The Dirty Bulking Craze
By Jacob Khabbazha
Contributor
With the rise of social media, diverse opinions that would not have received attention in the past are now captivating young and impressionable audiences. Unfortunately, the information can take a long time to fact-check, leading even adults to fall into the trap of misleading ideas, such as the so-called “dirty bulk diet.”
This new-age phenomenon of thinking that massively overeating will lead to a significant amount of muscle growth is downright wrong. Don’t get me wrong, in order to gain more size
you must be in a calorie surplus. This is because muscle growth is achieved when the muscle fibers are injured; once they heal, they get bigger and stronger. Most professionals, including myself, would recommend eating 100 to 400 calories for the peak amount of “gains” in order to increase lean muscle tissue (lean tissue refers to muscle tissue that has a low level of fat). However, oversupplying your body with calories will cause fat gain.
A lot of young lifters may think that this is perfect as your body will be able to pull from its fat stores to both fuel itself and potentially build muscle mass, but that would happen regardless, even at a small calorie surplus. Although no person of sane mind could make a compelling argument in opposition of a minor calorie addition. I can say this: the higher your body fat percentage is, the more your body produces estrogen, and the less your body produces testosterone, which then builds a lot less muscle. Also, higher body fat levels may induce anabolic resistance and impair muscle growth—anabolic resistance describes the reduced stimulation of muscle protein synthesis (muscle protein synthesis is the process of producing new muscle protein; the muscle protein components are the most important for muscle fiber).
Clearly, whoever is advocating for the “dirty bulk” diet has been dropped way too many times as a child because they’d rather listen to an unreliable source instead of the cold, hard facts, as it is proven that overeating leads to a lesser amount of muscle growth.