Anyone here bulking in their late 30's/40's? How did it go?

[montexss]

July last year I got sick of being fat and having backpain so went on an intermittent fasting (OMAD) diet and cut out ALL processed foods- ate meat/fish/eggs/veggies/nuts/kefir only and started running. Added in carbs from sweet potato and squash too, but zero wheat, rice, oats, corn, etc... Dropped from 190lbs to 145ish in a couple months and built great cardio endurance- was doing 10K run 4-5, sometimes 6 days a week. Did some basic machine and bodyweight exercises too - but running was the priority until January.

I was happy with results, got great abs, felt like I had unlimited oxygen capacity, but felt my arms/shoulders/chest were small, quads could be bigger, etc....

Changed my routine from running 10K and then doing some miscellaneous lifting and calisthenics 4-6 days a week to 3x a week full body resistance training and after weights I do a quick 2 mile run just to maintain some cardio. Also upped my carb intake quite a bit & added whey protein and creatine.

Currently sitting at ~156-158lbs. I feel like my biceps, triceps and quads are growing. Leg press and bicep curls have improved rapidly the past month with my new routine- hitting more reps at higher weights than I could a few weeks back.

However I also feel like my abs are getting a little "fluffy", just less definition than when I was banging out the mileage and a little more padding on them.

Has anyone else in their 40s tried cycling between bulking and cutting to get to their goal physique? I was hoping I could reach my physique goals just re-comping, but when my running was so high I couldn't budge my weight above 150lbs even eating 4000+ calories a day, and felt like muscles just wouldn't grow- it felt great to hit low BF and see the abs, but I want to hit a low BF% at 160-165lbs, not at 145lbs.

Just wondering if bulking/cutting is less optimal or harder for older guys or if anyone has had success with it in their 40s+? Psychologically it was tough to commence a "bulk" and up carbs/cut out running when I had just gotten lean after 10 years of being heavy, but I can tell the muscle growth/hypertrophy and strength gains are better already- i just don't want to end up with alot of bodyfat and then lose a significant amount of muscle I just worked hard to build trying to cut the bodyfat again. I would be stuck in an endless compromise of having jacked limbs with a belly, or skinny limbs with abs

 

[josealvi]

@montexss Started bulking at 40 here. Similar situation to yours, lost a ton of fat but got too skinny. Protein is key. You should be shooting for about 160g per day now. I was cycling a lot but when I dropped to only zone two type riding once or twice a week, 1-2 hours total and started to put on faster. Went from 165 to about 185 lean but it took over a year. Supplement with creatine if you can and make sure you get sufficient balance on your macros, good meals and protein immediately after workouts.

 

[montexss]

@josealvi Yes, I do a high protein diet

4 eggs for breakfast
Post workout whey shake with 5g creatine.
Sardines or meat for lunch with sweet potato
Grassfed ribeye for dinner.
Snacks are nuts, cheese, kefir
I hit a minimum of 1g/lb every day which is easy for me as grilled meat is my favorite. Its more playing around with the carbs that I'm trying to dial in.

 

[gm0nkx]

@montexss

1. Nutrition coach. Currently bulking

1) You will likely have less visible abs while bulking. It’s really hard to do it otherwise. Hollywood guys who are jacked with abs are bulking and then cutting right before they film.

2) Good carbs to stock up on are fruits and dried fruits. (In addition to the obvious like rice and potatoes). Easy way to up your carbs without going over on protein.

Avoid the processed stuff as much as you can. I know people talk about dirty bulking and they seem fine but that’s survivorship bias. Processed food is killing us just look at the rise of digestive health issues and cancer*

*No the evidence isn’t 100% but use your brain. Feel free to to wait until the peer reviewed studies that come out to show the connection or make the switch now.

Plus you’ll just feel better.

As a Dad I care infinitely more about my long term health than just looking good or being muscular. But a clean bulk can do both. You just might not also look like captain America. Health and aesthetics are not always tied together

 

[mikeb34]

@montexss Through my 40s I simply used a slow bulk approach, no real target gain, just eating a mild surplus and using a pretty aggressive moderate volume hypertrophy approach.

Early 50s this is what worked for me - Use a reverse Matador approach in combination with a low volume/high intensity approach:

• approx 500 cal daily surplus for 2-4 weeks, drop back to maintenance or very slight deficit for 10 days to 2 weeks.
• rinse and repeat
• use a genuine hypertrophic focused program with high demand and progressive overload. This is VERY important and not given enough emphasis in discussion of "bulking". Your body does not willingly invest in more muscle - it must be convinced to do so.
• optional, reduce dietary fat to 20% of your macros. This will allow you run longer somewhat longer surplus phases with less bf accumulation and faster drawdown in the non bulking phases
• divide your protein into 3 or 4 large spikes of 40gr or more per, spaced at least 4 hours apart.

 

[onepassionate1]

@mikeb34 If someone consumes 'x' calories and 20% of those calories are fat vs 30% being fat how does that reduce bf accumulation if they are still only consuming x calories ?

 

[mikeb34]

@onepassionate1 If "X" is maintenance, and we add 20% surplus in fat, let's say for argument's sake that 1/3 of those calories get stored as bf.

If we add 20% surplus in carbs, every single glucose storage site needs to be topped off, resting energy expenditure will increase as much as 20%, and then 1/3 of anything left gets consumed in the conversion to fat. A lot less bf will be generated per surplus calorie and the body becomes more anabolic as a result.

In a hard-exercising individual you will almost always have some space to store more glucose. In an excess of carbs you will burn a little less fat for maintenance, but following exercise you'll still burn off fat while the muscles reload glucose, which can take a few. So a surplus of carbs does not accumulate the same amount of bf as a surplus of fat. This has been demonstrated in a number of studies

This was also verfified in metabolic chamber experiment where a deficit of fats led to geater loss of body fat than a deficit of carbs, despite both deficits shedding the same amount of total body mass.

In a surplus, not all calories are equal.

https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)06404-3/pdf

"During overfeeding, subjects were given an average of 1398 g carbohydrate and oxidized 1280 g, which resulted in a mean carbohydrate balance of 115 g (Table 4). Concomitant measures of hepatic de novo lipogenesis showed that the mean de novo lipogenesis was 27% (averaged for both overfeeding treatments and for pooled subject data). The estimated amount of absolute fat production via de novo lipogenesis that this represents is only 4 g; however, this may well be an underestimation because these estimates are dependent on an index that was not measured, namely, VLDL-triacylglycerol production. Nonetheless, even when VLDL-triacylglycerol production was measured from kinetic modeling, absolute fat production is similarly low (8). Dietary fat intake during this period was 512 g, of which 233 g was oxidized, leaving all subjects with an average positive fat balance of 278 g (Table 4), of which the de novo lipogenesis con-
tribution was clearly a tiny proportion.

 

[ckm333]

@montexss I got fat

 

[haley12]

@ckm333 Yeah, I started bulking on accident

 

[hudson61]

@montexss Recomping or Gaintaining after the beginner phase will only take you so far - because progress will become so slow and incremental that you eventually won’t be able to tell if/when you even are making progress without comparing states between several months at a time at best. If you’re not looking to make major changes, that’s fine.

In the words of Mike Israetel, the problem with bulking too slow (with a less than 500 calorie a day plus) is that the other “noise” of variables like water weight or random daily activity become as big or larger than the actual meaningful changes you are trying to track.

 

[jaharrttttt]

@hudson61

In the words of Mike Israetel, the problem with bulking too slow (with a less than 500 calorie a day plus)

500 is already a pretty big surplus. Pretty sure he suggests lower than 500 calorie daily surplus unless you're a huge guy. RP just recently had "are you bulking too slow" video and iirc their recommendations based on bodyweight would be closer to 300ish for average guy.

Similarly eg. Eric Helms and Greg Nuckols seem to think 500 calorie daily surplus is excessive in most cases. MacroFactor FAQ also has a section why they don't recommend the 1 lbs/week kind of "oldschool bodybuilding bulk"

 

[montexss]

@hudson61 I watch Dr Mike, good stuff.

I'm very habitual with my diet and also cook/prepare 100% of my food which is good for being able to make incremental changes- I also notice my weight is incredibly consistent- I typically am within +/- 0.1lbs every morning, never really see multiple lb fluctuations of weight, probably because of how regimented I am. Since trying to bulk the variation has been a bit higher, but I had a three week long stretch where I was 147.2 every single morning post morning pee

 

[jkeati4]

@montexss If you jump back and forth too much you mostly spin your wheels… slow, clean bulk for 2-3 years, then cut. Best thing about being 40’s… no one even cares about abs but you… so enjoy being 15-20% BF and being called ripped.

 

[absentia]

@montexss I'm about to turn 67, 5'11. Last year I decided WTF and started a bulk. Went from about 174 to 194 lbs over 3 months. Looked really swole and got strong AF, but started to be uncomfortable with the belly. So I cut down to about 168. Can't say I gained lbs and lbs of muscle, but I definitely added some lean mass and now I feel great at the lower weight. You can check some of my posts.

I go to the gym 5x week for about 50-60 mins per day - lower/upper/arms/lower/upper splits in varying strength or hypertrophy blocks. Tooks cals up to about 3600 daily (ugh), now maintaining at about 2200-2400 per day. I also do 30 mins cardio on lifting days (cycle or swim) and 60 mins non-lifting days. My strength on big lifts has continued to go up whether bulking or cutting.

I suggest you track calories fairly closely, keep at about a 200-300 cal surplus, lift your ass off on compound movements, and try to limit weight gain to about 1-2 lbs month. Take it slow and you'll avoid adding a lot of fat.

So my belief is with proper training you can keep adding good muscle at least through your 60's.

So get started dude and best of luck to you

 

[yossman]

@absentia 67 and still getting after it, you’re a inspiration!

 

[julief]

@montexss Yes - started last year at 36 at 63kg / 135lbs. Now 75kg / 165lbs. Plan to push to 80kg / 175lbs and then see. Rapidly running out of clothes that fit as I move from a Small to a Medium, 30” waist to 32”, 36” chest to 40”. I’m Ecto and bulking is hard I need to be at 3.5K-4K calories a day to see it.

 

[montexss]

@julief Yah, I had weeks when I was rocking 4500 cals a day and with the running my weight would literally not budge above 150lbs- people at work commenting about how every time they see me I'm eating I carried a cooler full of grilled steaktips and chicken breasts and sweet potato and pistachios with me everywhere I went.

My metabolism totally changed when I cut out grains and processed foods- I could stay 190lbs eating 2000-2500 calories a day when I was eating pasta and bread, and now I have to eat endlessly to keep from losing weight.

 

[jennifergarcia]

@montexss I noticed you mentioned grains. If you don’t mind me asking, which kind of carbs do you eat? And what is your macro split? I’m doing my research and going to try to get where you’re at now. I’ve been ramping my walks/runs up to about 8 miles a day but am ready to really drop some weight.

 

[montexss]

@jennifergarcia I get all carbs from different varieties of sweet potato and squash. Zero grain because I think grains are sub-optimal for health for a number of reasons.

• grains are deficient in most vitamins, sweet potato and squash has A, several Bs, C, E, antioxidants like lutein/astaxanthin, soluble fiber, more potassium, etc. Grains might have decent magnesium and a couple B's but thats about it. Wheat flour for instance has to be fortified with thiamine otherwise it actually causes nutrient depletion in the body- grains are high in lectins and phytic acid that chelate dietary minerals and reduce nutrient absorption. During the depression when people were eating tons of grain because they had no money, nutrient deficiency diseases like beri beri and pellegra became endemic- this is actually why the FDA started requiring wheat flour be enriched. Look at how many synthetic vitamins are put in "healthy" cereals- they have to add all this because grain is so deficient.
• problematic proteins like gluten and gliadin. Within a week of cutting out grain my hands and feet stopped hurting after having arthritis/joint pain for years. Alot of proteins in modern engineered grains are inflammatory. Ancient emmer wheat for instance codes for about 400 proteins, but the modern bio-engineered semi-dwarf wheat farmed at industrial scale contains over 2000 proteins- alot of these are new novel proteins humans have only been exposed to for the last ~5 decades. These crops are heavily engineered for drought, pest and disease resistance by increasing phytic acid, lectin and oxalate content.
• sweet potato and squash are fresh whole foods with limited shelf life- when potatoes or squash spoil or go bad you know it quickly. Grains are often stored for months in silos before being refined and processed after which they can have years long shelf life at a store or before being used in processed foods- during this time they can acquire mold/mold toxins, but also due to long storage periods they can also be heavily oxidized by the time they are actually cooked/eaten. If the potato you are eating is spoiled you will instantly know it, but you have no idea how bad the grain is you are eating due to it being heavily refined, processed and dried.
• modern wheat, corn and soy are engineered to be "roundup ready"- and are the crops most heavily sprayed with glyphosate. Additionally they are engineered to grow extremely quickly/high productivity per acre which means soils used year after year to grow these crops are depleted of micronutrients like selenium, iodine, manganese, copper, etc... industrial grain farming relies heavily on NPK (nitrogen potassium phosphorous) fertilizers which help high yields but all these other important micronutrients are depleted in these soils. Overall organically grown sweet potato and squash just seem like a healthier, fresher, more nutrient dense option for carbs than grains and the organic varieties are still cheap enough to be an affordable source of carbs in spite of costing a bit more than non-organic varieties.

 

[jennifergarcia]

@montexss Wow thank you for the incredibly detailed response!

I also have the same random pains after eating certain foods. I’m going to give this a try and see how I feel. I know it’s an inflammatory response of some sort but I never thought healthy grains could be the reason.