When I look back on my obese permabulking days, I look back with both regret and nostalgia. Permabulking gave me some problems, but I also liked some aspects of it.
Perhaps we can share our permabulking stories. Here is a serious of questions.
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
When I look back on my obese permabulking days, I look back with both regret and nostalgia. Permabulking gave me some problems, but I also liked some aspects of it.
Perhaps we can share our permabulking stories. Here is a serious of questions.
1,2:
Package of Italian sausage or brautwurst with buns
Frozen pizza
homestyle mac and cheese
Gnocchi and ground beef in marinara (a pound of dumplings+beef each)
whole bag of hash browns and a tube jimmy dean breakfast sausage+ 6 whole eggs
20oz 2% milk+ 4sc protein before bed daily
all kinds of shit like this. I ate a frozen pizza daily.
I hit 235-240 at 5’9" I started dealing with chronic back pain about two years ago. I decided to diet. I started LOSING weight at 5000 tracked calories a day Started paleoish and transitioned to a SKD and eventually a TKD
Da tasty foods.
Being fat
I did it because I was super small and puny and when the force feeding lost it’s effectiveness ie beginners gains stopped I kept eating like that.
I dieted 230-240 down to 165 in less than a year. Back injury kept me from squatting and pulling for most of it. An ART practitioner made my back like 95% better but now I have a groin strain that isn’t healing. Gains were lost, but lateral delts and a few other parts that were neglected by powerlifting training improved.
Now I eat like 150-250g carb/day, 200 pro and 80-100 fat depending on my activity.
Like any good dirty bulker McDoubles featured daily as did Cookies N Cream ice cream
Thinking about how good I would look if and when I decided to “cut”
Jeans shopping. Wearing shirts tucked in. Having big arms that looked the same flexed as relaxed.
Since I wasn’t as strong as I wanted/hadn’t gained all the muscle I could, why stymie that with dieting? You obviously need to be as muscular as physically possible before you consider cutting. Fortunately I saw beach photos of myself and was suitably disgusted.
This should be called “memoirs of a dreamer bulk”… Unless some actual permabulker a chime in 
During my “dreamer bulking” days:
The diet looked like my normal diet except more hot wings and more In N Out 4x4’s.
Regular PWO meal was an In N Out 4x4 with grilled onions, fries, large Dr Pepper. When I was feeling primed for extra growth I would order a double double on the side 
One 4x4 is 1,040 calories and almost 50g’s of pro.
Another favorite was what I like to call the “Mc Turf and Clux Delux.” Order a Mc Donald’s double cheeseburger and a Mc Chicken sandwich plain. Peel apart the two cheese burger patties and slap yhe Mc chicken pattie in between, empty one ketchup packet in there and re form the mega muscle fueling sandwich of awesomeness. You can EASILY crush two of those in less than 2 minutes. No problem.
Eating extra food that I knew was bad for me and justifying it because I was cultivating mass and needed the cals bro!! I need em. Also feeling/looking huge in t-shirts and having people make comments about being huge.
I didn’t like feeling chubby, slow, and having knee pain. I also didn’t like seeing any resemblance of a double chin in photos. It also sucked to not be pumped to pop your shirt off at the beach.
I, like virtually everyone else, was on that dreamer bulk because “that’s how it’s always been done!” Eat tons of food and justify it because you’re “in a mass gaining stage” lol.
I’ve always admitted that I wasted a lot of time early on with either lack of correct information, or simply a misunderstanding of real information. Nutrition and dietwise, I was as guilty as anyone else of doing things… I don’t want to say ‘wrong’, because I’ll get crucified by people with different goals, but not the way I should have to optimally reach those of my own.
Things I did or believed incorrectly - relatively of couse
-I thought calories were the be all end all. If I ate enough and made it to the gym regularly, I’d look like Arnold when I eventually cut up. Sorry, it’s not that simple. Macronutrients are more than a fad word, and they need to be understood if you want to make the most of your pursuit.
-“Eat big, train big” was the best way to look like a bodybuilder. If I ate more than I needed and constantly tried to lift heavier progress would come (this kind of gets into the whole “chasing #s” thing I’ve written about in the past.)
-Definitely overestimated how many calories I ‘needed’. When I finally dieted down smartly for the first time, and made myself track everything on a daily basis, it made me understand just what I needed to maintain, to lose, and to gain (relative to my body composition at the time, as well as my training volume, split, etc… of course!)
-Thought that if I underate for a day that the couple of lbs I lost were actual muscle, and not just the usual amount of crap working its way through my intestines -lol
-Believed that if I missed a meal, I’d instantly lose muscle, and so I’d find myself in Penn station or at corner bodegas in NYC downing some pretty poor choices for nourishment at times.
-Always had to order more food than anyone I was hanging out with. I was a bodybuilder after all (or so I belived at the time), and one burger couldn’t possibly be enough to satiate my growing muscles! Sure I had eaten two hours earlier, but damnit, this is what all the really ‘big’ guys in the gym must do.
As none of my friends at the time looked like competitive bodybuilders (just very serious, fairly large gym rats), no one was in any position to call me out. We’d all hit the gym, shower up, head out for the night, and make sure we all shoveled in tons of food so we’d continue to look like the local wrecking crew hanging in the corner of whatever bar or club we were at. We’d joke about how easy it was to get cut, all you had to do was a few hours of cardio every day for a few weeks,… right? But who has time for that? and besides, I’d rather be huge! Anyone can be ripped at 150 lbs right?!
As much as I loved telling people what I weighed, especially considering that I started training in college weighing all of 150 non-shredded lbs, I knew that I didn’t feel great losing my shirt at the beach. Sleeveless shirts are a favorite of pudgy gym rats for a reason. Tight acorss the back? Shoulders stretching the XL fabric? Triceps hanging like smooth hams from the sleeve holes? Check, check and check! Plenty of material to hide the belly, love handles and back fat? Thank goodness yes.
S
After bulking for a while I PM’d Professor X with some progress pics. He told me I actually wasn’t doing too bad, just to not let that waistline get any more out of control. Cleaned up my diet and recomped for a year, and now I’m doing my first serious cut. All in all I have to say it worked, I gained most of my muscle base in those 2 years I was eating big.
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
When I look back on my obese permabulking days, I look back with both regret and nostalgia. Permabulking gave me some problems, but I also liked some aspects of it.
Perhaps we can share our permabulking stories. Here is a serious of questions.
It has been almost 2 years now but I will try to remember some details.
Breakfast - involved eggs/some breakfast meat and I remember avoiding carbs
Lunch - Protein shake + footlong sub
Dinner - Meatloaf/green beans/mashed potatoes (this was and still is my favorite meal)
Snack - Protein shake + smaller carb meal(fruits/oatmeal etc)
Before bed - Big ass omelette with sausage/eggs/tons of cheese
1 gallon milk a day - no veggies/fiber haha
See above dinner and before bed
Ate what I loved, never counted calories, scale/strength was always moving up.
I felt like I was taking the easy way out and not putting in the effort that I could be; I am a perfectionist through and through…When I decide to be good at something I give it everything I have. Lack of control as I would hit a plateau and jump calories up so much unknowingly that I put on 5-10 lbs in just a few weeks; this happen many times.
Read too damn much. I don’t regret it however, I learned a lot and as someone that never had anyone to guide him when it came to weight lifting I picked up the good lessons from it and discarded the nonsense. Being constantly referred to as “big guy” and such was great for my confidence(which I lacked beforehand).
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
When I look back on my obese permabulking days, I look back with both regret and nostalgia. Permabulking gave me some problems, but I also liked some aspects of it.
Perhaps we can share our permabulking stories. Here is a serious of questions.
I played Australian Rules Football up until I was 32. After many injuries I stopped running so much and started eating a lot of crap foods.
Lots of pizza and pasta. Mashed potatoes everyday. Drank lots of milk. Heaps of cheese. Drank soft drink. Lots of beer. Heaps of sugary snacks. Pies, sausage rolls, all that crap food. Make me sick thinking about it.
A large Pizza and pasta dish would be a regular. Washed down with 5 or 6 beers.
I felt big and people called me big boy etc…I also felt really strong. Had no joint issues like I do now so could lift big weights. This is a huge psychological advantage. You feel different from everyone else.
I looked like shit. I hold fat around my waist and face so I didn’t look great to women. Taking your clothes off in front of a woman when you have a gut was somewhat embarrassing. Women do not want that look lol.
As an athlete I was always limited to how big I could get as I had to be fast and run a lot. This was my first chance to really put on some size with no cardio holding me back. I just wanted to be big I guess lol.
I don’t really regret it. I look back now and laugh when I hear people talk about how you should bulk up etc… lol Yeah ok, have fun getting rid of all that fat pal whilst trying to maintain your strength. It’s all part of the journey.
As you get older you worry less about such things. It’s more like how to get through an arms day without injuring an elbow
How long does a bulk have to be before you call it “perma?” I’m not sure 2-3 years bulking at the start of one’s lifting career qualifies. Most people go a bit over board at one time or another, so to be labeled a permabulk I think you can really only talk about those that never leaned out again.
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
When I look back on my obese permabulking days, I look back with both regret and nostalgia. Permabulking gave me some problems, but I also liked some aspects of it.
Perhaps we can share our permabulking stories. Here is a serious of questions.
What did your permabulking diet look like?
What was one of your permabulking regular meals?
What did you like about permabulking?
What didn’t you like?
Why did you permabulk?[/quote]
Sample day:
Breakfast: 1 lbs of ground beef (30% fat) with spaghetti noodles and meat sauce
Snack and lunch: 20 slices of bread with ham/cheese/lettuce (1 loaf a day was the goal)
Dinner: regular meat and potatoes with veggies plus protein shake and dessert
After training: 1/2 gallon milk, yoghurt, cheese and a carb source like mashed potatoes with carrots (Dutch dish, has lots of grass fed butter in it!)
Before bed: Cottage cheese with sour cream
See snack and lunch: this was during college (in Holland) and during my first years in the States…
I like the just massive amount of work I could do on all these calories. I could easily do 20 sets of really hard work per muscle group on this diet. Felt strong and pumped all day long and actually slept really well, if I remember correctly…
what I didn’t like is that it ruined my physique.
Although it got me up to 290lbs (no steroids) I have completely ruined my proportions. I started out exceptionally skinny weighing only 116 lbs at 6 ft. By the time I hit a ripped 176 lbs I still only saw that really skinny kid in the mirror. Didn’t matter that I was offered modeling gigs and that I got compliments on a daily basis. I kept pushing the envelope and worked my way up to 216 then 235 followed by 269 and finally 290. All on a bone structure of a Frank Zane.
Yes I was large, and very impressive looking (in clothes) and I was incredibly strong but I did NOT look like a bodybuilder and my 26 inch waist was gone. I also was not in proportion with a super thick back and quads yet arms (extremities really) that did not match.
The other thing I do not like is that as a result I am ravenously hungry almost all the time. Not easy for me to lose fat whereas before it was no issue.
Things is, I achieved that at 176-180 lbs and even more so at 216-225 lbs. There was never a reason to go all the way to 290 lbs.
Would not advice anyone to do this for more than 1-2 years. And only if they are under 150 lbs and tall, like I was. To anyone under 5’10" weighing more than 135 lbs when they start out, I’d say do not do this and aim for 2-3 lbs of mass gain a month for the first two years. Now, if that takes 6,000 calories a day…than go for it
I realize that it will not be linear and that some months you gain 1 and others you gain 5 lbs but gaining more than 20 lbs will likely lead to too much fat gain.
I never permabulked, but in college I did povertybulk. Trying to find a way to get in 3500-4000 cals a day when you had no money and a lightning metabolism was fun.
My go to meal was what I would call a Feed Bucket. Had these giant bowl tupperwears that I would filled with a box of whole wheat pasta, a 1 lb log of frozen ground turkey from walmart, can of sauce and bag of broccoli. Would make the bowl and just sit there on the couch eating until it was gone, sometimes took 2 hours or so.
Other Feedbuckets worked with rice or ramen, cans of tuna or frozen chicken and salsa.
I also would go to the College meal plan kitchen, eat until I could move, then make 2-3 sandwhiches at the sandwhich counter, wrap them in napkins and stick them in my backback. Fun times…
[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
How long does a bulk have to be before you call it “perma?” I’m not sure 2-3 years bulking at the start of one’s lifting career qualifies. Most people go a bit over board at one time or another, so to be labeled a permabulk I think you can really only talk about those that never leaned out again.[/quote]
That’s why I suggested “dreamer bulk.”
When you’re pounding away on some food with dreams of it going straight into your stomach and magically pumped out into your body as new musclez. Dreams of looking like the guy in the poster or magazine if only you just keep giving yourself enough calories to groooooooow!!! Lol
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
How long does a bulk have to be before you call it “perma?” I’m not sure 2-3 years bulking at the start of one’s lifting career qualifies. Most people go a bit over board at one time or another, so to be labeled a permabulk I think you can really only talk about those that never leaned out again.[/quote]
That’s why I suggested “dreamer bulk.”
When you’re pounding away on some food with dreams of it going straight into your stomach and magically pumped out into your body as new musclez. Dreams of looking like the guy in the poster or magazine if only you just keep giving yourself enough calories to groooooooow!!! Lol[/quote]
You are right, I ‘dreamed’ like that for 14 years (from 16-30). Unfortunately after that life gets in the way and it becomes more and more difficult to deal with the negative aspect of what you did for so many years.
[quote]IamMarqaos wrote:
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]Quick Ben wrote:
How long does a bulk have to be before you call it “perma?” I’m not sure 2-3 years bulking at the start of one’s lifting career qualifies. Most people go a bit over board at one time or another, so to be labeled a permabulk I think you can really only talk about those that never leaned out again.[/quote]
That’s why I suggested “dreamer bulk.”
When you’re pounding away on some food with dreams of it going straight into your stomach and magically pumped out into your body as new musclez. Dreams of looking like the guy in the poster or magazine if only you just keep giving yourself enough calories to groooooooow!!! Lol[/quote]
You are right, I ‘dreamed’ like that for 14 years (from 16-30). Unfortunately after that life gets in the way and it becomes more and more difficult to deal with the negative aspect of what you did for so many years.[/quote]
I’m sure almost every lifter to every pick up a barbell did this.
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
When I look back on my obese permabulking days, I look back with both regret and nostalgia. Permabulking gave me some problems, but I also liked some aspects of it.
Perhaps we can share our permabulking stories. Here is a serious of questions.
I used to permabulk because I felt I needed to eat a lot and be eating all the time or I’d go “catabolic”
A normal day would consist of some bs breakfast like cereal and a shake or something like that, I’d get in around 1000 calories peri workout in any form whatsoever (intra shakes, subways, sometimes burgers afterwards) and then at night I’d eat as much as I could usually two double burgers and then later on some pizza. I’d also have a gallon of milk in my dorm room at all times and drink it in 3-4 days to bump my calories up.
I then realized I was just a fatty and just looked like a fatty so I cut down and actually looked like I went to the gym.
Looking like you live in the gym > looking like you live in the all you can eat buffet.
[quote]gregron wrote:
Looking like you live in the gym > looking like you live in the all you can eat buffet.[/quote]
This is so true. Ultimately bodybuilding is about having the best body possible and permabulking certainly isn’t the way to get there (since you’ll never get lean)
Maybe this deserves its own thread, but is is it possible to bulk too slowly? Are there negatives to getting bigger and stronger, but really only adding a pound every few weeks, if that?
[quote]LoRez wrote:
Maybe this deserves its own thread, but is is it possible to bulk too slowly? Are there negatives to getting bigger and stronger, but really only adding a pound every few weeks, if that?[/quote]
If you’re getting bigger and stronger while only gaining a pound every two weeks or so why would you care?
This fixation with the scale is such a dated philosophy. A pound every two weeks or so is 20-25 pounds in a year. Gaining at that rate would probably result in minimal fat gain. That would be a crazy before an after photo of a years progress.
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]LoRez wrote:
Maybe this deserves its own thread, but is is it possible to bulk too slowly? Are there negatives to getting bigger and stronger, but really only adding a pound every few weeks, if that?[/quote]
If you’re getting bigger and stronger while only gaining a pound every two weeks or so why would you care?
This fixation with the scale is such a dated philosophy. A pound every two weeks or so is 20-25 pounds in a year. Gaining at that rate would probably result in minimal fat gain. That would be a crazy before an after photo of a years progress.[/quote]
Exactly! All these “[Insert Monster Body Builder Here] ate all of this stuff and gained 20lbs in 1 month!” is all smoke and mirrors.
It’s really no different than losing weight. If someone lost 20lbs in 1 month, everyone would cry foul and point out “it’s water weight, glycogen stores, some muscle and some fat” and that it’s impossible to lose 20lbs of fat in 1 month.
So why is it everyone has this notion that you can gain 20lbs of muscle in a month?