Bulking — Blog — Healy Chen

At the limit

It seems I am stuck at around 167 pounds. Conventional wisdom is that if you want to grow muscle and get stronger, you have to eat more. I’ve been eating more for this entire year, and yet I’ve been hovering at the 167 pounds mark for the past months. Still adding weight on the barbell, though, thankfully.

I guess that’s the problem with bulking: what got you to a certain weight level, won’t take you any further. My body has reached an equilibrium with my current food intake amount. To increase weight further, I must eat even more. And honestly, I am tapped out.

Because I don’t want to become the guy who is obsessed about eating. I have to remember this whole weightlifting thing is about health and longevity. It should not dominate my life. The goal isn’t to maximize muscle mass or step on a bodybuilding competition stage. To eat any more than I already am will become a chore. And it won’t be comfortable, too (all that digestion). Hard pass.

Getting fat - dirty bulk - is easy: I’d simply eat all the ice cream I could ever want, every single day. That’s not my goal, obviously. Clean bulking is incredibly difficult. To get enough calories by eating the right foods is not only time consuming (fiber and protein is not as caloric dense as a piece of cheesecake), but also expensive (cookies are cheap). There’s a limit, and I’ve personally reached mine.

At least until they figure out muscle protein synthesis in a pill. What Ozempic is to fat loss.

I prayed for this

For the longest time I’ve wished for Costco to offer salmon poke. They’ve only ever done tuna, but not anymore! On a recent trip to Costco I was ecstatic to find a Sriracha flavored salmon poke. Even better, it costs less per pound than the equivalent tuna. I get my preferred fish and I save money. Cannot be beat! Pairing the poke with rice is absolutely fantastic.

It seems I am stuck at 166 pounds body weight for past month. (I weight myself every morning soon as I leave the bed.) Looks like I’ve reached a wall on this slow bulking plan. The math is simple: just eat more. But in exercise it’s slightly more complicated. I’m already eating as much as I comfortably want to eat. Adding more calories would mean having the act of eating be something I actually have to stress about. And I definitely do not want that.

The amount of calories that got me to this current weight isn’t sufficient to keep the number on the scale increasing. Makes sense: I need more calories to sustain this new weight. Therefore the more I gain, the more I have to eat to simply maintain. What got me here won’t get me to the next level up.

Obviously when I say bulking, I mean gaining lean mass. It would be enjoyably easy if it were just a matter of straight poundage. All I’d have to do is mash down a few crumbl cookies every day. Before long I’d be heavier and flabbier at the same time. Conversely, gaining muscle whilst limited fat gain is way tougher to execute. I really don’t want to add another protein shake into the daily rotation.

I think a solid end goal for me, at 5 foot 10 inches tall, is about 175 pounds. That’s a sizable amount of muscle mass, but not overly high to make it difficult to maintain in terms of food intake. Nine pounds is a significant amount of weight to gain when you want it to be as much lean tissue as possible.

Bottom line: got to eat more. Pass the salmon.