Why Bulking to Gain Muscle Is One of the Biggest Mistakes I’ve Ever Made
By: Samuel Roberts
Tags: Fitness, Health, Weight Loss, Body Image, Mental Health

Why Bulking to Gain Muscle Is One of the Biggest Mistakes I’ve Ever Made

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Coming out of High School at 18 and getting ready to go to University a bit over four years ago, all I wanted to do was get huge. The week before moving, I had just finished my first ‘cut’, losing around 15 pounds — I wanted to be ripped for my first university experience… naturally.

Like every other 18-year-old in the gym, I wanted to look like Arnold — well, maybe kids today want to look like someone from social media but still, you get the point. I wanted to be the most jacked kid known to man. That was my first mistake; I was a kid — gaining muscle shouldn’t have been the main focus of my life.

The thing is with 18-year-olds (and most adults too), they’re ignorant. Whatever they see someone they want to be like do, they usually do it too expecting the same results. That’s exactly what I did. Great critical thinking, Sam. Fantastic.

Unbeknownst to me, I was already pretty dang muscular. I had been lifting for over four years at that point and had arms bigger than the vast majority of guys at the gym who’d been working out for well into double digits. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right? Well, I was under the impression it was broken.

Why

Why did I think it was broken? I believe there were two main reasons to blame: natural insecurity and social media.

There’s this theory in the bodybuilding world called bigorexia. It essentially means that no matter how big, muscular, or fit you are, you’ll never think you’re big, muscular, or fit enough. There’s a great graphic/comic usually associated with it that shows a massive, muscular bodybuilder looking in the mirror and seeing himself with the body of a skinny teenager; it’s maybe not as severe for most people, but that’s bigorexia in a nutshell.

If that was a problem before social media, imagine it now. You have kids and adults jacked up on steroids (not all of them) with hundreds of thousands of followers setting insanely unrealistic expectations for other kids and adults who think they should look just like them at the same age. What people don’t realize is the amount of time, dedication, and commitment it takes to reach those expectations. Don’t forget the drugs, angles, lighting, and filters too. They see these fitness influencers show off their lives like they’re in a fairy tale and think getting jacked is the answer to all of their problems. Reality check. It’s not.

I saw these rich, famous, attractive people promoting constant bulking and cutting by getting massive in the winter and shredding down for the summer. So naturally, as a kid who didn’t know any better and wanted to live like them, that’s exactly what I did; except I took it to the extreme. Whoops.

If a kid from rural Canada who wasn’t insanely into social media could fall into this trap, imagine the number of people worldwide who do. I know, right? Yikes.

This was my transformation from 13–18. Pretty impressive right? It wasn’t impressive enough for me. I needed (or felt like I needed) more.

What happened

Put yourself into 18-year-old me’s shoes.

You walk into the dining hall for the first time in frosh week and what do you see? Unlimited pizza, chocolate milk, sweets, ice cream, you name it. So what do you do? You stuff your face every day for my entire freshman year and completely avoid cardio under the excuse of “oh, I’m bulking“ and gain over 40 pounds. That was my excuse for being undisciplined, lazy, and living like a slob. I’m bulking.

Yes, it was what people in the industry would refer to as a dirty bulk, but I didn’t call it that.

Oh, yeah, by the way. You read that right. FORTY. POUNDS.

Do you know what I thought? Most of it is muscle. Yep, I really did.

Guess what? It wasn’t. It definitely wasn’t. Most of it was fat and water. Don’t get me wrong, I became much stronger and did gain a good amount of muscle. But was it worth it? Not a bloody chance.

I was in so deep and so focused on my progress in the gym I didn’t notice just how drastically I changed, and not for the better. I genuinely believed I was a ball of muscle and not a ball of water and fat with some muscle hiding somewhere underneath. Hindsight is a beautiful thing.

Here’s what I learned:

My freshman year transformation. September 2016 vs July 2017. Around 10 months. 175lbs vs nearly 220. 18 vs 19. It was radical, I’m not exaggerating.

Put your actual health, both mental and physical, first

In what picture above do you think I was healthier, the before or after? At 175lbs or 220lbs? Please don’t tell me you said the after.

Physical health

Well, I was eating like crap so my body undeniably wasn’t functioning at its full capacity. I was eating pizza more days than not. I wasn’t taking my vitamins. I wasn’t going out of my way to eat vegetables. I wasn’t doing cardio. I was more or less a mess.

At that size, moving freely isn’t the easiest. You feel lethargic and sluggish. Your cardiovascular system is non-existent; you get winded much more easily than I’d like to admit. And, at least in my case, I was much less appealing to the eye. My face was puffy and round and my muscles were balloons; I looked like a real-life incarnation of the Michelin man. It wasn’t ideal. But hey I was bulking so it was okay, I had an excuse!

In my opinion, I looked incomparably better before than I did after. Of course, looks aren’t everything, but it for sure harmed other aspects of my life too.

Mental health

At the time it wasn’t very evident but looking back, I wasn’t great. I stayed in my room a lot playing video games and being isolated. I didn’t socialize as much as, in hindsight, I should have. All I really did was go to class, go to the gym, study, play video games, and eat. At least my grades flourished and I got good at FIFA!

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Except I lost out on a lot of external opportunities, whether it be social, professional, or otherwise. I was so trapped in my own little bubble and focused on the short term that I lost sight of the person I wanted to be in the long term. Bodybuilding took over my life instead of improving it — that’s where I went wrong.

The gym, fitness, whatever activity it may be — are there to improve your life, not control it. They are meant to be positive. They are meant to aid in your physical and mental well-being. This is what I lost track of.

Additionally, because of some of the insecurities I developed being in that shape, and thanks to the influences of social media and some people around me — I compensated. It could have gone many ways, but I fell into the keeping up with the Jones’ trap. I saw my friends, peers, and people on social media showing off these expensive things and making it seem like they were the answer to being happy. Obviously, they weren’t. But I fell into it anyway.

And lone behold to my avail — it didn’t do squat. If anything, it made my mental state worse.

Oh well, it happened. Live and learn.

So?

So. I did all of that to gain an extra few pounds of muscle that I very likely lost because I had to diet for so long to lose the accompanying fat. I sacrificed the very things going to the gym was meant to improve for superficiality.

Do you know what the worst part (at least in my opinion) is? I repeated this almost exact cycle two more times in my second and third years. After my first year, I lost around 20 pounds in the summer, bringing myself down to 200. Can you guess what I did when I went back to school? I got even bigger than I did the year before, reaching a peak weight of 225 all to drop back down again in the summer. Third-year was a bit less over-the-top, but I still ‘bulked’ and ‘cut’. I made the same mistake multiple times, expecting the same results. Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

Minor bulks and cuts are fine but please, please don’t take it to the extreme like me. If you know anyone who’s thinking about it or is currently caught in the cycle, for their sake inform them it may not be worth it — much healthier alternatives are available. Maingaining and lean bulking are both great options that in my experience, yield a much greater overall ROI.

August 2018 vs August 2020. 20 vs 22. 225lbs vs 175lbs. On the right, I’m the same weight as I was when I was 18. Crazy.

Now

Thankfully this last year I finally learned my lesson. My mindset changed. I had gotten down to around 190 in the summer between my third and fourth year in 2019 and I was determined not to make the same mistake again. Why the change? I got compliments when I was at that weight. I went out and people would ask if I lost weight and say how much better they thought I looked, at least that’s how I interpreted it. It’s crazy what a little bit of self-confidence can do.

After I finished school and COVID started, I made a decision. I was going to get in the best shape of my life.

I lost nearly 30 pounds from March to July. I went from 200 to as low as 173 — lighter than I was when I was 18 but leaner, much stronger, and much more muscular.

The thing is, now — I’m making just as good if not better strength and muscle gains by maintaining my body fat than I was by stuffing my face and walking around like the Michelin man. Crazy how that works, huh. Good times.

Find balance. Be healthy. Enjoy your life.