THE ULTIMATE CLEAN BULK MEAL PLAN

Last Updated on January 7, 2021

Forget the cutting phase and get ripped while you bulk with intermittent feasting.

For ages, bodybuilders and regular guys alike have taken a two-prong approach to getting big and ripped. “Bulking,” or eating as much as possible while training for muscle growth, followed by a calorie-restricted, fat-burning “cutting” phase has become the default method to carve out a bigger, leaner physique. But it’s time consuming, and treating your body like a thermostat that you turn up and down can have negative effects on a cellular level. Fortunately, as we learn more about how the body processes macronutrients, it’s becoming clearer that we aren’t being nearly as efficient in our physique-enhancing efforts as we could be, and consuming specific quantities of nutrients at certain times of day can condense the bulking and cutting phases into one simple phase that will get you jacked—the healthy way—in a fraction of the time.

‘CLEAN’ VS. ‘DIRTY’ BULKING

Bigger and fatter is not an ideal bulking strategy. Bigger and better is. Old-school bodybuilders like Frank Zane and Vince Gironda—two of the greatest physiques of all time, in my opinion— would tell you that you’d look a lot more impressive by adding five to eight pounds of fat-free muscle mass than by slapping on 10 pounds of muscle with 20 pounds of belly marbling. These days, traditional bulking strategies tend to fall under two broad categories, and they both leave much to be desired.

It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right, just eat it, eat it, eat it: The “dirty” school of thought is that as long as you down enough protein, you can garbage disposal whatever else you want, regardless of food quality. Even if this “crap loading” works physique-wise, it’s not a wise choice from a long-term health perspective. (Admit it, you know.)

If you are pounding foods loaded with sugar, trans fats, and omega-6 vegetable oils every day, cell-membrane integrity and elasticity can be compromised, chronic systemic inflammation can predispose you to disease—or at least debilitating joint pain—and you may just end up with the emotional stability of a seesaw.

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Even if you’re not scared of disease, think emotions are for women, and care only about how you look, consider that poor food choices can reduce insulin sensitivity and nutrient partitioning toward the muscle cell. This makes it harder to gain quality muscle mass with each successive bulk, and next to impossible to shed that last layer of flab when shifting into a shredding phase.