Nutrition
Bulking Diet Guide: How to Eat for Muscle Growth
This bulking diet guide covers everything you need to know about eating for muscle growth. This is how bodybuilders have traditionally bulked up, how athletes gain lean mass, and what modern science shows is the most effective way to fuel muscle growth.
Cassandra used this diet to gain over twenty pounds, I’ve used it to gain over sixty pounds, and Marco used it to gain over seventy. We also use it to help our clients bulk up, both in person and online. Those clients range from desk workers to college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
There are five parts to this guide:
- How much do you need to eat?
- What if you stop gaining weight?
- How much protein, carbs, and fat you should eat?
- What does a healthy bulking diet look like?
- What foods and meals should you eat?
Don’t expect to be shocked or thrilled. There’s nothing controversial here. These are well-known and well-studied principles with decades of tradition behind them. That’s by far the best way to get reliable results.
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High-Calorie, High-Protein Vegan Bulking Meals (With Recipes)
We’ve already covered whether vegan diets are good for building muscle and explained how to bulk on a plant-based diet. Now, let’s arm you with some vegan bulking meals. All of these recipes are nutritious, high in calories, and high in protein.
You might worry you won’t get enough protein, but most plant-based foods have some protein, and with all these extra calories coming in, it adds up quickly. I think you’ll be surprised at how simple this can be.
If you make your diet out of these meals, they’ll give you 3,000 calories and nearly 200 grams of protein. That’s more than enough protein to maximize your rate of muscle growth.
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The Vertical Diet: Full Overview & Review
The Vertical Diet is a bulking diet designed to help people get bigger, stronger, and fitter. It’s supposed to make it easier to eat enough food to gain weight, thus supporting muscle growth and strength gains.
The diet is especially popular with professional bodybuilders and strongmen who use performance-enhancing drugs. Stan Efferding says he invented the diet to mitigate the harms of those lifestyles. But it’s supposed to be healthy for everyone. Is it?
We’re natural lifters, and we’re more interested in health than professional bodybuilding, but we’ve helped college, professional, and Olympic athletes bulk up. We know how to train and diet for elite performance.
Here’s our overview and review of the Vertical Diet.
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The Best High-Calorie Bulking Meals (With Recipes)
One of our most popular articles is about how to eat a good bulking diet. It covers all the most important principles—calories, macros, how to choose nutritious foods, how to calculate your calorie needs, how to adjust those calories based on your results (or lack thereof), and so much more.
However, it doesn’t give many examples of good bulking meals, and it doesn’t have any recipes. That’s where this article comes in. These are some of my favourite bulking meals. I’ve used them to gain 70 pounds, and we’ve been using them with clients for over a decade now. I’ll give you recipes for all of them, with the calories and macros calculated out.
Feel free to ask questions. I’ll answer all the comments.
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Can You Build Muscle on a Vegan Diet?
A new study by Pinckaers and colleagues found that plant-based protein wasn’t as good as animal protein for stimulating muscle protein synthesis. This is just one of several studies, so it probably shouldn’t have, but it sparked some controversy online.
Muscle protein synthesis is when your body adds protein to your muscles, so studies like this can make it seem like vegan diets aren’t good for building muscle. But higher rates of muscle protein synthesis don’t always cause higher rates of muscle growth.
To see how much muscle you can build on a vegan diet, it’s much better to look at studies that measure actual muscle growth. Fortunately, there have been quite a few of those.
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How Much Protein Should You Eat at Breakfast to Build Muscle?
There are two recent studies that I found interesting. The first looked at whether going from a low-protein breakfast to a moderate-protein breakfast would improve muscle growth. The second looked at the effects of going from a moderate amount of protein to a massive amount of protein.
If we look at both studies, we get a pretty good idea of how much protein you should eat at breakfast.
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Is Intermittent Fasting Good for Bulking & Building Muscle?
Intermittent fasting is popular for weight loss. But what if you’re a skinny guy trying to bulk up? Can you use intermittent fasting to build muscle faster or more leanly? After all, intermittent fasting raises growth hormone production, which purportedly helps with muscle growth; it increases insulin sensitivity, which could help make your muscle gains leaner; and research shows that intermittent fasting may help preserve muscle when losing weight.
On the other hand, bodybuilders are known for eating frequently—every few hours. They eat more often than the average person. Why is that? Could there be an advantage to eating more meals more often?
Finally, does intermittent fasting make it harder to eat enough calories to gain weight? Skinny guys are notorious for having smaller stomachs, faster metabolisms, and more meagre appetites, all of which can make it harder to eat enough calories to gain weight. Will intermittent fasting make that even harder?
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Are Carbs Good for Building Muscle? Yes, Here’s Why
Most people associate muscle growth with protein, but classic bodybuilding diets contain up to 60% carbohydrates. These diets get far more of their calories from starchy carbs like oats, rice, beans, potatoes, and pasta. Is that the correct approach? Are carbs actually good for building muscle?
Interestingly, that’s the same proportion of carbs the healthiest cultures in the world eat. Is there a benefit to eating so many carbs?
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Should Skinny Guys Use Mass Gainers?
Mass gainers, also known as weight gainers, are popular with skinny guys trying to bulk up. They’re especially popular with “hardgainers” whose metabolisms make it difficult to gain weight. I’m a naturally skinny guy myself, and I’ve always found it nearly impossible to get into a sustainable calorie surplus.
I’ve experimented with my fair share of mass gainers. I’ve tried all the popular brands, I’ve made my own homemade shakes from whey protein and maltodextrin, and I’ve tried all sorts of thousand-calorie bulking shakes. That’s how I gained my first 50 pounds.
So, do mass gainers work? Are they healthy? Do they cause excess fat gain? And, if you’re a skinny guy struggling to gain weight, should you use them?
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The Best Protein Powder for Bulking (2024)
I’ll tell you the best protein powder for bulking, but you might be asking the wrong question. Protein is an important part of a balanced bulking diet, and protein powder is an easy way to get that protein, but you might be thinking of a weight gainer.
Weight gainers are high-calorie bulking supplements that contain both protein and carbs. You mix it into water just like protein powder, but you can get around 10x as many calories per serving. That can make it easier to gain weight. That might be what you’re thinking of. We’ll cover the best weight gainers, too.
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