How To Lean Bulk (without counting calories)

These days, there’s a lot of confusion around bulking—what it actually means, whether you should lean bulk or dirty bulk, and which approach gets the best results.

In this newsletter, I’ll start by clearing up common misconceptions about bulking and laying out key definitions to make sure we’re on the same page—then I’ll share how I approach lean bulking without counting calories.

If you’re someone who wants to maximize muscle gain while minimizing fat gain without the hassle of tracking your food every day, this one’s for you.

What is a bulk?

By definition, bulking is a deliberate strategy to consume more calories than your body burns to promote muscle growth.

The relationship between calories and weight gain

Fundamentally, the higher your net calorie surplus, the more weight you gain.

This is illustrated by the white graph called ‘total weight gain’.

The relationship between calorie surplus and weight gain is pretty much 1:1 proportional, especially if you ignore noise in the data like water retention.

This will become more important later.

Why rate of weight gain is a better measure than calorie surplus

As we established, calorie surplus and weight gain are pretty much 1:1 proportional.

So, calorie surplus and weight gain are pretty much interchangeable words. When you’re speaking of a calorie surplus, you’re speaking of weight gain and vice versa.

But how do you know your actual calorie surplus? You can’t.

You can only know how much weight you gained, on average, week by week.

That’s why studies often quantify bulks in rate of weight gain rather than calorie surpluses.

What about maingaining/gaintaining?

Often, terms like maingaining or gaintaining are thrown around, putting forward the idea that you can gain muscle while in a maintenance phase, which you technically can, but it will not be much.

Sadly, because of that, some people tend to believe that they can actually build an aesthetic, lean, muscular physique while maintaining their bodyweight, which they can’t.

Let me explain it with an easy-to-understand example.

Imagine you are 70 kg (~155 lbs) and 15% body fat. If you want to eventually be 80 kg (~175 lbs) and 15% body fat, that is not achievable eating maintenance calories.

How are you supposed to add tissue to your body if you’re eating exactly as much as you’re spending?

Maintenance calories are, by definition, the number of calories an individual needs to consume daily to maintain their current body weight without gaining or losing weight.

So, what most people mean by maingaining or gaintaining was never about true maintenance. What they actually mean is a small calorie surplus, so in reality, a lean bulk.

What is a lean bulk?

A lean bulk is where you try to gain as much muscle mass as possible while minimizing needless fat gain.

But what calorie surplus/rate of weight gain achieves this?

That totally depends on your muscle growth potential.

The higher your muscle growth potential, the higher your calorie surplus/rate of weight gain can be.

The lower your muscle growth potential, the lower your calorie surplus/rate of weight gain has to be, if you want to lean bulk.

What determines muscle growth potential?

• Training age

• Biological age

• Genetics

• Protein intake

• Quality of training stimulus

• Fatigue and recovery

If you’ve already built a ton of muscle mass, your ability to build additional muscle is going to be diminished.

That’s why it’s recommended for beginners, intermediates, and advanced trainees to achieve different rates of weight gain and therefore, consume different calorie surpluses.

• Beginner: not more than 0.25 kg (~0.5 lb) per week → 1 kg (2.2 lbs) per month

• Intermediate: not more than 0.125 kg (~0.25 lbs) per week → 0.5 kg (~1 lb) per month

• Advanced: 0.25-0.5 kg (~0.5-1 lb) per month

These are kind of arbitrary and really depend on your individual variables.

If your training, nutrition, and recovery are superb, you might get away with more.

If your training, nutrition, and recovery are not as good, you might even have to lower your rate of weight gain to still gain predominantly lean mass.

What is best? - My case for the lean bulk

I will assume your goals are to…

1. build muscle

2. as fast as possible

3. while minimizing fat gain.

If that’s the case, the lean bulk is for you.

In the next section, I will go over all of the reasons why the lean bulk is best and superior to any other approach.

1. You don’t want a high calorie surplus/high rate of weight gain

More weight gain (higher calorie surplus) does not equal more muscle growth.

To illustrate that fact, look at the following graph.

As you start getting into a calorie surplus, most of your weight gain is going to be muscle mass.

But as you start increasing your calorie surplus, more and more of the weight gain is going to be fat and less is going to be muscle until the muscle gain curve is completely flat and the fat gain curve is linear.

At that point, you won’t gain any additional amount of muscle and only fat.

If we want to maximize muscle gain and minimize fat gain, we want to maximize the difference between the muscle gain and fat gain curves.

I denote the point at which the difference between the two curves is maximized C* or W*. They represent the theoretical optimal calorie surplus/theoretical optimal rate of weight gain.

Although we might want to consider gaining a bit more muscle mass for a small disproportionate increase in fat gain, as gaining muscle is harder and losing fat is much easier.

I denote this point C+ or W+.

The take-home message is, you don’t want to increase your calorie surplus/rate of weight gain above and beyond the point that would already get you most of the muscle gain, because then you’re just gaining needless additional fat.

Additionally, a recent study found that between a 2% calorie surplus group and a 9% calorie surplus group, the 2% calorie surplus group gained almost as much muscle mass as the 9% group while gaining significantly less fat.

Mind you, a 2% calorie surplus is not much. If you were to consume 2500 for your maintenance calories, you’d have to consume an additional 50 kcal. That’s like half a banana.

According to Menno Henselman’s calculations, the 2% group gained 1.3 kg of muscle mass, while the 9% group gained 1.9 kg BUT the 2% group gained only 0.4 kg of fat while the 9% group gained 1.9 kg.

Personally, I’d much prefer the 2% surplus, gaining most of the muscle mass while gaining almost no fat.

This way you can bulk for way longer, which means increased gains. Plus, you can avoid cutting, which can potentially even lose you gains.

2. You don’t want to be consuming maintenance calories

As I kind of already explained, I don’t know how people want to gain tissue on their body without a net surplus of energy. It’s thermodynamically not possible.

Further, the primary muscle growth mechanism (mTOR) is only activated when there is 1) enough protein (especially the amino acid leucine), 2) a stimulus (mechanical tension from resistance training), and enough 3) energy availability.

Anecdotally, I would also highly discourage you from doing this. Whenever I’ve been in a maintenance (accidentally), I was making basically no muscle gains because I wasn’t in a surplus, but I was also not losing body fat either because I wasn’t in a calorie deficit.

I was effectively spinning my wheels.

Not recommended.

3. You want to maximize your time in a bulk

Muscle hypertrophy (i.e., building muscle) takes time.

As we discussed already, being in a calorie surplus (bulking) is where you maximize muscle growth.

So you want to maximize the time you’re in a calorie surplus (bulking).

If your goal was to maximize muscle growth, you should want to be bulking as long as possible.

But how do you do that without getting overly fat?

By being in an ever-so-slight calorie surplus.

Another reason to lean bulk.

4. You want to minimize how often you have to cut

Being in a cut is not only bad from the perspective that you might even be losing muscle, but you also have the opportunity cost of losing the time where you could’ve been maximizing muscle growth by bulking — a double whammy.

But how do you minimize how often you have to cut?

By gaining less body fat on a bulk — i.e., by lean bulking.

How I lean bulk without counting calories (step-by-step)

Step 1) Create a meal plan

You can create a weekly meal plan, a daily meal plan, or anything in between.

I like to create a daily meal plan and follow it every day.

I have no problem eating the same things every day.

On the contrary, I prefer it because then I don’t have to think about what I have to eat and when, I know what to buy, and I know how to prepare it the fastest because I’ve practiced it so much.

Without a meal plan, though, it’s almost impossible to lean bulk without tracking calories.

Additionally, by building a meal plan once, you can make sure you’re consuming healthy foods, the right amount of micronutrients, your desired amount of macronutrients, and your desired amount of calories.

You do it once and follow it for the rest of the time, and you know you’re consuming the right macros.

Before I go into how to build a meal plan, I want to go over the principles that your meal plan should adhere to if you want to maximize muscle growth.

Important nutrition principles to maximize muscle growth

The most important principle your meal plan should adhere to is a proper protein intake (for obvious reasons).

You want to consume at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight (1+ g/lb or 2.2+ g/kg).

Not as important, and even less so if you’re consuming enough protein, is protein timing. To really maximize muscle protein synthesis over the day, you can try consuming 4-6 meals with an even distribution of protein.

Also, less important, if you’re consuming enough protein, is protein quality. If you want to be safe, eating high-quality protein sources is recommended. These include lean meats, lean dairy, eggs, and protein supplements. And there are probably high-quality vegan sources, but I have no idea about that.

Protein quality is important because you need a certain amino acid composition for muscle protein synthesis. If you’re low on certain, but needed, amino acids, your muscle protein synthesis will be bottlenecked.

If you want to find out if something has a good amino acid composition, look up the Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) of the food.

The other macros really don’t matter as much, but are needed to build a meal plan, so here it goes.

Fats should be about 0.3-0.5 g/lb, and carbs should make up the rest.

Focus on high-quality options here as well.

High-quality fats are mono- and poly-unsaturated fats (e.g., from nuts, avocado, olive oil, etc.).

High-quality carbs are fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Summary

1. Protein intake = 1+ g/lb (~2.2+ g/kg)

2. Protein distribution = evenly distributed across 4-6 meals per day

3. Protein quality = high-quality proteins like in lean meats, lean dairy, eggs, protein supplements (whey, casein), and probably some vegan options

4. Fats = 0.3-0.5 g/lb of high-quality fats

5. Carbs = remainder of high-quality carbs

How to build the meal plan

Now, let’s go over how to build the meal plan.

There are many ways.

What I like to do is to start by determining how many meals I want to eat.

Personally, I am eating 5 right now, so let’s go with that as an example.

Next, I’d go into my calorie tracker app (personally, I use Cronometer, but you can also use Myfitnesspal or any other calorie tracker app) and start plugging in foods.

But what foods?

I’d start with my high-quality protein sources.

Each meal will have at least 1 high-quality protein source.

Example:

• Post wake up: whey shake (with water)

• Breakfast: eggs, diced ham

• Lunch: Chicken

• Snack: whey shake

• Dinner: Turkey

After that, I start adding high-quality carbs and fats.

You can add whatever carbs and fats you want, and would like to eat with your high-quality protein sources.

Chicken goes well with potatoes, rice, and even pasta if you want to.

Don’t forget to include vegetables and fruits, as I was guilty of in the past.

If you have no idea what meals to build, let ChatGPT give you inspiration. Just tell it your preferences and it will give you many good ideas.

Just mention ALL of your preferences.

Tell it…

• your desired calories for the meal.

• your desired macros for the meal.

• that you want high-quality proteins.

• if you want many micronutrients (and which).

• if you want it to be quick and easy.

• if you don’t like certain foods.

• if you want it to be cheap.

• whether you want it to be tasty or don’t really care about that.

• if you want minimal clean up time after making the meal.

• if you don’t want the meal to include too many ingredients.

Tell it everything.

You can even make ChatGPT create a whole meal plan for you. You just need to be patient and tell it everything it needs to know (e.g., how many meals you want, what foods, what macros, etc.).

However, when you create your meal plan, just remember you want your meal plan to be as sustainable as possible.

And you can only achieve that if the meal plan truly satisfies all of your preferences.

But how many foods/meals/ingredients are you supposed to add to your meal plan?

You basically add food/meals/ingredients until you’ve fulfilled your desired calorie intake and macros.

But what will your calorie intake be?

To calculate your calorie intake, you will have to estimate your maintenance calories first.

There are two ways to estimate your maintenance calories.

1) Estimate from past experience

2) Estimate with a TDEE calculator (e.g., https://tdeecalculator.net/)

Either you know from experience how many calories you need to maintain your bodyweight, or you can use a TDEE calculator to estimate it.

In any case, you don’t have to be very precise, as we will change it on the fly based on our body composition changes anyway.

But how do you know what calorie surplus to consume to gain X kg/lbs per week?

That’s where a quick and dirty rule of thumb comes in, and it goes like this:

Now, if you want to gain 0.25 kg (~ 0.5 lbs) per week, you’d have to be in a 250 kcal surplus.

This is very simplified, but it works fine as a start to estimate your calories.

Huge caveat: This assumes all of your weight gain is fat.

Fat has a higher energy density. To build 1 lb of fat, you need 3500 kcal.

To build 1 lb of muscle, you need 700 kcal.

So if you’re gaining faster than your desired rate of weight gain, but you’re staying fairly lean, then you might be building a lot of muscle mass.

Summary

1. Determine meal amount

2. Determine high-quality protein sources for each meal

3. Add high-quality carb and fat sources to that and start building meals

4. (Potentially consult ChatGPT or any other AI)

5. Make it sustainable (make the meal plan satisfy all of your preferences)

6. Add meals/foods until you’ve fulfilled your desired calorie intake and macros

Step 2) Eat the same every day (or every week)

This step is important because, if we don’t do this, we can’t know what average weekly calorie intake led to which average weekly weight changes.

And we need to know that to auto-regulate our meal plan and calorie intake to facilitate lean gains (which I will go over in step 4).

Step 3) Track your bodyweight every day

I kind of already mentioned this, but you need to be tracking your bodyweight daily or at least 4-5 times per week to get a good estimate of your average weight for the week.

This allows us to calculate our average rate of weight gain week-to-week.

Step 4) Take weekly progress pictures

This is also important for our next step, as if we don’t know how our body composition is changing and we only make decisions based on our weekly average weight gain, we could be making the wrong changes.

For example, imagine you’re gaining way faster than you wanted to, but you’re also not gaining much fat, why would you then decrease your calorie intake? That wouldn’t be a good change.

So this is important to track as well.

Step 5) Make adjustments on the fly (auto-regulation)

Now we should know three things.

1. Our desired rate of weight gain (for our lean bulk)

2. Our weekly average calorie intake

3. Our weekly average rate of weight gain

With this data, we can auto-regulate our calorie intake week-to-week so we’re gaining predominantly lean mass, while not tracking anything.

• If you’re gaining too much (actual rate of weight gain > desired rate of weight gain) AND you’re gaining too much fat, lower your calorie intake.

• If you’re gaining too little (actual rate of weight gain < desired rate of weight gain) AND you’re gaining little to no fat, increase your calorie intake.

• If you’re gaining just right (actual rate of weight gain = desired rate of weight gain) AND you’re gaining little to no fat, that’s perfect. Don’t change anything.

• If you’re gaining just right (actual rate of weight gain = desired rate of weight gain) AND you’re gaining too much fat, decrease your calorie intake.

How do you increase/decrease your calorie intake, and by how much?

That depends on how much weight you think you’re gaining too much.

We can go back to the rule of thumb (from above), and let’s assume you think you’re gaining, on average, 0.1 kg (~0.2 lbs) too much each week, then you should decrease your daily calorie intake by about 100 kcal.

But what do you take out of your meal plan?

Most of the time, it will be carbs… or fats if they aren’t already on the lower side.

Take out any carbs (or fats… but not any lower than 0.3 gram per pound of bodyweight, though) until you’ve reduced your daily calorie intake of your meal plan by 100 kcal.

That’s how you make adjustments on the fly (auto-regulate).

Here’s a quick summary:

Summary

• Step 1) Create a meal plan

• Step 2) Eat the same every day (or every week)

• Step 3) Track your bodyweight every day

• Step 4) Take weekly progress pictures

• Step 5) Make adjustments on the fly (auto-regulation)

I hope you found it helpful.

Thanks for reading, Jonas