Controlling weight gain while bulking

[MrBeanz]

Hey guys,

I'm struggling to get my nutrition in order, most specifically my calorie numbers and I'm looking for advice.

Background and stats: 40 year old male, married and have kids. 5'10". Cut from 204 lbs to 159 lbs from January to May. Started my first ever bulk with weight lifting as soon as I reached 159 lbs. Running Starting Strength program, currently wrapping up week 7 of program.

Macros: 200g protein per day, no more than 25% of caloric intake from fat, rest from carbs.

Here's the issue, I can't tell if I'm gaining weight too rapidly (now that I am gaining weight, didn't at first), yet I don't want to negatively impact my ability to go through the novice linear progression. I know I could just say screw it, eat 4000 calories and worry about the cut later, but I just forced myself to go through 4 straight months of cutting to get down to a relatively healthy body fat %. I'd rather not make the cut worse than it has to be after the bulk.

So here's what I've experienced over the last 7 weeks.

Weeks 1 through 3 was just trying to figure out my new weight. While I wrapped up my cut at 159 lbs, I almost immediately had my weight jump up to 167 lbs (165 lbs after week 1, 167 lbs after week 2 and 3). But I attribute this to vastly reducing the cardio work I was doing during the cut, beginning to supplement creatine, and eating more which means also eating more sodium. So more water retention all around. I was at 2500 calories per day during this time.

Once I realized I had stabilized at 2500 calories, I moved up to 2700 calories for week 4. At the end of week 4, I lost half a pound. Weird.

So for weeks 5 and 6, I increased to 3200 calories. This added 3500 calories for the entire week over the previous week when I lost half a pound, so I was hopping to see a half pound gain. Instead, after week 5, I gained 2.5 pounds. After week 6, I gained another 2.5 pounds. I started to get concerned about this being far too fast.

Week 7, reduced to 2800 calories. Still gained 2 pounds this week. How am I gaining 2 pounds per week on 2800 calories?

My body is just completely confusing me. Not to mention, my pants are now starting to feel pretty tight in both the legs and the waist, and I'm visibly putting on fat.

Should I drop my calories once again back to 2500? I want to make sure I'm giving my body the calories and nutrients it needs to continue building muscle and strength during this novice phase, but I also don't want to throw way more at it than I need to.

Note on my Starting Strength progression: Good recovery, no stalls. Still putting on 10 lbs each workout on squats and deads, and putting on 5 lbs each workout on press and bench.

[Murelli]

Option A: Avatar Nutrition;

Option B: http://www.powerliftingtowin.com/how-to ... erlifting/

Problems I see already:

1) Starting a bulk right after a cut. You should have done a reverse and then some maintenance before bulking to avoid the "bounce back". Your body has to get acclimated to its new state, or else you'll just have nice fat gain right after you get into caloric surplus territory;

2) Not tracking your bodyfat;

3) Reducing too much your caloric output (cutting cardio 100%).

Also, what are your other stats (current lifts, previous lifting history and programming, etc.). How are you tracking your macros? Why 159?

[JohnHelton]

You are going to have some natural fluctuations. I thinking using a 7 day rolling average for your weight is more telling. I would reduce your calories to 2800 and hold it there for a couple of weeks. Then make 200 calorie adjustments from there, holding constant for 2 weeks at a time.

Also, you might have some insulin resistance at this point. I wouldn't hold my fat calories down as much. Of course, that point is more controversial. Personally, I bulk really fast when eating carbs.

Also, don't worry too much about your novice progression ending early. There are tons of gains to be had over the next 10 years.

[MrBeanz]

Option A: Avatar Nutrition;

Option B: http://www.powerliftingtowin.com/how-to ... erlifting/

Problems I see already:

1) Starting a bulk right after a cut. You should have done a reverse and then some maintenance before bulking to avoid the "bounce back". Your body has to get acclimated to its new state, or else you'll just have nice fat gain right after you get into caloric surplus territory;

2) Not tracking your bodyfat;

3) Reducing too much your caloric output (cutting cardio 100%).

Also, what are your other stats (current lifts, previous lifting history and programming, etc.). How are you tracking your macros? Why 159?

Thanks for the response!

Re: Avatar Nutrition - That was essentially my route during the cut. I ate hamburgers, pizza, whatever. As long as it fit my calorie goal for the day. I'm not someone who is of the mindset that you have to eat 100% clean to make progress. In fact, 3/4 of the way through my cut, I had blood work done and was healthier across the board despite making regular trips to McDonald's.

Re: Option B - Thanks for the link. This is ultimately what led me to make this post. I'm trying to stay within that .5% to 1% body weight increase per month. I think I was perhaps thrown off by the 3 weeks of consistent weight at 167 lbs consuming 2500 per day, then a half pound loss in week 4 despite an increase in calorie intake. Then the completely bonkers weight gain over the last 3 weeks.

Re: 1) - Yeah, when I switched from cut to bulk, I eliminated the cardio for two reasons. For one, it's recommended to leave it out in the first few months of the Starting Strength program in order to drive recovery towards muscle synthesis rather than recovering from cardio workouts. And two, I wanted to find out what my cardio intake needs to be based on weight training alone. Keeping cardio in the mix just adds more variables to try and work through. Even still, going from 159 lbs to 165 lbs in the first week is undoubtedly mostly water rather than fat from adding creatine and reducing cardio. I would have had to have had a 21,000 caloric surplus for that week to gain 6 pounds of fat and I was only eating 2500 per day which put me at 17,500 for the entire week. That's just literally not possible.

Re: 2) Body fat is very difficult to accurately track. Any recommendations on how to track it accurately without paying for regular DEXA scans? It seems visual checks seem to be best. Pants tightness in the waist seems to be fairly accurate just from the standpoint of knowing whether your weight gain is lean body mass or fat.

Re: 3) Yeah, I intend to go back to cardio. Like I said earlier, Starting Strength recommends avoiding cardio at the start, plus I wanted to remove variables that might prevent me from accurately finding a solid caloric intake number for me.

Strength stats over the last 7 weeks on the program:
Overhead Press: 65lbs to 95lbs
Deadlift: 115lbs to 275lbs
Back Squat: 135lbs to 230lbs
Bench: 85lbs to 135lbs

Previous lifting history: About 5 years ago I did Crossfit for about a year or so. Taught me the lifts and the gym I went to really harped on good form. So at least I can start off this program knowing the lifts and doing them right. This is my first true focus on pure weight lifting though.

Macros: MyFitnessPal. I weigh and measure all my food accurately. It's how I did my cut as well. Counted calories precisely.

Why 159? No reason. My goal weight for the cut was 160. I was waiting for my Rogue power rack to arrive so I can start my lifting in my garage, so continued on my cut for a couple more days and just happened to end it at 159.

[MrBeanz]

You are going to have some natural fluctuations. I thinking using a 7 day rolling average for your weight is more telling. I would reduce your calories to 2800 and hold it there for a couple of weeks. Then make 200 calorie adjustments from there, holding constant for 2 weeks at a time.

Also, you might have some insulin resistance at this point. I wouldn't hold my fat calories down as much. Of course, that point is more controversial. Personally, I bulk really fast when eating carbs.

Also, don't worry too much about your novice progression ending early. There are tons of gains to be had over the next 10 years.

Good reasonable advice John. I appreciate that. Let me try the 7 day rolling average. I've been just weighing once weekly at the same exact time first thing in the morning. I think I may go ahead and try the 200 calorie adjustment downward to 2600, see how the weight continues to move, and see if the strength gains continue.

[Murelli]

So:

1) Weigh yourself everyday in the morning after using the bathroom and establish a certain weekday to be your "weigh in" day where you take the 7 day average every week;

2) Cut back to 2600kcal/day;

3) Try to use the PTW guidelines for weight gain - you see that the max increase in calories week to week is 200kcal when you've lost more than 0.5% bodyweight in a week. You've lost 0.3% when you went to 2700 (your metabolism speeded up), which would have made you bump calories up by 100kcal, not 500.

4) You can keep one light conditioning day while doing StSt Linear Progression, it will help you with recovery. That advice to cut all cardio while doing LP is just dumb. You have already made some pretty nice gains on LP, so keep in mind that "increase weight at all costs" is not a good idea for long term progress (I see no risk of you doing this since you are already concerned with controlling weight gain).

5) Posterior chain muscle mass gains can increase your waist circumference, especially if you never trained it seriously for a good period of time, but measuring your waist and neck with a tape (Navy method) is a reasonable method for tracking body fat. You should be concerned with the trend, but not the absolute value.

[MrBeanz]

Thanks Murelli! I'll do all of that. Appreciate your advice greatly!

[Mugaaz]

Glad people here are talking about using 7 day average for weight. I wish more people talked about it. Removes so much confusion from the process and makes it easier to see what is actually happening.

I don't think BF% is needed to track progress. I do weekly weight average, biweekly hip/waist measurement, and monthly video.
I agree with Murelli that light cardio helps and does not hinder recovery. I feel noticeably less stiff, achy, and sore doing some the day after high volume sessions.

Keep track of that, if weekly average is going up too quick, then lower your macros.

[Bliss]

If you track on an android phone, use app called Libra - its fantastic! Makes nice graph with weight per day and overlays a trendline.

If you're using iPhone or a computer, make an account at hacker's diet and log there online, it calculates a very neat weighted rolling average trendline.

In both, set a reference line with a slope that corresponds to your desired weight change rate, and aim to keep YOUR trendline parallel to the reference.