Bulking Diet Plan: How to Set One Up

Step 2: Choose your surplus

A 2019 review of nutrition for natural bodybuilders in the off-season, by Iraki and colleagues in Sports, recommends that beginners and intermediates gain about 0.25 to 0.5% of body weight a week, with a surplus of about 10 to 20% above maintenance, and that advanced lifters use a smaller surplus.

A more recent study suggests a smaller surplus is usually enough. In a 2023 study by Helms and colleagues in Sports Medicine - Open, trained lifters spent 8 weeks lifting 3 days a week while eating at maintenance, with a 5% surplus or with a 15% surplus. Muscle growth was similar across the groups, but the faster people gained weight, the more their skinfolds (a measure of body fat) went up. The biggest surplus did help bench press strength. The study was small, with 17 people finishing, but it fits the wider picture: past a modest surplus, extra food mostly becomes fat.

So start small: about 5 to 10% above maintenance. For someone with a maintenance of 2,800 calories, that is about 2,940 to 3,080 calories a day. Starting near 3,000 leaves room to add more if you gain too slowly, and it is easier to eat.

Then let your rate of gain decide. Lean bulk: how fast should you gain weight? suggests about 1 to 1.5% of body weight a month for beginners, 0.5 to 1% for intermediates and up to 0.5% for advanced lifters. The review's 0.25 to 0.5% a week works out at roughly 1 to 2% a month, so these targets sit at its cautious end for beginners and below it for intermediates, to keep fat gain down.

Step 3: Set your bulking macros

Calories decide whether you gain. Macros decide how well that gain supports your training.

• Protein: 1.6 to 2.2 g per kg a day. A 2018 meta-analysis of 49 studies by Morton and colleagues in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found the benefit for muscle gain levelled off at about 1.6 g/kg, with 2.2 g/kg as a sensible upper end. The Iraki review gives the same range. The free protein calculator works out your number.
• Fat: about 0.5 to 1.5 g per kg a day (Iraki and colleagues).
• Carbohydrate: the rest, aiming for at least 3 to 5 g per kg a day to fuel your training (Iraki and colleagues). On a bulk, most of the extra calories usually come from here.

Protein and carbohydrate have about 4 calories per gram and fat about 9 (NHS figures). Here is the example for an 80 kg (176 lb) lifter eating 3,000 calories:

	Grams	Calories
Protein (2 g per kg)	160 g	640
Fat (1 g per kg)	80 g	720
Carbohydrate (the rest)	410 g	1,640
Total		3,000

That is about 5 g of carbohydrate per kg, which meets the review's minimum, and fat at about a quarter of calories, the same share the free calculator uses.

Step 4: Structure your meals

The Iraki review recommends spreading protein evenly over 3 to 6 meals, with about 0.40 to 0.55 g of protein per kg in each, with protein in the 1 to 2 hours before and after training. For an 80 kg lifter, that is about 32 to 44 g of protein a meal.

In practice:

• Build every meal around a protein, then add carbohydrate, fruit or vegetables and a little fat.
• Put more of your carbohydrate around training, where it fuels your sessions.
• Use easy calories when appetite runs out: milk, oats, rice, bread, nut butter, olive oil and dried fruit add calories without much bulk.
• Keep meals repeatable. A handful of meals you can make on autopilot beats a new recipe every day.

A sample bulking diet plan

For the 80 kg lifter above, eating about 3,000 calories:

Meal	What
Breakfast	Porridge made with milk, a banana, a scoop of whey and a spoonful of peanut butter
Lunch	Two chicken wraps with salad and cheese, a piece of fruit and a yoghurt
Before training	Bagel with honey, or rice cakes and a banana
After training	Lean beef mince, rice and vegetables cooked in olive oil
Evening	Greek yoghurt with granola and berries, or cottage cheese on toast

Adjust portions to your own targets. Weigh and log your food for the first two or three weeks so you learn what your numbers look like on a plate.

How to adjust when the scale moves too fast or too slow

Weigh yourself every morning, after the toilet and before eating, and compare weekly averages, not single days. Daily weight swings for reasons that have nothing to do with muscle or fat: see how to read the scale.

For an 80 kg (176 lb) beginner, 1 to 1.5% a month is about 0.8 to 1.2 kg (1.75 to 2.6 lb), or roughly 0.2 to 0.3 kg (0.4 to 0.6 lb) a week. After two to three weeks, compare your trend with your target:

Your weekly average	What to do
Rising within the target	Change nothing
Rising faster than the target	Lower calories slightly, mostly from carbohydrate or fat
Rising slower than the target, or flat	Raise calories slightly, mostly from carbohydrate or fat

Make small changes. Add or remove about 100 to 200 calories a day, roughly a small snack, so you can see the effect, then give it another two to three weeks.

Expect a jump at the start. In the first week or two, more food and more carbohydrate add some weight that is not muscle or fat. Judge the trend after that.

Expect to eat more over time. As you get heavier, your maintenance rises, so a long bulk usually needs small increases along the way.

Signs your bulk needs more than a calorie change

• Your weight is rising but your lifts are not. The surplus needs a reason to become muscle. Check that your training gets harder over time.
• Your waist is rising quickly while your arms, chest and legs barely change. Slow the rate of gain.
• You feel sluggish and bloated or you are forcing down food. Make more of your calories easier to eat, or slow the rate.
• You are less lean than you are comfortable with. That is often the point to end the bulk and run a short fat loss phase.

Where coaching helps

Setting up a bulking diet plan takes an afternoon. Sticking to it for months, reading noisy weight data and making the right small change at the right time is the hard part.

With one-to-one coaching from CoachAk, your calorie and macro targets and your training program are in the app, and they are updated as your body responds. You log your weight daily and see a smoothed trend. Each week you send a check-in covering your weight, training and nutrition adherence, hunger, energy and more, with optional progress photos compared side by side. Your coach replies with written feedback explaining what changes next week and why.

If you want to build muscle without guessing, apply for coaching.