The Lean Bulking Problelm

A new approach to eating for size can help you add muscle without the fat.

- Vince Del Monte

The idea behind what is known as “lean bulking” or “lean gains” is based on the premise that you can build muscle without adding body fat, assuming you’re past the beginner stages of weight training. It’s also based on the intent to maximize the muscle-to-fat ratio in your favor (more than 50 percent of your gains being muscle versus fat, so if you gained 10 pounds on the scale, more than five of those pounds would be muscle).

Lean bulking is typically promoted with dietary strategies such as intermittent fasting, ketogenic, carb cycling, calorie shifting, and other nutrient-timing strategies that suggest if you eat the right combination of macronutrients at a certain time on certain days (training versus non-training days), you can “lean bulk.”

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the idea of adding muscle while losing fat or keeping the same body fat percentage. The problem is that it doesn’t really work. The only people who can successfully lean bulk are newbies or people coming off a long layoff, people on performance enhancers, or individuals doing a short overtraining protocol or specialization phase.

Why don’t any of the strategies above really work? Intricate and demanding nutrient timing simply isn’t practical—unless you have zero life and no issues with revolving your day around eating and training. It also requires minimal to no screwups, which is simply unrealistic for people who don’t live and breathe bodybuilding.