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Happy Sunday, everyone! This week I’m excited to give a bit of a progress update and write about the surprisingly difficult task of bulking and intermittent fasting at the same time. Can it be done?!
Well I’ve got some findings to report so far – let’s get into it! Sit back, grab your metabolism-boosting super coffee (that doesn’t break your fast!), and get ready for some good ol’ fashioned learnin’.
What Is Intermittent Fasting?
You may have heard of intermittent fasting before, especially if you’re in fitness circles or are a “gym rat” like I am. For those that aren’t familiar, here’s a breakdown.
Intermittent fasting is a method of eating that follows a specific schedule. I don’t mean that you have to eat at certain times, though. Instead, you have to eat all your food within a specific timeframe, typically between 6-10 hours of the day. Squeezing all your meals into this window lets your body take advantage of what’s known as the fasting window.
The Fasting Window
The purpose of intermittent fasting is to put the body back into an optimal state of planned deprivation, so to speak. Limiting meals to that 6-10 hour window lets our bodies operate more efficiently, using the majority of the day (and night) to process and metabolize our food for energy.
I personally prefer to eat my breakfast no earlier than 8am, and my last meal no later than 6pm, every day. That gives me a 10-hour window to eat all of the 2,800 calories I’m allowed for the day. It also gives my body 14 hours to process my food for energy (time spent sleeping counts as a fast as well!).
But…Why? Why Would You Do Intermittent Fasting?
It’s a good question – why put yourself to such a schedule, feeling hungry at times (especially at the start) just for the sake of “optimizing your metabolism”? Well, the reason may vary for different people. Some may want to lose weight quickly, while others may want more structure in their day. Others still may want to experiment with how their body reacts to changes.
How Does Intermittent Fasting Help You Lose Weight?
There are several layers to the benefits of intermittent fasting, all of which help you to meet your goal of losing or maintaining weight. How do they work, you ask? Let me educate you a bit!
Choose Your Body’s Fuel Source
Pop quiz time! Let’s do a knowledge check: What does your body use for fuel to give you energy throughout the day?
If you said food, nice job! You caught that point earlier, but I’ve got news for you: food isn’t actually the whole picture. The body also has the ability to consume body fat and muscle for energy when food isn’t in the picture.
You read that right: the body can literally eat your muscle to survive. This is part of why people lose weight so quickly at first when they try a huge caloric deficit or fad diet. They’re losing muscle too!
This might not bother everyone, but for those of us that are aiming for improvements to strength, physique, and overall fitness, this is a disaster! We work hard for our gains. Do we have to to lose them just to get leaner?
Not exactly.
Intermittent fasting allows the body to prioritize body fat as its energy source instead of food, helping to burn fat while also preserving muscle mass through a process calledmetabolic switching.
A study conducted in 2020 found that lean body mass is generally maintained when intermittent fasting is combined with resistance training. The study goes on to state that “the combination of BR intermittent fasting CBR and resistance training may also lead to a reduction in body fat, not only during apparent energy deficit, but also energy surplus.”
Does this mean that a caloric surplus can still result in a reduction in body fat while building lean muscle? The results here were inconclusive, meaning that there wasn’t enough data to support a conclusion one way or another.
Enter Dave with his FIThinking fitness experiments: Can I put on lean mass while intermittent fasting in a caloric surplus?. Time for a progress check!
Progress Check
Let’s talk about my intermittent fasting bulking experiment thus far. I’m currently eating 2,800 calories per day, with a macro split of 40% carbs, 30% fats, 30% protein, between the hours of 8am and 6pm. I work out 6 days per week, 5 days of weight training and 1 day of cardio.
Has It Been Easy?
Nope, not at all. The workouts have been great, but eating so much food in that time window is actually really difficult. 2,800 calories might not sound like much – it’s pretty close to the average calorie requirement for an adult male in America, after all. But here’s the thing: I’m still on a really, really clean diet for this bulk.
When your main sources of food are lean ground turkey, eggs, rice, chicken, oats, fruits and vegetables, and healthy fats like extra virgin olive oil, MCT oil, and real cheese, that’s…a lot of food. I have to supplement all that with protein and weight gainer just to get to the finish line each day!
I also tend to get into a flow state at work and forget to eat between main meals. Playing catch up means I need to eat A TON of food at once, and that always makes me crash. The carb coma struggle is real, and it takes me out for the night when I want to be active with my family after work.
Going forward I’m going have a timer set to remind me to eat every 2 hours to make sure I can avoid the huge meals and subsequent crash.
Cut To The Chase, Dave! You Seeing Those Gains?
In short, yes – yes I am. As of today I’m up to 161.5lbs, a gain of 6.5lbs since I started my caloric surplus. It hasn’t been entirely muscle, but I am pretty happy with the ratio of muscle-to-fat gain. My strength has been going back up as well for multiple exercises. When I was doing this last cut I found my strength dropped a fair bit, so I’m excited to use intermittent fasting for my show prep cut in hopes of mitigating that. Here’s where a few of my lifts are right now:
- 3 sets of 225×5 on bench press
- 3 sets of 205×4 on incline bench press
- 3 sets of 225×10 on bent over shrugs (amazing for trap development)
- 3×6 on pull ups with a 45lb plate on a chain belt
- 3 sets of 20×95 on squats to keep the muscle engaged while giving my knee a bit of a breather after pain over the holiday
At this point I have another 19.5lbs to go by around September. It’s one hell of an intimidating goal, but I’m going to push as hard as I can to get there. I just need to trust the process, let the compound effect do its work, and be happy with whatever I wind up with. #roadto180
Conclusion
So in summary, yes – so far bulking while intermittent fasting has worked for me. I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’ll stay the course and trust the process! In the meantime, I want to ask you to chime in!
