Calculate Your Lean Bulk Macros

If you aren’t familiar with how to begin a lean bulk, then you’re in the right place! However, if you’ve done it before, perhaps we can offer you some new tips and tricks to implement on your lean bulking diet – so keep on reading…

Many people are afraid of doing a bulk as they think they’ll gain tons of fat in the process. When, if done correctly (such as a lean bulk), you might not gain that much fat at all. Yes, it is inevitable that you will gain some fat by eating in a calorie surplus (over what you need to maintain your weight). However, how much is down to what you eat, your calorie intake, your overall activity level, and of course, your genetics.

Some people are blessed with a naturally high metabolism, so they won’t gain much at all….if any! However, we normal folk will gain some fat, just try to ignore it and see the bigger picture. Ask yourself why you want to start a lean bulk in the first place. If you want to stay small and not put on any weight or muscle, then bulking is NOT for you! However, if you want to gain size, strength and muscle mass, then a lean bulk could be for you.

Most people will decide to do a lean bulk during the winter months when you can be more covered up and enjoy all of the festive food and drink. However, you can do it whenever you like or whenever suits you the best.

What Are Macros?

OK, so first of all you need to understand what macros are. Macros or macronutrients are the three main nutrient food groups we need to live, survive and thrive…

• Fats
• Carbohydrates
• Protein

How you consume these macros will some-what determine whether you gain weight, promote muscle growth, or lose weight. For example, someone looking to gain more lean muscle mass would tend to have a higher protein intake. However, calculating your macros can also help you to work out the best macros for fat loss, or weight gain as well.

Of course, it’s not just about what you eat that will determine the outcome of your lean bulk, you will also need to incorporate exercise into your routine to get the best results.

How To Calculate Your Lean Bulk Macros

To calculate your lean bulk macros there are a few things you need to consider. You can use a macro calculator to do this, however, they generally aren’t all that accurate as they are for the average person, not YOU specifically.

• Basal metabolic rate (BMR) – Calories you burn while resting, everything you do outside of exercise.
• Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) – The calories you burn during exercise.

The best way to do this is by working it out yourself through this formula.

BMR Formula

The first step is to work out your BMR, or the amount of energy you use while resting.

For Men –

10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) + 5 = BMR

For Women –

10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) – 161 = BMR

For example, my REE would be 10 x 57 (570) + 6.25 x 165 (1,031.25) + (570) = (1,601.25) – 5 x 39 (195) = (1,406.25) – 161 = 1,245.25. So this is the number of calories I would burn if I sat around doing nothing all day.

TDEE Formula

Once you have your BMR number, you can then work out your TDEE number. To do this you need to work out whether you are slightly active, moderately active, or very active.

Slightly Active – You do an activity that burns an additional 200-400 calories (females) or 250-500 calories (males). If this is you, multiply the (BMR) number you got above by 1.375 = (BMR x 1.375) = TDEE.

Moderately Active – You do an activity that burns an additional 400-650 calories (females) or 500-800 calories (males). (BMR x 1.55) = TDEE.

Very Active – An activity you do that burns an additional 650+ calories (females) or 800+ calories (males). (REE x 1.75) = TDEE.

So for me, based on my BMR, my TDEE would be (BMR x 1.75) = 2,179.18. This means the total calories I should be eating to maintain my weight would be 2,179. However, if I wanted to gain or lose weight, I would need to adjust this by 10% either up or down.

How To Start Clean Bulking

Once you’ve worked out what your maintenance calories are (either by doing the above or using an online calculator), start by increasing your daily calories. For example, based on the above, if I wanted to do a lean bulk, I would increase my calories by 10% to 2,397.11.

The amount of calories would then be evaluated each week and amended accordingly. For example, if you hadn’t gained any weight at all over that week, you would consider increasing it by another 10% to ensure you’re getting enough calories for your bulking phase.

What you don’t want to do is to increase it too quickly as your body won’t know what to do with the extra calories and will likely store it as unwanted fat. To gain as little fat as possible, you want to be seeing a weight increase of up to around 0.5 pounds per week – no more than this.

It might take you a few weeks to find your sweet spot for bulking so give it some time and patience. You will need to track every mouthful of food and drink you have to get the best results and to ensure you aren’t going too far over or under.

Make sure to take photos as you go so you can keep an eye on your body composition throughout the process. There is a lot that will happen that the scales don’t see so take lots of photos of every angle as you go. If you find you are putting on weight too quickly, change your daily calorie requirements. Simply go back to the previous week’s fewer calories and see what happens. A lot of it will be trial and error as every person is different and every journey is different depending on your primary goal.

Reasons To Start A Bulk

One of the most popular reasons to start a bulk is for muscle building and strength. By eating in a caloric surplus, your body will have more fuel for your workouts so you’ll be able to lift heavier weights and increase your lean muscle gain much faster. It’s also likely your muscles will heal and repair much faster as they have more nutrients to repair muscle tissue.

Another popular reason to do a lean bulk is to speed up your metabolism. By slowly increasing the amount you eat over time, your body will adapt to those extra calories in different ways. It will begin to use the extra calories as energy, and not store it as body fat.

You may even find in the long term, the more you eat, the slimmer and leaner you start to become as your body finds balance. Say you started off being able to eat 1,500 calories as your maintenance level calories. After you’ve finished your bulk, your maintenance level calories might now be more like 3,500. Wouldn’t it be great to be on a ‘diet’ being able to eat 3,000 calories a day.

How Long To Stay In A Bulking Phase

You won’t be able to go on forever increasing your calories week after week, it just wouldn’t be feasible. You’d end up having to eat thousands and thousands of calories a day, so much so it would become annoying – and expensive!

There will come a time when you do start to see that either your strength will plateau, or that you just start to gain more and more weight. This is when you will need to stop bulking and either start to reduce your food intake or maintain your calories to be at maintenance level.

However, quite often when people come out of a bulking phase, they will go straight into a weight loss phase and do a mini cut to get rid of any excess fat that occurred during the bulk. This is known as being in a calorie deficit where you would start to bring down your calories by 10% each week – or thereabouts.

What Is Dirty Bulking

A ‘dirty’ bulk is not healthy long-term, but many bodybuilders might experiment with one to gain as much muscle mass as fast as possible. However, following this, they’ll then need to perform a pretty tough cutting cycle to get rid of all the excess fat they’ve accumulated along the way. So what is a ‘dirty’ bulk? Essentially it’s where you would eat lots of fast food, takeaways and generally unhealthy food high in fat to increase your calories quickly without having to spend all day eating fruits and vegetables that are much lower in calories.

Lean bulking is a far more efficient way to try and build muscle mass…without also gaining a tonne of fat. By focusing on just building muscle without fat, you will have much slower results but you won’t need to go through such a tough cut afterwards to get rid of the excess fat. So, it depends on what works best for you and how desperate you are to gain size…however we would suggest you do a clean bulk as gaining fat quickly is NOT healthy!

Things To Consider Before You Begin

Doing a bulk to gain more lean mass will either sound terrifying to someone who hasn’t done it before, or will sound great because they get to eat so much more. However, often people forget about the toll it can take on you mentally. You will start to look different and feel different as you begin to put on weight. Clothes won’t fit as well and you may even have to buy larger clothes to fit while you’re in this phase.

• The expense
• Weight gain – looking and feeling different
• May need to do a fat loss diet afterwards
• Time consuming – eating and preparing a lot more food
• Always feeling full and possibly bloated

Then there’s the cost to think about. Eating a lot more food for at least a few months will be expensive and time-consuming having to prepare it all. You may even start to resent food because you’re having to eat so much more than you’re used to.

However, if you can get your head around all of this, then bulking can be great in so many ways if you do it properly and incorporate heavy strength training into your routine.

We hope you found this article useful and good luck on your lean bulking journey! We’d love to know how you get on in the comments below.

Would you try doing a lean bulk?