These days everyone is interested in lean bulking macros, calories, and other nutritional details, to help them gain muscle mass. It’s understandable. No one wants to gain excessive body fat, only to have to laboriously diet back down afterwards. In this article I will be diving into current research on building muscle mass. I’ll include macros, calories, and other pertinent nutrition information to help you build mass, while minimizing body fat. By the end of this article you should have a great diet plan to help achieve your goals. Keep reading for more.
If you’ve read any of my other articles on maximizing muscle growth, then you’ll know that it doesn’t take a PHd level of understanding to achieve your fitness goals. You need to understand the principles behind what you’re trying to achieve and be diligent in your pursuit of these goals. Lean bulking is exactly the same.
Once you understand the basics of calories, macros, and nutrient timing, then you have a simple plan that will help you build muscle, and limit fat gain. Here is a quick overview for the ultimate guide to lean bulking for muscle gain.
Lean Bulking Macros, Calories, and Nutrition Overview
- Total number of calories needs to be 10-20% above maintenance requirements
- You most likely need less protein than you think you do
- Carbs and fats fill out the bulk of your energy intake
- You don’t need to eat thousands of extra calories per day
- Nutrient timing is less important than you might think
I do want to be clear. There is no way to gain muscle without gaining some amount of body fat with the weight gain. Your goal should be to maximize the amount of muscle you can gain, while minimizing excess fat. As you’ll see this is fairly simple once you understand the basics of bulking. If you want a great macro calculator for muscle building, or dieting, then check this out.
In the next section we’ll review some excellent research on bulking. As you’ll see, your calorie intake during a lean bulk really depends on how hard you train, and how much experience you have in the gym, as well as your body composition. Before we do that don’t forget to join the email list below.
Lean Bulking Research Review
In this section we’re going to review an awesome research review entitled, “Nutrition Recommendations for Bodybuilders in the Off-Season: A Narrative Review.” This extensive research review references over 100 peer reviewed scientific studies, and it boils down the key points very well.
They highlight that the most important factor for gaining muscle weight, is the total amount of calories you’re eating. They point out that new athletes can eat quite a lot of extra calories, without gaining excessive fat. Intermediate and advanced lifters cannot do the same. Here’s a quick summary.
Based on the current evidence, it may be appropriate to recommend bodybuilders to consume a slightly hyper-energetic diet (~10–20% above maintenance calories) in the off-season and recommend advanced bodybuilders to aim for the lower end of this recommendation, or even be more conservative if substantial increases in fat mass are experienced.
Nutrition Recommendations for Bodybuilders in the Off-Season: A Narrative Review.
If you’ve read any of my weight loss articles, then you know there is a lot of research on optimal weight loss rates. Surprise, surprise, these researchers found that the optimal amount of weekly weight gain is between 0.25 -0.5% of your bodyweight. This means that an average sized man, weighing 185 pounds, should only gain about a half pound of body weight per week.
It’s important to weigh your self multiple times each week as your daily weight can fluctuate by several pounds due to the vagaries of hormones, fluid retention, and daily activity level.
I think it’s incredible important to stay within these recommended ranges, above your total daily energy expenditure. All too often athletes use the term bulking to mean that they’re going to eat like trash, and gain a lot of weight, some of which will be muscle. If you plan your weight loss diet, then you should plan your weight gain diet!
Now that we’ve covered the basics of your caloric intake, we can move into a little more detail. In the next section we’ll review our lean bulking macros. If you want to try my most popular functional bodybuilding program, then check it out below.
Lean Bulking Macros: Protein, Carbs, and Fats
Most athletes think they need to focus on eating enough protein to maximize their chances of building muscle mass. That’s not exactly true. Sure, protein is important, as its constituent amino acids are the building blocks of muscle tissue. However, eating tons of protein does not help you build more muscle mass. Eating a reasonable amount of calories over your basal metabolic rate, plus daily activity does!
The researchers reviewed several studies, as it relates to the ideal amount of protein intake for building muscle. They concluded that 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight is about the useful limit. Math nerds will have noticed that 2.2g/kg equals 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. Yes, the meatheads were right!
To be clear, you can certainly eat more protein than this, if you prefer. You need to understand that you aren’t gaining any extra muscle, as a natural athlete. Only a reasonable calorie surplus will do that. Next we’ll talk about fats.
Fats for Lean Bulking
Fats are key for synthesizing hormones and regulating your bodies normal functions. It’s also one area that most researchers don’t spend a lot of time analyzing unfortunately. This leads us with some fairly wide margins for our lean bulking macros.
The researchers here recommend between 0.5g – 1.5g/kg/day of dietary fat intake. That’s 0.22 – 0.68 g/lb/day. That’s a huge range, and it gives us a lot of flexibility in our food choices in order to meet our fat needs. Keep in mind that each gram of protein and carbohydrate has 4 calories, while each gram of fat has 9 calories.
If you choose to eat a lot of fats, you might be limiting one of the most important macros for clean bulking, carbs. This can also be good for those that have a hard time building muscle. Fats are an easy source of calories. In fact, you’ll see a lot of fat in this list of the best bulking protein powders.
Carbohydrate Intake for Lean Bulking
The easiest way to figure the correct amount of carbs is to realize that once you set your protein and fat macros, carbs are the remainder of your overall energy intake. The researchers in this review recommend 3-5 g/kg/day or 1.36 – 2.27 g/lb/day. For our 185 pound male this is between 250 – 420 grams of carbs per day.
Again, this is one area that you could go a little higher than this range if you happen to respond well to higher carb diets. Just like eating excess protein, it isn’t likely to benefit you much in terms of lean bulking.
If all this math is hurting your head just remember that you need to eat 10-20% over your maintenance caloric needs, with advanced athletes erring on the lower end of the range. Protein needs to be around 1 gram per pound of bodyweight, with carbs between 1.3 – 2.3 g/lb/day. Fats should be 0.2-0.7 g/lb/day. Most importantly, check your rate of weight gain multiple times per week using the average, keeping it within .25 – .5% of your bodyweight increase.
Now that we’ve covered the macro ratios, and daily caloric needs, we can quickly review some of the less important aspects of lean bulking, like nutrient timing, and supplements.
Nutrient Timing and Supplements
The researchers highlight that while there are a lot of studies on protein timing, and muscle protein synthesis, it doesn’t really have much of a practical effect for hypertrophy. The most important factor is hitting your lean bulking macros. This is the best way to build lean muscle mass, without too much fat.
Once you have that nailed down, you can spread out your meals in whatever reasonable way works for your schedule. To be clear, you aren’t doing any damage by slamming a protein shake right after your workout. Don’t expect to turn into the Incredible Hulk, or your Uncle Rick, by doing that.
If you’re looking to gain strength, mass, and build some awesome conditioning as a hybrid athlete, then this training program is for you.
Supplements for Building Mass
These researchers also reviewed a lot of studies on which supplements helped athletes build muscle. If you’re hoping they found some super secret supplement that doubles gains, then I’m sorry to disappoint.
They found that caffeine and creatine to be effective in providing some help for lean bulking. They also found that beta alanine can help when you’re training hard. Otherwise, there isn’t a lot of research showing big improvements from supplements. Your best results come from eating good nutritious meals, not supplements!
Now that we’ve covered how you should be eating, we’ll review some awesome fitness plans you can use to build muscle mass. I’ll include several different types of fitness programs including: pure mass programs, functional fitness programs, and hybrid programs.
Finding A Great Lean Bulking Fitness Program
Now that we’ve covered all the details you need to know for building your ultimate lean bulking nutrition plan, I’ll give you a few different fitness programs. As always, I encourage you to follow the links to the programs to see all the details. Some are great for functional fitness athletes, and others are aimed at pure bodybuilding.
If you’re the type of athlete that really likes to have all the details for each training session, then I recommend checking out my premium programs. They include specific warm ups, coaches notes, percentages, and more.
- 8 Week Functional Bodybuilding Hybrid Program
- 7 Week Free Functional Bodybuilding Program
- 8 Week Hybrid Strength and Endurance Training Plan
- 12 Week Muscular Growth Program
- 12 Week Free Bodybuilding Program: Building Pure Muscle Mass [PDF]
These programs are some of my most popular options. I would recommend trying out a week or two of the program you like the most. I have a feeling you’ll rapidly determine if that program fits your specific goal. Now let’s finish this article with some practical advice.
Final Thoughts
It’s great to have some awesome research to point us in the right direction. You now have the lean bulking macros that you should be shooting for, as well as some fitness plans you can use. Keep in mind that none of this matters if you aren’t consistent with your nutrition and work in the gym, in the long term.
Practically speaking, the most important thing to track is your rate of weight gain. It doesn’t really matter if you’re religiously tracking your calories in MyFitnessPal, which I recommend, if you’re gaining weight too quickly.
All of this research points us in the right direction. You’ll have to adjust your eating to accommodate your particular needs. If you have any questions or comments put them below. I’ll do my best to get you an answer. Now get out there and get training. Don’t forget to join the email list below.
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