# Bulking calories on off days



## jstnelson2006 (Nov 17, 2010)

Say someone is bulking and they want to take in 3,000 calories a day;

On lift days you need those excess calories to deliver nutrients to your muscles and have a surplus of calories to build muscle with.

But what if you don't lift the next day? You're muscles got the nutrients they needed yesterday and grew when you slept right? So shouldn't you only eat your maintenance level of calories that day?


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## MDR (Nov 17, 2010)

No


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## Marat (Nov 17, 2010)

It's fine to eat fewer calories on your non-training days. You'll need to make up for those missed calories during your non-training days on your training days if you'd like to keep your average daily intake at 3,000.


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## MDR (Nov 17, 2010)

Seems easier to me to be consistent with your diet.  Plus, you are making gains on your rest and recovery days.  The body needs food when you are trying to gain size.  Eating at maintenance on your off days just doesn't make sense to me.


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## OutWhey (Nov 17, 2010)

MDR said:


> Seems easier to me to be consistent with your diet. Plus, you are making gains on your rest and recovery days. The body needs food when you are trying to gain size. Eating at maintenance on your off days just doesn't make sense to me.


 I concur with this. It is much easier to keep the same general diet.


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## LAM (Nov 17, 2010)

MDR said:


> Seems easier to me to be consistent with your diet.  Plus, you are making gains on your rest and recovery days.  The body needs food when you are trying to gain size.  Eating at maintenance on your off days just doesn't make sense to me.



ditto to all of the above....considering that muscle protein synthesis is higher 24-36 hours after exercise it is imperative to keep cals high all the time for optimum gains of strength and/or increases in muscle mass


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## Phineas (Nov 18, 2010)

Create your base surplus for non-training days. If 2,500 is maintenance, eat at 3,000. On training days just add something to compensate for lost calories from training. There's no way to know how many calories you burn training without having all sorts of medical equipment attached to you, but you can give a rough estimate just so your body has something extra to ensure you stay in a surplus. 

The way I've been doing it since I started tracking my diet is training days (3-4 days a week) I'll add an additional 300 calories worth of carbs, combined with one of my usual non-training day carbs, to make a good-sized pre-workout carbup (120g carbs, to be exact). Also, as I eat beef 3-4 times a week, I'll also have the beef on my training days. I substitute one of my other meat sources from the non-training days. Every day I eat 7oz salmon, which I never replace, 6oz poultry, and another 3-4 oz of some other meat (needs to be around 120-150 calories, and 20-30g protein, preferably 25g. I might have the smaller protein source be 3oz X lean ground turkey, so I still get poultry, but then take out my 6oz salmon in place of 5oz lean ground beef, which has the 40g protein the chicken does (at about the same bioavailability), but more calories and fat, so it will bring up my daily calorie total with the carbs by about 450. So, if on non-training days my total is 3,600, on training days it becomes around 4,050. I'll add a bit more if I'm running after I workout. My runs are usually 4-6 km, which is enough to burn off several hundred calories in someone 200 lbs.


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## MDR (Nov 18, 2010)

Phineas said:


> Create your base surplus for non-training days. If 2,500 is maintenance, eat at 3,000. On training days just add something to compensate for lost calories from training. There's no way to know how many calories you burn training without having all sorts of medical equipment attached to you, but you can give a rough estimate just so your body has something extra to ensure you stay in a surplus.
> 
> The way I've been doing it since I started tracking my diet is training days (3-4 days a week) I'll add an additional 300 calories worth of carbs, combined with one of my usual non-training day carbs, to make a good-sized pre-workout carbup (120g carbs, to be exact). Also, as I eat beef 3-4 times a week, I'll also have the beef on my training days. I substitute one of my other meat sources from the non-training days. Every day I eat 7oz salmon, which I never replace, 6oz poultry, and another 3-4 oz of some other meat (needs to be around 120-150 calories, and 20-30g protein, preferably 25g. I might have the smaller protein source be 3oz X lean ground turkey, so I still get poultry, but then take out my 6oz salmon in place of 5oz lean ground beef, which has the 40g protein the chicken does (at about the same bioavailability), but more calories and fat, so it will bring up my daily calorie total with the carbs by about 450. So, if on non-training days my total is 3,600, on training days it becomes around 4,050. I'll add a bit more if I'm running after I workout. My runs are usually 4-6 km, which is enough to burn off several hundred calories in someone 200 lbs.



Makes sense to me.


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## Phineas (Nov 18, 2010)

Phineas said:


> Create your base surplus for non-training days. If 2,500 is maintenance, eat at 3,000. On training days just add something to compensate for lost calories from training. There's no way to know how many calories you burn training without having all sorts of medical equipment attached to you, but you can give a rough estimate just so your body has something extra to ensure you stay in a surplus.
> 
> The way I've been doing it since I started tracking my diet is training days (3-4 days a week) I'll add an additional 300 calories worth of carbs, combined with one of my usual non-training day carbs, to make a good-sized pre-workout carbup (120g carbs, to be exact). Also, as I eat beef 3-4 times a week, I'll also have the beef on my training days. I substitute one of my other meat sources from the non-training days. Every day I eat 7oz salmon, which I never replace, 6oz poultry, and another 3-4 oz of some other meat (needs to be around 120-150 calories, and 20-30g protein, preferably 25g. I might have the smaller protein source be 3oz X lean ground turkey, so I still get poultry, but then take out my 6oz salmon in place of 5oz lean ground beef, which has the 40g protein the chicken does (at about the same bioavailability), but more calories and fat, so it will bring up my daily calorie total with the carbs by about 450. So, if on non-training days my total is 3,600, on training days it becomes around 4,050. I'll add a bit more if I'm running after I workout. My runs are usually 4-6 km, which is enough to burn off several hundred calories in someone 200 lbs.



Edit: take out the 6oz chicken. The salmon I never take out.


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