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Afraid of Getting Bulky? Here’s the Truth · Beyond Fat Loss

• Katie & Sean Darlow: Welcome to the Beyond Fat Loss podcast where we don't just stop at fat loss, you'll learn about all the good stuff that follows. How to build muscle, how to enjoy more food and how to stay lean without going to extremes. We are your hosts Sean and Katie and today we're going to talk about one of the most misunderstood declarations in fitness. I don't want to look bulky from lifting weights. There's an assumption that lifting weights will instantly transform you into the Incredible Hulk. The reality is very different indeed. The problem with this thinking is that it puts people off lifting weights to build muscle and get stronger, which ends up being a net negative for health and longevity, as well as preventing them from achieving the appearance they really want. What most people are referring to when they say bulky is the visual effect of carrying too much body mass. But the reality is lacking muscle will limit the amount of definition, tone or shape that you want to see. The fear of getting bulky puts people off lifting weights, going to the gym, training with any real intensity and these prolonged periods of undreaching. In this episode, we're going to try and change your perspective on this term. which is robbing you some of the best benefits you can receive from lifting weights. We'll also give you a short insight on how to build muscle without looking bulky, like you think you will. Let's start this off by giving our own personal experience on this matter, Katie. So I have probably tried since the age of about 16 to get to the point where I can look too bulky. Look like Hulk, mean? don't really like the kind of green that much. But ultimately, have been chasing the look which people would probably claim they don't want to have more than I have chased the look of trying to look too skinny. Perhaps your experience was different, Katie. Have you ever been through a time where you thought, I don't want to do that because I'm worried I'll look too bulky? For me, I would say so because I was always a larger individual, shall we say. I was always quite tall for my age. I always carried more body fat than I would have liked, so felt bigger than perhaps I wanted to feel. And then there's always that concern of, well, if I lift weight, if I put on muscle mass, I already feel big now, so what's that gonna do for me? think that's a really common misconception though, isn't it? think so. The building muscle is just automatically going to add a huge amount of size to your frame, ⁓ if you are an individual that currently holds more body fat than you'd like. I think when you're in that state of carrying too much body fat than you like, just, you want to be trimmer, you want to be smaller, you want to fit into your clothes easier, whatever it may be, right? So the thought of adding mass to something that's already uncomfortable for you, it doesn't seem like it's a productive thing to do for the outcome that you want to achieve. So I can understand, well, I can tell why I thought and I can understand why many people are put off by weights and thinking that they're going to make them look bulky. But the reality is far different. And I think that's what know we would like to get across in this podcast is So Griff just thought he'd come and sit on my head as I'm trying to explain what I'd like to get across in this podcast. Griff has decided that he wants to be a parrot today. He's just along the back of the sofa and perched himself bummed down on Casey's shoulder. ⁓ wish we could just show this image because he cannot be comfortable in that position. Classic. I think it's fair to say that the fear of getting too bulky comes from ⁓ visual perspective ⁓ adding more mass to a frame that you already feel uncomfortable in. I think part of this is also the perception of wanting to look trimmer, leaner, more defined and that being an image which people aspire to have. Would you say that based on your experience, Katie, that's a look that you wanted to have and you're worried about not being able to achieve that? Yeah, I'd say so, but I was very uneducated on that point. Yes, I had to go through the experience to learn that, but I wish I knew a lot more of it before I started this journey, because probably would have saved myself years, right? Years of faffing about doing the wrong thing. You can keep losing body fat time and time and time and time again, but ultimately that's not going to change your body shape. That's not going to make you feel more toned, more defined. If anything, you just start feeling flatter. You don't quite underwhelm by the end result because you think that actually just losing body fat, or at least I did anyway, many years ago, if I just lose body fat, then I will get to that place where my muscles are showing, I've got some muscles that I look lean, I look toned, I've got shape to me, but the reality is very different. And even more so if you keep going through cycles of dieting after dieting after dieting after dieting, right? You're not giving your body any chance then to build muscle mass. So you're less likely to get bulky because you're not spending any time actually building any of that muscle anyway to get that bulky state. So by the end of this podcast, I hope we can let the listeners really get an understanding for what muscle mass can do for your body shape and the difference between, I guess, if you're perhaps carrying too much body fat, or how you would look if you actually have more muscle mass and then drop body fat. I think the terminology matters because the term bulky, we take this away from a body image or a visual image and we look at it like a bulky object. If you've got a bulky object in your house, that object is perhaps taking up more space than other objects comparatively. It might be something that's quite uncomfortable to lump around. It's probably the thing that you look at when you're about to move house and think, ⁓ for God's sake, I've got to pack this thing up, chuck it on the back of a lorry, somehow get it in the new house. find a way to angle it around the door frame. That's what you'd class as like a bulk object, isn't it? It's something that's quite awkward to get about. And when I think of that term bulky from a human perspective, I just think of a really large human being. I probably don't think of somebody that's necessarily carrying low levels of body fat because I would probably use a term like lean, ripped, defined. that specifically suggests that they're not carrying as much body fat. So for me, when I think of somebody that's bulky, I think of somebody that's got a lot of muscle mass, but also carrying body fat with that muscle mass. ⁓ people's perspective and different people's kind of idea of what that word means will change, won't it? I think so. And as were speaking then, it was making me think about What did I actually think? And I wonder what other people, and I can imagine for men to women, it will differ as well, like what class is bulky. But I can imagine there's a lot of people out there that think lifting weights will make them look like a bodybuilder. I'm not saying looking like a bodybuilder is right or wrong, because each to their own. But for a lot of people, look of a bodybuilder when they're stage ready not a ⁓ look would like to achieve. and would like for themselves. Let's differentiate though, right? Because a bodybuilder that's stage ready looks quite different to a bodybuilder that's preparing at some point to be stage ready. Let's be clear, a bodybuilder that's off season, i.e. when they're looking to gain as much mass as possible, looks very different to a bodybuilder that is on season. So an on season bodybuilder is prepping for show. They're cutting down, they're removing body fat. to reveal all the muscle that they've built. The individuals that are off season in the bodybuilding world, especially the higher up the levels you go, enormous human beings, like ⁓ real outliers compared to the rest of the population. And yeah, you might class them as bulky if you saw them in season when they're cutting down, because they're just simply that big. that even though they're carrying low levels of body fat, they're just enormous human beings. they would be more bulky in their off season. And probably this is where the terminology, bulky, has come from as well. I can't say for sure what the origins of that word are, but there's a reason why they call it bulking season, because these guys do look really bulky when they're off season. I think for me though, and again, I don't know if this is everyone's thought, don't even know. Does everyone really know the difference between bodybuilders seasons? They just think bodybuilding is bodybuilding, right, for a lot of people. So you understand a lot more about this. I understand a lot more about But I think for the general population, it's of a, that's the bodybuilding look. It's just bigger, muscular. they're generally larger human beings. So I don't even know if the differentiation between the different seasons I'd even thought of, perhaps just bulky in general, has come from, ⁓ they lift weights, therefore they're bulky. Therefore, if I lift weights, I will be bulky. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. be clear, we're not bodybuilders, right? Neither of us are competitive bodybuilders and we don't have ambitions. at the moment to be competitive bodybuilders. But it's worth noting that of what every single coach will teach about building muscle has originated in some way from bodybuilding world. The to build muscle, the strategies to build muscle, how you eat to build muscle, all of these have been tried and tested for decades and decades by bodybuilders. we're borrowing methods and we're making them fit a little bit better to normal population everyday life. So we have a lot to be grateful for when it comes to, you know, the bodybuilding world and building muscle. without it, we wouldn't have the knowledge that we have of how to build muscle nowadays. But these quite often extreme examples of what humans can achieve in terms of how far they push. the levels of muscle mass that they have sometimes ⁓ much body weight they actually choose to gain. For those that to be interested, there is a significant difference, like a huge difference between a bodybuilder that is competing in an enhanced world. with the use of extra stuff, let's say, ⁓ slightly illegal substances, ⁓ performance enhancing drugs, yeah. There's a big difference between those that are using those substances and those that are competing in natural categories in the natural world. vastly different body shapes. Very impressive, ⁓ still not on the same level. So within that, are ⁓ key Something that we probably hear a lot the term, ⁓ don't want to look like a bodybuilder. Yeah, I definitely did that a fair few times. And I've even said that myself in the past, right? Many years ago, I said I didn't want to. I not understanding really what it takes to get to that level. Muscle building is a slow process, right? It's a very rewarding one, and it's one I think everyone should partake in if they can for the rest of their lives. But it is a slow process. It doesn't happen overnight. The general misconception is that you can accidentally end up looking like a bodybuilder. This does not happen by accident. To look even remotely close to a competitive bodybuilder, you're looking at years and years and years and years of application. Those that achieve that look the quickest have quite a significant genetic advantage for how much muscle mass they have to start off with, how quickly they respond to lifting weights, that muscle goes their frame. So they ⁓ have shape a skeleton allows them ⁓ to demonstrate their mass really well as they're building muscle. know, like wide broad shoulders, narrow waist, all that stuff. where their muscles inserts, can get a little bit of a genetic hand up. Doesn't disqualify all the hard work, of course, but the point is that some people have more of an accelerated response to muscle growth. It still takes them years and years and years and years to look like a quote unquote bodybuilder. So. I think this is a misconception and in some ways it might be a little bit. In some ways it almost diminishes the work that is required to actually be a bodybuilder. And for those that train for a longer period of time, like us, Katie, to try and build muscle, you appreciate how much work actually has to go in to try and look that way. This, this isn't going to be a happy accident where all of a sudden you go up from lifting six kg to 10 kg dumbbells and you start to look like you're about to jump on stage for a show. It does not happen that way. You're talking multiple years of consistency and effort. And even that might not be enough for you. I don't have this belief of that narrative that they tell themselves they don't want to look like a bodybuilder. I think it's easy to have that narrative with the way social media is now and fitness is rightly so out there a lot, which I am happy about, but also the perception of what fitness can do, what lifting weights can do. We see a lot of extremes online, which can feed into a narrative of you know, if I do less, if I lift weights, then I'm going to look like a bodybuilder. But having that narrative and living by that narrative can actually really hold you back from being healthy. If that's your main goal, you just want to look after your quality of life. And if you're looking to change your body composition, it's massively holding you back. And I think everyone's in there for a bit of a both, right? I don't think everyone solely just wants health or solely wants to... more confident in their body. think both complement each other and most people are off after both but just the ratios of one or the other may differ between individuals. But letting that narrative take over of I don't want to look like a bodybuilder and I don't want to be bulky. it's actually detrimental to of those outcomes. for sure. Imagine not ever cooking because you're worried about becoming the next top chef, five star Michelin restaurant. Imagine that you never learned to drive because you're worried about becoming Lewis Hamilton. When you put it like that. Imagine you never open a bank account because you don't want to work as a CEO of an investment banking company. These do necessarily mean that you're going to become the very top, top upper echelon ⁓ of accomplishment or human achievement. There are so many different steps and processes. that still need to be fulfilled in order for you to ever reach that level. and for the hundreds of thousands of people that try. The vast majority of them never make it. So, like lifting weights for the fear ⁓ well one day I might accidentally look like... somebody that's probably on the most extreme ends of the scale just doesn't make that much sense logically. doesn't. doesn't. And... And I hope that this is a misconception that we can finally put to bed allow people to actually experience the benefits of lifting weights rather than avoiding them for the fear of something that is likely never going to happen. Do you think it's just... What misconceptions do you think there are then, Sean, other than I don't want to look like a bodybuilder? Because that is the main one we hear for sure, but there are also other ones out there too, right? So you mentioned about the kind of the bulky object thing where it's like, it's the size element, it's how much space it takes up. And I lot of people associate building muscle with just being ⁓ bigger in general. Maybe some of the ⁓ around that is that looking bigger does draw more attention to you, or are gonna judge you for your size as a human being. can't deny that there is some element of truth in that, where... Being a certain size might draw more attention to you, especially if you're a bit of an outlier, if you're larger than a normal human being. But I don't think that would be any different to if you wore your hair in a completely different way to the vast majority of people around you, or you walked around with a full, let's say, clown mask of face paint every single day. You're still going to draw attention to you because it's unusual for what we see day to day. And carrying a lot of muscle mass is unusual. to what you normally see day to day, right? But I think for a lot of people they... They feel uncomfortable in a larger body and their intention or their goal for fitness is to be smaller, to stand out less, to be less noticeable for the size of their body. And a lot of that is through reduction of the body fat that they have. I totally hear what you're saying. What do you think this differs between, and again, this is going to be a bit of a generalization, but between males and females in terms of, I don't want to look bigger. So from perspective, you've always ⁓ ⁓ tried to gain mass. You wanted to look bigger. You wanted to have more size to your frame. Whereas from my perspective, When I say I don't want to look bigger, I didn't want to ever look bigger because I've always been big. Not always. Years ago, I'd always been big, right? That's when the start of my journey happened 10, 12 years ago. It was, I feel big all the time. I don't want to feel big. I want to feel smaller. So I think this is very different and there may be even females that have been smaller want to be bigger and vice versa with men too. I don't know, right? Everyone might be slightly different and that's why I don't want to totally overgeneralize the male to female. But from our perspectives, we can certainly say that you've actually wanted to be bigger. And I've actually at times wanted to be smaller because I always felt big. This is a really interesting conversation. And obviously this is very much from our opinion here for you listening, but I think that there are differences and there's crossover. think that generally speaking, from my experience of when I've worked with females, there is this pressure, this external pressure, this external drive from years and years and years of magazine culture, weight loss culture, slimming club culture, certain backgrounds, things like dance, things like ballet. They drive the narrative that females should be feminine, that they should look a certain way, that they should hold a certain dainty appearance. And I just think that that's embedded in so many female psychologies. And it's almost like there's an expectation for them to look a certain way, which I completely disagree with. So I think there's an element of that. And I think that that's something a lot of guys will necessarily associate with. I agree. But I also think that if we put this into context, you can get very site specific discomfort with certain parts of your body feeling bigger than they should be. I think a lot of men feel quite uncomfortable if they're carrying a lot of fat tissue around their stomach, for example. Like they don't want a big belly, let's say, and they feel like they don't want that to be a certain size. They want that to be smaller. It could be that they don't like the amount of body fat that they hold on their torso in general, like their chest area, for example. They might say, I don't want more fat in that area. I want that to be smaller. want to reduce fat. So I think I think the general undertone is that a lot of women are unfortunately fed this narrative that they should look feminine, they should look smaller. There are also a lot of women that feel like they're site-specific areas, there are site-specific areas that they want to be smaller. I think that is also shared with males as well, where males feel like they want to reduce... fat in site specific areas too. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think it's just clear and evident that majority of people don't want to be carrying a lot of body fat. It's coming from that, right? It's the body fat element that we'd like to reduce whatever part of the body fat may be that people would like to be smaller rather than bigger. But on the flip side as well, Katie, I feel like we've all got an ideal impression of what we'd like to look like. And it may be the case that we might not want certain body fat. body parts to build muscle and look bigger either. Very true. I have this conversation a lot with clients where you first start speaking to them when they sign up, you're asking about their goals, you're asking about how they would like to shape their bodies. And they might say, don't want big arms, or I don't want big legs. I don't want to grow traps and delts which poke out of things. I want everything to be quite neat and tidy and not be too obvious. And there are others that really want size in certain areas, but are quite happy for other areas not to look as big. So... Again, this is very individually dependent, but it's worth noting that a lot of the time individuals are looking for less body fat in general, and there might be certain areas they want to look bigger and certain areas that they want to look smaller. It does seem to me that there is more of an obsession with trying to look smaller than there is. trying to look bigger when you compare. let's say males to females. Yeah, you don't often hear too many males saying they want to look smaller in general. There might be site-specific areas, like you said, right? Whereas women, myself included many years ago, to be smaller in general. And I think that and narrative then, ⁓ you have had the feeling of being bigger or maybe you feel bulky in your eyes already, that then ⁓ muscle mass onto that is just adding to that conception of you being bigger in your head. But the reality of muscle mass in comparison to body fat mass, muscle is so much more compact. It's firmer, it's more solid. It doesn't add mass in a bad way or ⁓ an aesthetic way or a way that you're going to feel unhappy about most of the time. And even if it did, you could just pull back on your training, right, and make that work for you. But the narrative of, don't want to look bigger. It's, and from my experience, it's not the muscle that is going to make you feel that way. Is if you can't get your body fat down low enough to make you feel more confident or comfortable in your body shape. And that's going to look different for everyone too, right? Where those body fat levels are and what's comfortable for you. I agree. We've all seen the images that go around where you've got somebody holding one pound of fat, one pound of muscle. They're not necessarily to scale, so don't take that as literal, but it's a fair statement to say that fat takes up a bit more space under your skin than muscle does. So if you're worried about looking bigger, reducing body fat going to be your best bet for... making yourself appear to be a bit smaller, slimmer, trimmer, whatever terminology you want to use. Building muscle is slightly different. That's going to give you a slightly different appearance. You're highly unlikely to build the amount of muscle that is likely to make you look really big or bulky at least noticing you're headed in that direction in the first place. You're going to notice you're getting too big and bulky before you realize you're pull back on it. the muscle is just going to, like Katie said, give you more of a compact, firmer, harder, more defined looking appearance which a lot of people are quite happy to chase. We're interested to know your thoughts on this for any listeners. Leave us a comment below, drop us a message. What's your experience with getting into weights training? Have you had fears of getting too bulky or fears of looking like a bodybuilder? And if you have been training for a while, have your feelings and opinions changed since you've been training and since you've seen your body develop? Get in contact with us and let us know. we'd be keen to hear your thoughts on this. Katie, there's a term which I've had running through my mind since we've been talking about this topic I think it's probably worth bringing it up. So the toned. Is this something that you have experienced as a goal for yourself? I feel like this term personally is a bit more female centric. Tell me about your experience with that and how you feel about that term now. I agree that I think it's more female-centric. I do hear guys talk about being torn, so I'm not... Me too. I don't think it's totally just a term females use. I agree that it's potentially more female-centric. Being torn is used widely across most the population when it comes to getting in shape. Getting in getting more torn, people are looking for that little bit more definition in the arms. is the leaner, the more of sculpted look then shall we say, is what ⁓ most will describe. what more people will use the word torn to describe. It's kind of like a universally accepted term, isn't it? We all know what person is thinking when they say the word torn, even if the way that it's explained isn't ⁓ accurate. But think people use the word ⁓ torn like you said, it's widely accepted without really thinking about ⁓ what is. I think it's just accepted as it's less fat. And don't even think it is necessarily more muscle mass. think people perhaps will think when I drop body fat, I look toned. And I it's getting more widely understood actually you need muscle mass to look toned. ⁓ I think many ago that wasn't the case. I think now ⁓ it's more accepted actually it's not just losing body fat. losing body fat and building muscle that gives that toned look. Did you ever have a goal of wanting to look toned? Was that what you thought you wanted? Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. I would say so. Yeah, I would say so when I started out. It's quite hard to remember actually because it was a long, long time ago now that I started out on this journey. And I do find it hard to draw back upon it sometimes. But tone has definitely come out of my mouth. And then I've also heard other people say, oh, you're looking tone now or you're getting tone now. Even though in my mind back then I was thinking, I don't feel quite toned yet. yeah, so it is definitely a tone. Definitely a word I have used. And it's a word that I use talking with people now. know, ⁓ people are saying their goals, it's generally a lot of people will say taunt and I fully understand what they're looking for, what they want from that. ⁓ think it shows the importance of language and terminology, doesn't it? It's one of these really interesting facets where even just the word that you associate with something can change your entire perception of what it is. It might be more comfortable to say, I want a toned look than say, I want to be lean, I want to be ripped, I want to be shredded. Yes, more accepted term, think, isn't it, toned? It might be a way that's used to describe a less extreme result a less extreme visual, because how do we put it on a scale of like, If you go from a scale of a competitive level bodybuilder jumping on stage, that lean to somebody that's a normal body fat level, you know, like a healthy body fat level. When you're closer to one end of scale than the other, what terms would you use to describe different parts of that scale? So like, you know, working back from the elite level bodybuilder jumping on stage, absolutely like, you know, minimal levels of body fat. You can see every single aspect of their musculature. What do you class as just carrying a little bit more fat than that? Would you say sculpted, ripped? And this is where I think it goes up the scale again. I think everyone's perception of lean, ripped, jacked, sculpted, toned, in shape, defined, whatever you want to call it, is different. And this is where it's important to understand what toned looks like for each individual, because everyone will have a different understanding, not even just an understanding, a different desire of what they want for themselves. That's so true. This is something that I have started adding to coaching clients recently, and really helped a lot because everyone has their own perspective of what they'd really like to look like. And ⁓ when describes you the look they want, it's hard to completely imagine what they're imagining in their head. So, This is where comparisons can be really useful. So an example is I'd ask a new client, can you send me an example or three examples a visual that you really like and that you aspire to look like? It's helpful in some ways because you can also be realistic with somebody then and say, What wouldn't be needed in order to achieve this image? is the timeframe gonna look like? What are the habits and behaviors on a day-to-day basis gonna look like? Is this realistic for you to achieve? Because in some ways it's harmful to leave an expectation with somebody that they can achieve a particular result that is not gonna align with their lifestyle, that's not gonna align with their behaviors, that's not gonna align with the actions that they're prepared. or even able to do at that moment in time. But sometimes when you get that image of what they'd like to achieve and what they'd like to look like. it allows you to understand they're, what are really meaning by the terminology they're using to describe that result. That makes sense. because we all have different visuals in our mind. And rightly so, right? And we all want different things for ourselves. And without actually getting a pen and paper out and drawing that for someone, it's hard to explain to anyone what you're imagining and what you want for yourself. So that is where comparisons can be helpful as long as they don't become too harmful, right? It's being realistic and not trying to say that you're going to get exactly to that, but it's, okay, what can I do to get a similar outcome to this person? When it comes to the torn though, I used to in my bonnet with the word torn ⁓ years ago because it gets thrown around so much and scientifically it's just not a thing. And as a coach it can be frustrating sometimes and you're thinking, well you can't bloody torn a muscle. Like you can't torn a muscle. What is torn in a muscle? Yeah, that term specifically. It's a bit triggering for coaches that understand the science of building muscle, isn't it? It can be, it can be. And for a while I was like, but you can't it. So let's be real here now. What you're looking to do is drop body fat and build muscle. That's what you need to do to get this outcome or toned look. That's what you need to do to get the outcome of a toned look. what you mean. So it's not 30 reps of this exercise that you on repeat. ⁓ this toning exercise. can't do that home workout toning plan. with the pink dumbbells. repeat. No, it's, ⁓ and misleading, right? It's misleading for, for people in, I This where the, this is where the term has been taken way out of context ⁓ and certain coaches preying on insecurities because they know that people really badly want this tone result ⁓ and they're claiming deliver it with methods that quite frankly, are not going to produce those results. And it's mass produced packages, isn't it? And programs and apps and things like that, that are one-time purchases sometimes are claimed to tone your muscles. And this is a phrase that I think I'd really like to clear up on this podcast is that whilst using the phrase to achieve a torn lock is absolutely fine. I think most people understand what you're aspiring to achieve when you say you're in a toned luck and you go for it if that's what you want because you know aesthetically if that's what you want for yourself then you can achieve that for sure but it's not achieved through toning a muscle because that's not a thing it's not I can't even it's not possible because what is it what even is toning a muscle right? it is impossible it doesn't exist. It's not a thing it's not a thing and this is where you Any narrative you have about looking bulky from building muscle, you want to put in the bin because building muscle is going to allow you to achieve that toned look. term you put on it, training your muscles to grow, develop, to show more definition, ⁓ to more toned, it's all exactly the same process and principle. ⁓ need expose your muscles to mechanical tension. Train them reasonably close to failure, like pretty close to failure. So you're encouraging them to recruit as much of the muscle fiber as possible. And then through your recovery, through your diet and through your sleep, you're providing the environment to let that muscle grow. High reps, low reps, lightweight, heavyweight. It's the same principle of training that muscle strenuously, close to failure, and then providing the appropriate recovery for it. So you can build that muscle so you can add shape, which allows you to lock tone, right? You can imagine. I like to think of it as a, I feel like a deflated balloon. Your muscles are a deflated balloon. if you've not really trained them intensity or put focus on muscle building for ⁓ time. Particularly being in diet phases, after dieting phases, right? They're a bit more like a flat and focusing on muscle. you imagine this balloon just getting pumped up as you're building muscle. But incredibly slowly. ⁓ yeah. Pretty slowly, pretty slowly. And I shouldn't do for six or five months, right? You can pump that up quite quickly and then it gets slower and slower ⁓ what I'm imagining is not that the balloons go into inflate massively, but it's more that the muscles become firmer. They've become ⁓ more Like a flat balloon is like floppy and ⁓ empty Where are with the balloon analogy? ⁓ Imagine it like imagine this... flat balloon like under your skin, right? You're gonna be wobbly, you're gonna be, there's not gonna be much structure there, there's not gonna be much shape there. But once this balloon starts filling up and get bigger, then it's gonna add shape, it's gonna add structure to that area. It's going to make it look, it's gonna make it feel firmer, but it's gonna add to a particular area. Like for example, if you want to use triceps for example, right? Women want to, Let's say lose the bingo wings. How do you lose bingo wings? Well, you need to reduce the fat that's there first of all. But you also need to build some muscle under there because right now you may have a flat balloon under there. But if you build up this flat balloon, you blow it up by a building muscle, then that's when you see people have more defined arms. They've got this pumped up balloon underneath it and a thin layer of body fat, not a lot of body fat. So ⁓ taken from this. I hope people are imagining what I've imagined in my head. We're going to go out over the next couple of months and there's going to be people just buying balloons, blowing them up, sticking them under their tops and going, look at my muscles. you understand it? Can you visualize this? Ours is just in my head. Kind of. I mean, I'm of it like this as well. We've all tried to blow up a balloon at some point where it's one of those balloons that just does not want to blow up no matter how much effort you're putting into it. And initially it just looks like nothing's changing. and you're huffing and puffing, you're trying to get it to grow. And it reaches a point where the rubber in that balloon and the elasticity just stretches enough so that it starts to fill with air a lot more. And then it starts to take shape and then it starts to feel like the balloon's actually growing up and we can all have a party soon. But initially, it just feels like that thing's not going anywhere. And that's your muscle when you first start growing it. It's not gonna be that noticeable how much change you're making. But as that thing starts to build over time. it's then going to become more noticeable. And even though it's growing up very, very, very, very, very small rates, it's the accumulation of everything that you've put into it. All that huffing and puffing you've done, which has got it to a point now where actually this is, this is visible. it does take time to get to that level. So I'm sure our balloon analogy is really going to take off, Katie, and everyone's going to say, well, that's amazing. But I don't know if it is. I might have to try and do like an Instagram post with this balloon underneath a surface or something. don't know. You can tell we haven't scripted this podcast, right? Because there's absolutely no way we were scripting that in. would have shut that. Sean would have shut that. Absolutely. Sean have shut that visual down, ⁓ I straight away. But my mind, this is what I'm imagining. It's, it's, That firmness, that wrongness, that sculpted look most people want, that shape's got to come from somewhere. So where do you think that shape's coming from if it's not muscle? Yeah, absolutely. have 100%. I mean, it's a different substance. It sits on your body in a different way. Muscle sits on your body in a very different way. It gives it different shapes. It gives us different curves. You can see parts in a different way. If you just lose your fat, then you're left with whatever you were left with. That's it. It's just how your skin and your base muscle sits on your frame. But a lot of people don't have a lot of base muscle naturally. I think it's important to note that. think obviously there's going be a lot of people that know that body fat and muscle mass are different substances. But there a lot of people that may not know that still and think that potentially fat can be turned into muscle and vice versa. but that's absolutely not the case, right? They are completely different substances. One cannot be turned into the other, vice versa. This is why a multi-phase journey is a pretty damn good approach to changing your body composition because you want to put one, you want to put, you want to focus on one at a time because they are different substances. You're not gonna turn one into the other. You need to focus on reducing one. Usually that's reducing body fat, right? And then it's the other focus is building muscle mass and losing body fat. You need to get yourself into that calorie deficit to allow your body to use the body fat stores that you've got. So you can reduce the body fat in your, in your body. But then when it comes to muscle building, optimally to build muscle, you need to have enough fuel alongside the training that you're doing. to keep building muscle. Obviously there's new ones to that, which we've talked about in previous podcasts with beginners, et cetera, returning from injury, cetera. But, know, keep it simple in ⁓ podcast now. The environment you need to lose fat and the environment you need to build muscle, they're different environments that you need to create in your body to optimize those processes. Let's talk about that environment because a lot of listeners may not understand what that environment needs to be like. So let's give a brief explanation to that. I think the whole fear of being bulky, as I mentioned earlier, is related to this bulking term, which I think probably did originate from the bodybuilder world, right? must have. must have. Bulking season, right? Yeah, exactly. Bulking essentially just means gaining mass. That's essentially all it means. And bulking means you're eating more calories and you're burning every day, which is what provides you with the additional energy the environment internally for you to be able to build more muscle tissue, for you to grow your muscle tissue. The thing is... bulking for a very long period of time was misinformed. or bulking was a strategy which lacked. research and evidence to prove its effectiveness. And what would happen is individuals would consume way more calories than what their body was burning every day. So term is calorie surplus. They're consuming a really large calorie surplus, which meant that they were then gaining huge amounts of body fat alongside the muscle that they were building. And then they were gaining lots of weight that they were having to lose when they go back to their fat loss phases, probably having to do more aggressive or longer term fat loss phases to get all the extra body fat off. But the belief was that you could only build more muscle or you would build muscle at an accelerated rate if you were eating even more food. And what we've learned over time, because research has developed and looked into this now and analyzed this, is that you don't increase your muscle gains by eating an even greater calorie surplus up to a certain point. You don't tend to increase your muscle gains, but what you do you increase the amount of fat you store. So for argument's sake, let's give a surplus of around 300 ⁓ surplus at most. If you go up to like a 500, 700, 1000 calorie surplus, so 500 to 1000 more calories going in every day than what you're burning, you might gain more fat, but you don't necessarily gain more muscle than if you were eating a 300 calorie surplus. So now your fat to muscle ratio, fat to muscle gain ratio is worse. You're gaining more fat per pound of muscle that you gain. And that will make you look much bulkier much more quickly because you're not only building your size with more muscle, but you're layering more fat on top of it, which probably takes up more space visually than the muscle did. and doesn't carry quite as much firmness and solidness or shape as muscle does, right? When you've got more body fat. So can make you feel a little bit worse about your body composition and confidence in your body. And I certainly, the traditional bulking certainly put me off building muscle for years. Cause I thought, hell no, I've spent enough of my time getting rid of body fat, feeling... pretty happy with where my body shape is right now. I do not want to put myself at risk of regaining all of that body fat back. So kind of totally just ignored the fact that I needed to eat more consistently to build muscle because I just... focused too much on the path that I was scared of and that was more of a fear of mine. because I didn't want to regain that body fat. But little did I know at the time that actually, as long as you are eating least maintenance calories consistently enough, you can effectively build muscle when that's coupled with training, lifting of course. But that bulky feeling, I'm not people would feel that way, because I felt that way about going into a bulk. seen you do it time and time again. And I was like, that's... That's not for me. I want the muscle. I want to change my shape through the muscle mass, but I can see what that does every time Sean cut back down eventually and had to lose 20, 25 pounds again. I could see that his body shape was changing and I was like, well, I want that. I want that, but I don't want all of that huge fat gain that goes with it because I don't want to spend the majority of my year feeling like I've gained too much or uncomfortable body or I can't run on the net, of course, because I feel like an absolute slug. didn't want that. Bye bye. The point of the matter is though, what Katie has just described there, bearing in mind that Katie at the time was an educated personal trainer that had experience working in the industry. She'd done a hell of a lot of her own due diligence in the background, reading about nutrition, reading about thermodynamics and energy balance and this, that and the other. She was still put off building muscle. because of the experience that she saw me go through where I was gaining muscle, but gaining too much body fat. And then ⁓ ⁓ loss phase that had to follow in order for me to get the fat off, because not only was my fat loss phase inefficient, but I'd also gained way too much fat. She then watched me go through that whole thing and be like, ⁓ well, I don't really want that. The outcome of her having more muscle, was not deemed to be worthy of putting herself through that whole process, no how much she wanted to build Mesel. And I just want you all to understand. This is exactly the position that so many people find themselves in when they say, I don't want to be bulky. That's the whole point. If Katie was put off by it, then there's a lot of people that don't have her knowledge or background feeling put off by it as well. Absolutely. You know, you're talking, what, three, four years into my career, maybe a bit more. And you believed I knew what I was doing. I mean, I believed I knew what I was doing. Well, yeah, at the time, absolutely. You've been, you know, you've not only been through through bugs for bodybuilding, though, like you've been through bugs, don't forget, for rugby and things in the past when I first met you. So you've done them for various different purposes over the years and... I think more of understanding came from the you're for rugby, were a more than perhaps the ones you've done for bodybuilding. And I think that's where it probably was in my brain going, well, Christ. I was thinking, well, my gosh, I don't think I want to gain that math back. And it took me a while to... come to terms with what I needed to do to really change my body composition. And I think you're right, Sean, I think there's probably a lot of people, men and women, are probably in that position and not really truly understanding, A, the differences between the processes, B, the environment that they need to be in to drive those outcomes, and C, not knowing what the bloody hell to do first. The point is that you don't need to be doing these large bulks in order to gain muscle. It's not necessary. You don't need to be doing them. And I would even go as far to say, with the research that we have nowadays and based on the experience that I've had and also what I've coached clients, If your fat gains are dramatically outpacing your muscle gains, you're not doing it right. And this is where these new terms have come in like lean bulking, lean building. What that is basically saying is you're not going to build muscle and gain loads of fat. The goal is to build muscle whilst trying to gain as little amount of fat as possible. And based on the evidence we have available nowadays, that is a much more sensible approach for a lot of people. And if you are worried about gaining fat and getting bigger and getting bulky by building muscle, then going for one of these leaner building approaches is definitely a better option for you. ⁓ absolutely. And I can say that with absolute. clarity, conviction, confidence, because that is me. That's the method I've been following for the last couple of years. And it's been an absolute game changer, absolute game changer for many different reasons, you know, for changing body composition, for actually proving to myself that you don't just get bulky from building muscle or lifting weights or even going into a building phase. It's not that that makes you bulky. In fact, it actually gives you body composition outcomes. And also, I would just like to mention, I don't want to make big conversation about this one on this podcast, but my relationship with food improved a lot too, because you can actually experience how much food you can eat on a regular basis and get yourself out of the endless fat loss loop or diet after diet. So there's many benefits of the lean bulk, the balance build. that goes beyond building muscle as well. And you're not gaining more fat when you are eating more food, which also breaks that perception which you have that when you start eating more you get fat again. When you do a lean building phase for a long period of time, like some of our members that have done this recently, for the first time in their lives for six months consecutively, and those before and afters, in terms of fat gain just don't look barely any different. Their whole world has now just changed because they've been eating 500 to 700 more calories than what they ever would have used to have eaten to try and keep fat off. But they've better results in terms of keeping body fat off. So it's a complete game changer for your relationship with food. in those cases. I would even go as far to say for people that are more advanced, like the difference is drastic. I used to gain around a pound a week, a pound to a pound a week when I was doing more traditional bulking. So ⁓ to four pounds a month. I have just done a lean bulk for the last six months. I've gained less than six pounds over six months. on this current approach. Whereas in my previous approach, I would have been gaining anywhere from like 12 to 24 pounds in that time. I've, the progress pictures show me that I've been building muscle. I've gained a minimal amount of fat, which I've got virtually no concerns about losing coming up to my fat loss phase this year, compared to where I was previously where I gained an additional 15 or so pounds on top of what I've gained now. Pretty much most of that, or if not all of that, being fat. And then I'd be facing the prospect of, my God, I've now got all this extra fat to lose, which is gonna take me two or three times as long. And my whole summer is dedicated towards fat loss. I'm in a completely different position. And the outcome I was really looking for from that building phase was building muscle. And I have clear evidence that that's happened. So I don't see the value in these big bulks anymore. Certainly not for me anyway. I agree for myself too. And there's not many clients I would put into a larger surplus to be honest or a traditional bulk. There may be some nuance to it, but most people I would encourage to do more of a lean bulk because what you just said there is really important, Sean, that Yeah, okay, on paper you gained more mass in a traditional bulk, right? But the ratios of what would have been muscle to fat, was probably quite like, no, there wasn't probably, there was a lot of fat gain in that bulk. You can say it as it is, Katie. I got chunky. Very chunky. It's okay if you say it, I guess. The irony is, right, you don't realize how bad things have gotten until you get a better experience and you look back on them. Because when I look back on my bulk in progress pictures now and I see where I was, I had no idea how much fat I unnecessarily gained until I've done a phase where I've not gained as much fat and then look back at it and gone, my God, like what was the point in all that extra fat? that's point I was just trying to make is that, yeah, okay, you gain more mass in the same but then you had to spend twice as long. in a fat loss phase, which actually, you look at it across a year, you then spend a lot of your year in fat loss. Whereas if you didn't actually gain all of that unnecessary fat in your building phase, you wouldn't actually need to spend three, four, five months in a cut or in a fat loss phase then to strip that fat back to reveal the muscle you worked hard for. So over the course of year, if you can actually do a lean build, then you're spending more of your year building muscle and less of your year actually stripping that fat off. So if you think of that over year upon year upon year, going to spend way more time in a building phase than actually stripping fat back in comparison to doing a traditional bulk. So over a three year or five year period, more of those months are going to be about building rather than cutting fat. Does that make sense? Did I explain that clearly enough? Definitely. Let's talk about some of the psychology behind building muscle and what puts people off that process, Katie, because I think it's quite important to bring that up now at this stage. A lot of people feel like they're on the road to bulky when they go into a muscle building phase. So does that thought come from and how do we put a stop to that? I think it's a couple of things. The first one I'd like to bring to the table is sensitivity to the scale weight, right? ⁓ boy. ⁓ spent months and I'm going to say years for some people, right? Many of ⁓ clients we've worked with spent years. Trying to get that number on the scale to go down and down and down. More softening articles back up, down, back up, down over the years. Trying to find an approach that works for them. generally when they start with us the focus is we're going to try and get our scale weight down over time right it's going to trend down so you we're going to strip back some of that body fat and then all of a sudden we're going okay that shift now or that focus now is not going to try and get those scales down we're actually going to watch them trend up over time And that shift be difficult sometimes because you've been putting all of your progress, achievements ⁓ to that number go down. And not only that, that number for many people has been linked to... being smaller, being healthier, whatever it may be. And now we're telling you to actually, we don't want that to go down anymore. We don't want it to shoot up as aggressively as perhaps it may have done in your past years when you've ended a fat loss phase. But we do want to see that trending up over time. And that can be hard to mentally shift from one to the other. From my experience, the way to overcome that is exposure to it. And I think that doing a building phase and actually seeing the weight trend up gradually over time. and not seeing the fat gain that comes along with that weight trending up is the best way to beat the fear of the scales. I don't think that there is a stronger way removing that ⁓ that mental barrier the scales than proving to yourself that what you think you're seeing is not what's actually happening. What most people associate with when they see weight up on the scales ⁓ is gain. ⁓ They weight going up means fat gain. If you listen to our previous podcast, you know exactly what we're talking about here. Your weight going up does not mean that it's just going up through fat gain. If you're building muscle, that muscle has to weigh something, your scale weight should be increasing over time as you build muscle and if you're not seeing that increase and your intention is to build muscle then chances are you're not building muscle. So we should be seeing that increase. And when you're not seeing loads and loads of body fat increase when you're building muscle, it changes how you perceive the scales to look. or it changes how you perceive the information you get back from the scales. It's no longer the scales are going up. I'm going backwards. It's the scales going up. I'm making progress. And that's a very different place to be in. There's a term as well, Sean, that... thrown around is very true statement. It's a very true feeling. experienced it ourselves when we're in a building phase where perhaps you start feeling a little bit more uncomfortable and that's feeling a little bit more fluffy. Tell me a little bit more about that. Quite a nice term isn't it really? It's not very harsh or aggressive. It's just simply those days where you feel like you're a little bit less defined. You might be feeling like you're a little bit more bloated, you might be feeling like you're a little bit more watery. Sometimes you can panic with that and think, oh God, I'm gaining fat now, I'm feeling really uncomfortable, this needs to change. Your body can change in terms of appearance reasonably quickly. They're small changes, but they can be noticeable and that can change day to day, week to week. You can have low body confidence days. Other days you might be feeling great in yourself, but on certain days, at certain times you might not feel too comfortable with how you look. That's not specific to just being in a building phase that can happen at any point. You could be the leanest you've ever been and you might feel like that for a couple of days a week. There's hormonal changes that happen with women for that. But the main point is that we all have those days. They're natural, they're a part of the process. Unfortunately, when you experience those days in a build phase, your brain will instantly go to... the thought of, I've gained too much fat, my muscles aren't very defined, my muscles look smoother rather than that sharp, toned... hard alert. and then you can panic a little bit. when you're doing a lean building approach, you can't completely eliminate fat gain altogether. There will be some small fat gained over time, even if you're eating at maintenance calories, which is important to note. You've got the same calories going in as what you've got going out every day. Even you're eating at maintenance calories, it's very, very, very rare not to see some change body fat levels over time. it will just be really small compared to if you're eating loads of calories above maintenance, right? you're gonna gain a little bit of fat over time in this process. It's normal, it's natural. If you weren't monitoring your calories, if you weren't training regularly, if you weren't targeting muscle growth, you'll probably gain fat at a certain time of the year naturally anyway. There's going to be times a year where you overeat. There's gonna be times a year where you eat more calories than what you burn in. You're gonna gain some fat. People that don't watch their nutrition or watch their calorie intake every day gain fat all the time and lose fat all the time as well. So the point is that your body's gonna go through these natural flexors. When you're more controlled with this, when you're keeping an eye on it and you're targeting something like a lean building phase with a very specific calorie amount. your fat gains will be minimal. It has, just a natural part of the process that you're gonna gain some and it's about being comfortable with that and understanding that your body's gonna be much better off in the long run because by allowing yourself to gain that little bit of fat, you're giving yourself the potential to build muscle, to get stronger, to improve your gym performance and what that's gonna do for your appearance, your health and your longevity is far gonna outweigh that small negative impact of a little bit of fat being gained. I absolutely agree. I think it's completely unnatural to think you aren't going to fluctuate slightly with body fat levels for the rest of your life. You're never going to. ⁓ hold peak leanness, shall we call it. You're never going to hold that peak leanness. There's always going to be some fluctuation with body fat levels. okay. It is natural, like you said, Sean. I being comfortable with that is ⁓ part life, not just part of changing your body composition. It's just, again, when the extremes happen, right? When you're potentially gaining too many pounds too quickly in a couple of weeks, ⁓ too frequently, negatively impacting your mental health, negative, impacting your health, your habits, your behaviors, et cetera. That's when it becomes ⁓ an issue and a problem. little bit of facking here and there and a little bit of facking throughout your lean build, get comfortable with it. Get comfortable feeling a little bit fluffy sometimes. There a big difference to feeling that in comparison to letting... things slip totally and you're not doing any healthy actions, you're not training frequently or consistently, not doing a nutritious diet and gaining fat at a really accelerated rate. They're completely different scenarios to be living in. You're right, Katie, and you should take confidence in the fact that you're health positive or results positive actions rather than negative ones that are going to take you further away from what you really want to achieve or what you really want to be able to maintain. I think a lot of the discomfort comes from the fact that we don't really check our thoughts when we're feeling uncomfortable about our body image. We just kind of go along with them or hit the panic button as soon as we experience them. Like how often do we actually stop and think to ourselves, why am I feeling uncomfortable with this little bit of fat gain? Why am I feeling uncomfortable with the fact that I've not got my sharp six pack abs that I had a few months ago? Like what messages or what impressions am I giving myself when my body has changed in this way? It's very easy to, again, have a narrative in your brain that you keep putting on or playing on repeat. And we can all do this by going through the motions. And if in previous years you gained a little bit of body fat, talked no-activity to yourself, told yourself it's causing X, Y, Z, whatever it may be, if you don't pull yourself up over that and check in with yourself, you'll be like, hang on, why am I thinking these thoughts? Why am I saying these things about myself? Are they even true? Most often not. They're not and you just need to change that narrative in your head. Where is that discomfort coming from? it coming from an impression that you've picked up online that you have to maintain a certain image all year round or you have to look a certain way all year round? Is it coming from? A history of feeding yourself a narrative that looking a certain way says more about you as a character or is a stronger part of your identity. Is it because comments have been made by, it could be a family member, it could be a friend, it could be somebody that you grew up around. Trying to understand where those thoughts have come from can be quite helpful when it comes to managing those thoughts and dealing with those thoughts. Because a lot of those claims you make about yourself when you're feeling uncomfortable, which leads you feel uncomfortable. aren't even your own thoughts, they're not even your own opinions, you've just adopted them from somewhere else, or from someone else. Yeah, whether that be from, like you said, someone close to you said it, someone you work with has said it to you, whether it's you fed this information to yourself from social media, because, you know, it's very easy for us to be exposed to many different body shapes, types, information about health and fitness online now. And it can be really easy to compare ourselves to those people online. that just do not look anything like an average person. I can think of two examples which stand out to me of people that have got very, very lean bodies that have both publicly shared their own stories as to why they have those very lean bodies. Ben Carpenter is one. So. He's often had people, I guess, critique him where he's been talking about fat loss and he's been talking about some the fears around fat loss and things like that. He's very, very, caring as a person. But people have challenged him because they've said, well, you you've got a six pack all year round and you're always leaning. What do you know about fat loss? You've never had this struggle. And Ben's had Crohn's his whole life. He struggles to absorb half of the nutrients from his food. He's had a massive problem with trying to actually fuel himself appropriately to build muscle and get stronger. There have been times where he's been severely ill with this condition. And yet people just instantly assume he's got a six pack because, you know, he's lucky or he's genetically blessed or whatever. he's... it's probably more likely due to the fact that for the vast majority of time, he literally can't eat enough to maintain his body fat levels to keep body fat on. another person I can think of off the top of my head. I ⁓ know this person very well But have seen this spoken about on her stories. I believe Lucy Davis fit I Think she a co-founder of the my coach app But anyway, I'm sure story was Growing up she was ⁓ always always genetically super Always had you know, very defined muscles like six pack leaners a female and she has been criticized so many times for not eating enough publicly. Why don't you eat enough? Why are under fueling? Why do you need to look like that? It's not healthy to look like that. It's not healthy for a woman to such low body fat percentage all year round. And this is somebody that's come from a really athletic background. incredibly fit and maintain high levels of performance in multiple areas of fitness. So she can't be that unhealthy for a start but secondly she's always always been that way. There has been no indication that this low level of body fat that she holds all year round is unhealthy for her. But it's assumed because of what everyone else's perspectives are that this is unhealthy for her. She's probably had to deal with so many different people criticizing and critiquing her without understanding her full circumstances. And there may have even been times where she's felt conscious about her body because it looks so different to everyone else's and because it's so abnormal to hold such low levels of body fat the environments that she's in for such long periods of time. So I guess what I'm trying to say by this is don't just assume that because somebody has a lean body or they look a certain way that they're not unfortunate in some ways either or that they don't have challenges that come with that because we never really know the full picture. No, we never, never do and certainly don't when the social media, you know, these days because there's only certain parts of people's lives you'll know. You'll never, hardly know the full story. ⁓ You'll snippets of it, right? So I think it's important to, okay, take some inspiration from what you see online, but don't get too caught up in comparing where you're at, what you can achieve with said person online, because you do not know their circumstances, what has taken for them to get there, the problems or challenges they've faced, what their day-to-day looks like. Lives are completely different and it's about finding not just the methods that work for you on a practical level, but also how you can support your psychology behind health, fitness, building muscle, whatever it may be. Because the environments you've been around since growing up would have created the narrative you've got in your head. You're very right. We should accept that our bodies change and we should accept that there are certain elements which aren't within our control. We should also accept that it's very unrealistic to maintain your leanest condition all year round. But we should also accept that we don't have to go to extreme measures in order to try and change our bodies to stay a certain way and that some natural body shifts and body fluctuations are likely to be healthy, normal and easily reversible. I think that longer term building phases. are actually a great time to learn to become more comfortable in your own skin and learn to settle into some of those natural ebbs and flows that your body goes through. We've spoken about the relationship with the scales, the relationship with the food, and the relationship with how your body can look slightly different from time to time. And I think that's something which I would encourage every single person that goes through a fitness journey should experience at some point. Yeah, I fully agree. think sometimes individuals, and perhaps I've been guilty of this in the past, where there's an expectation of an end result and you were going to look like that every day of your life. But it's just not the case. That's not to say you won't feel confident and happy and comfortable in your body majority of the time. But it's natural for our body to go through changes on a day to day basis sometimes, you know, down to Even how you sleep, mean, hours you sleep will impact whether you feel a little bit more fluffy or bloated or not, ⁓ how your body responds day to day. And particularly for women around menstrual cycle, around your ovulation, body is going to change, it's going to fluctuate. And the more in tune you can get with that, the easier it is for you mentally to go, okay, it's that time I know this is gonna make me feel like X, Y, Z. It's just temporary, just need to ride it out. Before we leave the listeners with a summary of the podcast, let's give them the nitty gritty of how to build muscle without getting bulky. Oh, the information I wish I had many years ago and starting. me too. This blueprint would have saved me years and years of struggle. Yeah, me too, me too. And giving me years and years back of actually really enjoying my diet, really enjoying my training and not let you overthink everything. So a little disclaimer to start, all right? We're going to talk to you as if you are a beginner at this with this particular blueprint. Would you say that's fair to say? Yep, even if you're not a beginner, this will be useful to you. But some of the recommendations are probably more tailored to beginners in terms of what to do in your training. So we would recommend if you're slightly more advanced and you want any particular advice about training. please drop one of us a message on social media and we can talk to you and your individual set of circumstances. for now we're just gonna share advice that we think will be appropriate to everyone that's listening. Yeah, I agree. And they're a great foundation, they, for building muscle. And if you were consistent with these, then it's a case of just tweaking them, progressing them potentially, progressing them potentially if you are more advanced. So let's start off with how much food you need to eat. You need to be in the eucaloric a surplus. So that is maintenance calories. You want to be at energy balance ⁓ least. So that is eating as many calories as your body is burning on daily basis. Or if we're in a surplus? Eating more calories than your body is burning on a daily basis. How much? Good question sir. If you're going to opt for a surplus. then around a 5 to 10 % surplus is more than enough, right? More than enough. So we're probably looking at anywhere between 100 to maybe 300 or so calories, depending on what your maintenance calories are. Most people's maintenance calories will be either 2000 or 3000 mark, around about that range. Slightly higher, but yeah, it's probably gonna be around 100 to 300 calories. Give or take. What about weight gain then, Sean? How much weight gain each week should a person expect when building muscle? Obviously this will differ from individual to individual, but if we're looking at in terms of how much body weight increase you should expect per week, 0.1 to 0.2%. So not 1 % or 2%, 0.1 or 0.2 % of body weight gain per week. So that's a really small amount. And you could probably expect there to be some weeks where you don't gain exactly that amount. So we're looking at that on average over a longer period of time. that's likely to be the upper limit of what you really would expect to gain in terms of muscle without gaining large amounts of body fat alongside it. The main thing is that your weight gains should be really small, really small and incremental. Even if you don't gain every single week, over time, it should be a small average increase. And don't always freak out if one week it's a little bit higher than you expect. Check in with yourself, of course. Are you consuming new calories? If you're not, sit tight. I might come back down a little next week. It's... an average over time again, like with losing body fat, same with gaining muscle. You want to look at your trend over time rather than just making decisions on one particular weekly average weighing. My weight gains on average per week for the last six months have been just over zero point two pounds per week. So it's not even a pound a month. is a very small amount and that's the point. It should be a really small amount to minimize your fat gains. If you do go a bit faster than that and you do gain a little bit of fat, as long as you're not going way over your maintenance calories or way over expected rate of gain, then you shouldn't be gaining too much fat. But if you're frequently 500 to 1000 calories, let's say for example, over your calorie maintenance, then should expect to see fat gains with that. ⁓ I agree. I agree. And probably at more of quicker rate than you would ⁓ which may to you feeling a little bit more bulky then, right, because you're going back into the higher body fat percentage territory. How much protein should we eat, Good place aim for when you're trying to build muscle mass. is an intake of at least 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight or above. Well, that would be. 0.7 grams per pound of body weight if you do the maths in pounds. Your mental math is better than mine. I just know that we've talked between pounds and kilograms a few times we've been speaking. Everyone have their natural preference for what they kind of calculate weight with in their head. ⁓ yeah, 0.7 grams per pound of body weight per day or 1.6 grams per kilogram per day. Yeah. That sounds right. In terms of building muscle, you're not going to build muscle unless you're the training. So you need to be in the gym, you need to be lifting the weights, you need to be training with some degree of intensity. So to begin with, you want to aim for at least four to six sets per muscle group per week as your baseline. choose exercises which work. each muscle group, some exercises carry over to other muscle groups. For example, if you do a chest press, your chest muscles are going to be working primarily, but you'll also work some of your triceps and your shoulders. Most apps will calculate this sort of stuff for you, but if you're not familiar with using apps to calculate that for you, think about which muscles are the main muscles working, which muscles are the secondary muscles working, and then what you do. is you make sure that you've got an exercise in your program to cover pretty much all those main muscle groups in the week and you're aiming for between four to six sets per muscle group in total each week. That's gonna be enough to see you make progress with building muscle. Anything more you do on top of that then adds to that, but you wanna make sure you're hitting that four to six sets per week to start off. more about how you train during those sets. or how you perform those sets. To build muscle, we ideally want to train close to failure. For absolute beginners, you're gonna have a little bit more margin for error with this. you'll also find that it's harder for you to judge how close to failure you are when you first start. So this will get better over time. The good news is your muscles are so sensitive to growth as a beginner that even if you don't quite know how close to failure you're going with your sets, you will still get a decent amount of muscle growth in first. say six to 12 months of training. But what we would expect is Once you get familiar with your exercise and your program and once you're in the routine of going to the gym regularly, then you start thinking about your intensity. So intensity being how close to failure you're taking each set. And what really helps with this to choose machines which are safe ⁓ use spotter, somebody to assist your lifts and for you to take some of your exercises all the to failure. So something like a chest press machine, something like a seated cable row, go all the way to failure with those sets until you literally cannot move the weight anymore with good technique and that will give you an idea of what your limits are. So from that then you have a benchmark of what your most intensive set is like so you can always work close to that limit. gonna give you your best returns when it comes to muscle growth from those sets. Like how you explained that, and I think it's about exposing yourself to that as soon as you can with your training, but not expecting to get that perfect straight away, right? And that leads me nicely onto good technique too. Of course you want to have good technique, but that doesn't have to be perfect either, right Sean? No, plenty of people have built very good physiques with not very good technique. Probably by nature of just doing more to make up for the fact that their technique wasn't quite so good. So they just work really, really hard and outwork the kind of the smarter work, if that makes sense. ⁓ way, our on this is that we want you to work smart and hard. So we want you to make sure your technique is good ⁓ to good standard. It allows for a lot of consistency. It allows you to make sure that you're working the muscles in the way that you want to work them as much as you can in your set. It might save you a little bit of time because you might not have to do extra work to compensate for sets which aren't quite getting the stimulus that you want. So, yeah, we encourage good technique with high intensity. But remember, it doesn't have to be completely perfect A, that doesn't really exist and B, it doesn't always lead to better outcomes anyway. And when you are training close to failure, not that you want your last couple of reps to go to pot, right? You don't, but they're not going to look as picture perfect as your first couple of reps. And if they do, it's likely that you're probably not training close to failure. The more advanced you are, the more I would expect better form, I would expect consistency in the hardest reps of your set. We don't want your last few reps to resemble a completely different exercise or a completely different movement. The are going to get really slow and really hard towards the end of your set if you're training close to failure. It's a key indicator that you're close to failure. But using a tiny bit of momentum, shifting position, just a tiny bit, it's unlikely to cause you any harm and it's unlikely to lead to you suffering worse muscle gains as a result. having standardized technique with your exercises is a really good way for you to be able to just be consistent with your training and consistently judge. how you're targeting your muscles. think that's a pretty smart technique and something that if you can get used to doing over time, it's probably gonna put you in a good position for your training journey. think it's about just not going through the motions with your training, isn't it? That's part of having good form is not just going and doing the reps, because you have to do them, but going and doing them, focusing on them and performing them with intention rather than just... there's eight reps on my program today now I'm just going to go in and do that. It's probably worth noting at this stage that it's not necessarily just feeling a muscle either is it because I can stand here and tense my bicep as hard as possible and feel the muscle but that's not enough weight to make it grow just because I'm squeezing my bicep. You have to load the muscle with enough weight and work it hard enough for it to actually experience growth so You can't just feel a muscle and grow a muscle. It has to be stimulated. And the intensity that you put into the work is what stimulates it. So it's not necessarily about feeling the muscle, but of how your limbs and your joints need to move in order for you to target the muscle is a better way of thinking about it. So that's why we focus more on how should this body part be moving. Where should my arm be in relation to my body? How should my shoulder move when I do this pull? All that is more important to focus on in my opinion than I feel a muscle in the set. If move my limb correctly, if I move my arm correctly or move my shoulder correctly, then I might feel that muscle working. But it also doesn't mean that my exercise is redundant if I don't feel the muscle. as long as I know I'm moving that limb correctly, the muscle attached to that limb has to be moving that limb. So it is doing the work. And when I'm getting fatigued through the exercise and the muscle is tiring and I'm struggling to finish the same amount of reps as I did the set before, and I'm struggling to let that weight get really slow when I'm trying to move it, I that that muscle is being fatigued. So that's just a nice little tip, I think, to take away. For beginners or anyone, don't focus on feeling the muscle work as much. Focus more on the thing that needs to be moving in order to get the muscle to work. I think it's a really good tip because when you're watching any videos to learn how to perform a movement, if you're only thinking about the muscles that you should feel, you're not really focusing so much on how that ⁓ body is moving. But if you can put your focus more on how that person's body is moving, then you can think, okay, so I need to move my body in that way as well. That will then most likely lead you work the muscles that you should be working in that exercise that's what you want to be thinking about, It's how do I need to move my body to make sure that muscle is working? It's more consistent. There's only so much you can focus on at any period of time you're in the gym. ⁓ if you're trying to constantly focus on ⁓ a muscle is feeling, you can forget how to move correctly to get the muscle to work in the first place. ⁓ you might not be able to... achieve the level of intensity you want to achieve in that set, you might not be able to push yourself to go as close to failure because essentially you're focusing on something else. Your distraction, your attention is being distracted by trying to feel a muscle working and that's not necessarily going to be inducing of muscle growth. What is going to be inducing of muscle growth is can you put as much load and as much work as possible? through the muscle that you're trying to work. Spending half of your set trying to get it to feel a certain way is less productive than trying to move the thing that you need to move, cable, bar, dumbbell, limb, whatever it is. How you try and move that pushing the intensity with that set will get that muscle to fire a lot more. Agreed. Agreed fully. And I think it's a very helpful ⁓ get confident doing to not only perform movement well, but for you to be able to assess your own movement within that particular exercise. If you watch a video back of yourself, for example, you know, me watching a video back thinking, what muscle am I feeling there? You're going to be thinking, how is my body moving? On top of all the fueling components and the muscle building components, is there anything else we should think about when it comes to building muscle without getting bulky? I a reminder that just make sure your nutrition is accurate. It's a key part. What do mean by that? don't want to be overshooting your calories. You don't want to be tracking calories but not really tracking your calories. We've touched upon do you need to carry track all the time in previous podcasts, but for the purpose of making sure that you are building muscle and not gaining too much body fat too quickly, calorie tracking is a real, of the most accurate tools out there you can use to guide that process. But if you're not using that tool accurately, and you're just popping some numbers in there without potentially weighing loads of things, then there's no accuracy there, right? You're just chucking some numbers in in a tool to make yourself feel better. Yeah, for the first time round, if you haven't done it before, if you haven't calorie tracked before, you haven't done a build phase before, calorie tracking is just a must, in our opinion. It makes that process so much more efficient. You can do that process with so much more confidence you will learn a lot about ⁓ foods you can. actually eat any amount of food you can eat as well. Two other things I can think of, Sean, that is good sleep quality, where you can, course, and a low stress environment, where you can, of course. easier said than done sometimes. I refuse to accept that we incapable improving our tolerance or of stress. refuse to accept that there aren't some things that we can do on a day-to-day basis, regardless of how crazy our lives are, regardless of how busy our brains are, regardless of all the responsibilities we got on. I think everyone can do at least ⁓ to three things a day, which will help them to reduce the amount of stress which they're exposing themselves to in ⁓ environment. And if you're used to running on high stress mode all the time where you've constantly got stress going on and you can just improve a few little things, well, that's a big net positive. And you should probably make that a priority in my opinion. Because I think the benefits are quite clear for what reduced stress does for our health, what it does for our performance, what it does for our progress. just a big win. ⁓ I agree fully. I agree fully. Some stresses that are totally outside of our control, but there are a lot of stresses that we can manage better for sure. This has been a very tasty podcast today. Let's summarize everything you need to know about the myth that you're going to get too bulky if you try to build muscle. And let's talk about what you really need to focus on when it comes to getting this right. building muscle rarely makes you bulky. Getting lots of body fat can make you feel pretty bulky. I think it's fair to say that, but building muscle rarely does. And it's very unlikely you're going to enough muscle to make you feel really bulky without noticing it. You will probably get to a point where it's not like you're just going to wake up overnight and go, ⁓ my God, I gained 40 pounds of muscle. What's happened? me your magic answer. Your magic pill you've been taking till that happened. ⁓ the things that people are taking to try and gain that much muscle. do not gain them that much muscle overnight. will see this coming, I promise you. And if you see it coming, you could probably start to pull back a little bit on the training, pull back a little bit on the diet, and you'll be able to stop yourself from getting too muscular at any one given period of time. But trust me, ⁓ have been ⁓ of people that have attempted to reach the physique, that look too muscular, and have failed dramatically in trying to achieve this. Unless you are... complete genetic anomaly and have hit the genetic jackpot then you're probably not going to get to a point where you all of a sudden just start lifting weights and you're the next Arnold Schwarzenegger jumping on stage. true. You do though have to be comfortable during the building phase in terms of your body composition levels how much body fat you're carrying probably why you should start it from a position where you are feeling comfortable in your body fat levels. Perhaps take things a little bit further in terms of leanness than you have before, just so you can give yourself a little bit of buffer room when you go into a building phase. Well said. You don't need to be lean to start building muscle at all. You really don't. But what we would say is that you're not going to be reducing body fat over time if you're building muscle correctly. and you're not one of the very unique individuals that can experience body recomp. So starting from a position where you're comfortable with your body fat or at least comfortable to maintain how much fat you currently have whilst you're building muscle is a really good place to start. You're probably going to gain a little bit over time. So you just need to be in a place where you can accept that and not feel really unhappy about it. Yeah, so the last thing you want to be doing is flip-flopping back and forth between them both because that's not helpful for anyone. If you gain in fat too quickly, you're probably doing it wrong. Something's amiss. of things, but chances are if you gain in fat too quickly, you're overeating calories. So maybe take a look at your track in, see if that's accurate, maybe adjust your approach. Maybe have a little look at what you're doing with your activity levels. Have they changed recently? But it's a telltale sign. If you're gaining fat quicker than you're gaining muscle, then something's probably going wrong there. From our experience, lean building is the way forward for most people, especially if you haven't done any building visits before, but it is absolutely still a value for those that are more experienced as well. And even see this in the bodybuilding world, aren't we, that lean builds are quite popular amongst some of the most successful bodybuilders out there. Yeah, which is again, a telltale sign. thinking these methods are... only for general public but The bodybuilders that are using these methods are trying to build as much muscle as possible. It is basically their life's goal to build the most muscular physiques they could possibly obtain. Both natural and enhanced bodybuilders have that goal in mind. So if they are choosing a lean building approach nowadays, when that's their primary intention to build as much muscle as they can, are it's a decent method to follow for building muscle. So pay attention to what these individuals are doing because they're probably onto something. They're just doing it more frequently, probably more intensively and might be dedicating a lot more time to it than what the average person may do. But the methods still hold up and produce a really great result for general population. Seeing ourselves with us, with our results and with our clients results. You most likely have an image of what you'd like to achieve, but you may be unsure where you should start. Should you lose fat first or should you build muscle first? We've got a really handy free quiz you can take to give you a personalized answer on what your next steps should be. If you head to our description, you'll be able to get the direct link to it. And it takes all of one to two minutes to complete. Don't forget to connect with us on our socials as well. You can find both of our personal Instagram pages below. Learn a little bit more about what we're doing, what our clients are achieving. And if you want to know a little bit more about our one-to-one coaching, you can chat to us in person there. Let's talk about your goals, let's talk about what we can do to help you. Zero obligation, just come along for a chat. all for this episode. Next week we'll be back to continue our discussion about building muscle. We'll be talking about some of the fueling problems people have that prevent them from seeing the muscle growth they want and how a ⁓ of the time people don't even realize how much their undue eating is costing them. Eyebrow raise from Katie. see you next time.