The common misconceptions about bulking, challenging the “calories in, calories out” theory. The emphasis is on the importance of macronutrient balance over merely increasing calorie intake. Examples like chocolate milk, Snickers, and sugary oatmeal are used to demonstrate how poor dietary choices can lead to fat gain rather than muscle development. The key to effective bulking lies in prioritizing protein intake, sleep, and well-structured workout routines to maximize muscle growth.

Drawing from personal experience, the discussion highlights how muscle can be gained with minimal calorie intake by focusing on recovery, nutrient absorption, and understanding body chemistry. The approach to bulking is reframed to go beyond calorie counting, emphasizing the significance of recovery, oxygen levels, and essential nutrients like leucine and isoleucine for achieving optimal muscle growth.

Highlights of the Podcast

01:22 – Calories In, Calories Out Debate

02:52 – The Chocolate Milk Myth

04:15 – The Snickers and Oatmeal Examples

05:25 – Bodybuilders and Bulking Cycles

06:34 – Gaining Muscle with Minimal Calories

07:39 – Importance of Macronutrients and Sleep

09:39 – Optimizing Oxygen and Nutrient Intake

10:35 – Recovery Over Caloric Intake

13:11 – Debunking the Calorie System

14:25 – Conclusion and Invitation for Further Questions

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So let’s talk about Balkan. So before we get into this, I have a question for you guys that I want you to think the first thing that comes to your mind. Think about that. So I had a patient in two dimensions, basically ten age, both guys. They’re trying to bulk one increase. They’re not carrying one. Increased his calories by about 2000 calories a day by eating extra Snickers because they’re packed with peanuts. The other one increased about 1800 calories. So close to 2000. Eating more thick. Now, in the six months they did this. Every day in six months. Which one do you think? Do you think they have the same body changes? Do you think they look the same? Do you think they felt the family think they had the same muscle mass gain? I think they looked exactly the same. If you said forget, we have a lot longer conversation now. If you said no, then you you understand kind of the concept of what’s going on. Let me walk through this. The calories in, calories out thing is trash. And we really shouldn’t we surely shouldn’t go with it. And that question just proves it because 2000 calories is not 2000 calories. You’re like, well, there’s a lot of sugar in trash and Snickers. You shouldn’t eat that. You should eat say, right, well, there’s two amount of calories. So that’s the calories thing. Then they would have been just fine. But if the macro thing and that’s actually what matters, how much sugar, how much protein, how much fat.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:22] Like if you think if that really was matters. Well, then we have to start looking at the macros, which has been my point the entire time. So let me walk you through some things that I thought were hilarious. I’ve seen come up over and over and over again. These are just some of the more, silly ones I’ve seen. So for a while, and I don’t know if it’s still a thing, but for a while people thought the best thing to drink after they worked out was chocolate milk. And I don’t know where this insanity started. Probably with some milk company. But if the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. So had a guy who was trying to bolt and he wanted, he was like, so I was drinking more chocolate milk. And I’m like, all right. I’m like, how much was like half a gallon today? Okay. So in fact, let me just put this that he was a fatty, like he, he gained like 12 pounds, but it was all fat. So let’s walk through that. Yeah. Chocolate milk, 24g of sugar per cup, half a gallon a day is eight cups. The top 192g of sugar he’s added into his body now. Yeah, I mean, there’s protein in it. There’s eight grams of protein. So, you know, eight times a day to 64. So he’s eating 64g of protein which you can get with you know the easiest body. Those with smoked turkey smoked turkey breast the best thing you can either I’m a big fan or eggs. But anyway. So we got 64g of protein today, but he got damn near 200g of sugar hypoglycemic sugar every day. And he was like, I don’t understand why this gain muscle. Well, because the macros are screwed.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:52] Yes, you increase your calories. You know, I think I think an extra that alone’s actually like 1500 calories because chocolate milk is about 200 calories per cup. So yeah, he increases calories. Good job. But he just got fat. Created a bunch of sugar. So okay. The thicker thing was a real deal. I had somebody who did that. I have, I swear to God. Like, when he told me, I thought he was nuts. I’m like. And he was like, I don’t get it. And I was like, you eat Snickers. He was like, it’s kind of like peanuts in a piece of protein. He’s like, I need the calories. I need the protein. I thought it was the best thing to do because they’re delicious. I was like, all right. I see people eating bars all the time. Okay. All right. I had a guy who, increased because he. He liked. He liked oatmeal. And he got really fat on it. And I’m like, walk me through this. And I was like, tell me about your oatmeal. So I was leaving instant oatmeal, which has the highest price limit function. And he would put sugar in it and cinnamon because, you know, sugar in him and make everything better. And he’s bulking, so it doesn’t matter, right? And I was like, how much sugar? He was like a spoonful. Well, here’s the thing. You have to understand when you say a spoonful what it is. And I was like, for the same thing you eat like cereal with me is like, yeah, that’s a tablespoon. So he was adding a tablespoon of sugar to his his hi guys.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:15] To make oatmeal that he would eat a lot of every day. And he got that he didn’t understand why. Again, when we’re trying to bulk, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to put on muscle mass, right. Okay. So the idea of the calorie deficit, calorie surplus is, again, if we go to calories, what you need is you need the chemicals your body requires to repair regenerate tissue. The reason why bodybuilders have to go on a bulking and cutting cycle is because they’re based on calories. What ends up happening is that they cut. They’re still taking in their carbohydrates. They’re catching their proteins, but they’re taking a lot less of it. And so what ends up happening is that at the end of the day, you’re just taking on giant amounts of fat. So that’s the problem. So if you’re if you’re cutting all your stuff, what is happening is that you lose a lot of muscle tissue as you’re losing fat. So that that’s why they cut down. They’re like, I put my muscle tissue back on. So I’ll just take that same idea, that waffle, this muscle mass and some fat, and I’ll just radically increase it, and then I’ll get all the stuff back. All right. Or you can just figure out what makes muscles grow and not make fat go away. From a macro standpoint, from a chemistry standpoint, that’ll be just fine.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:25] I gained the most amount of muscle I have ever gained in my entire life, eating once every 48 hours. I didn’t ever figure it out, but I think the calories on that was about. 1800 to 2020 100 for every two days and you’re like, whoa, left. No wonder you lost all the fat. You know, because I was a calorie deficit, I gained substantial amounts of muscle. I literally swapped fat for muscle. That’s good for a month. So I was about 30 pounds. And so because I was eating giant amounts of protein, I had my testosterone. What we’re supposed to be I was taking giant off of collagen, which is about what the body needs to actually grow and regenerate and heal and that type of thing. And so I was getting the chemicals my body needed and my body was getting all the ATP, which is what the body actually runs on from lipolysis, which is a breakdown of fat. Your body, your body makes energy two ways. Glycolysis is breakdown of sugars, and lipolysis, which is breakdown of fat, and so that the only way to do it. So if you’re feeding your body with two sugars and you exceed the amount of sugar everybody needs in a day, it’s source of sugars of fat, it can later come back and use that fat to produce sugar again because your body runs on sugar.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:34] So that’s I’ve gone over the chemistry of it over and over again. So that brief, brief, brief overview, but that’s what’s going on. So if you’re trying to bulk, what you need to do is focus on your amino acids. So your proteins, and you need to focus on your sleep. You need to focus on your workout. You need to focus on your your androgens, your to satisfy. That’s the thing you need to focus on getting the weight out of your body and give you body all the nutrients it requires to properly move along that path. So you got to recognize that you’re gonna be producing a lot more lactic acid, which is why if you’re in ketosis or you’re too fat. Actually, I think it works much, much better because your body uses lactate for her, lactic acid for he goes through the core cycle making more ATP through putting in generate more function so it’ll generate more energy. So you can build more muscle tissue off the lactic acid that your body is producing as a waste product. Your body, your body recycles everything. So that’s a great way to do it. However, you’ve got to get yourself into that. In that functional state, the recovery piece is much, much, much more important. And then you’ve got to change your workout. You got to go to failure every single time.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:39] You’ve got to. You got to live in failure. If you really want to gain muscle tissue, you’ve got to drop all your weights down. You got to drop your ego first, and then you got to recognize that my goal is to exhaust the muscle. I’ve got to tear it completely down. I have to be able to walk out of the gym and not be able to use that, that part of my body again. So if you do leg day and you can walk down stairs ten minutes after you did it, you didn’t do it like that, right? So if you if you did a really good arm day and you can go jump in the car and drive home, you didn’t do arm day right. You should not be able to use that that appendage for a while, or that leg or that AB or whatever it is for 20, 30 minutes. And then it could, you know, slowly start getting back, but you didn’t have to feed that properly. And I’m not talking about calories again. It’s do we have the required nutrients to produce ATP? Guess what? If you’re in a fat actualizing state, you have all the fat you’re going to need. So don’t worry about ATP. Which is why when you’re bulking, it’s best to get into a fat oxidizing stage rather than live on carbohydrates.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:34] But again, that’s not that’s not true for every single person. But for most people, moving into that state is going to be more beneficial because of the just the way your body’s chemistry set up. Again, not for everybody, but for a lot of you, about 70% of it. So that can be more beneficial right now. Where’s your oxygen at night? Where’s your methylated B vitamins? You know, are you taking in all the amino acids you need specifically the brain’s changed. So the reason why whey protein and p protein are the two that are used the very most is because they’re the highest concentration of loosing. Leucine is the amino acid that produces muscle protein synthesis. It’s a branch chain amino acid. The other branched amino acid that I love is ISO leucine. ISO leucine helps do what gets nutrients into the tissue. Well, if it’s sitting out in your interstitial fluid or in your gut doesn’t help you much. You got to get it into the tissue that’s actually trying to regenerate and heal. So I think leucine helps you with that. So getting your branch changed in is gonna be another big piece. You know what else your body needs desperately. Oxygen. So okay great. Like when you’re asleep. Where’s your oxygen. Because I, we do sleep studies. You know, 100 is a lot better than 95.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:39] You’re like, oh, it’s pretty close. Fine. Be pretty close. You know, get three sets instead of four. You know, get 60% of the way there every time. Have a nice time with that. So little things like that. But they all add up. So if you’re trying to bulk, which you’re basically trying to do, is you’re saying, I need to focus on my recovery more than anything, so I need to get in bed. It it’s just a big time. I need to make sure I get all of my sleep. I need to get that sleep at the same time every night. I need to wake up. I’m just saying the parasympathetic state. I need to make sure that when I’m eating, I’m digesting all that food properly. So we’re going to talk about digestive enzymes. We’re going to talk about methylated B6 because you’re consuming more fat. If we multiply that fat with bile, bile requires methylated B6 the same suspension. So you know CoQ10 because you got to help make these ATP, right. Going to make the ATP to generate the function to grow the muscle tissue. So there’s lots of little things that you guys need to put in there. You need to focus on your recovery not your calories. Because what are we.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:35] We’re trying to build muscle tissue. What? Build muscle tissue recovery fast. And so you got to make sure that you’ve got all the chemicals you need throwing with your sugar in the system, especially just like high glycemic sugar. As you create inflammation you’ll hold a lot more water. But what’s going to happen is because of that inflammation you’re going to do, you’re going to just throttle back on the generation of anything in your body fat. And so it’s going to have happening is that this bulk you’re on because you’re consuming all these sugars and all these things are counterproductive. Or if you’re sensitive to it like, like that’s the other big pieces that get tested for your food sensitivities. Like, like, oh, I’m just eating meat. Yeah. I have a lot of people who have high sensitivity to meat and don’t know it. So we’ll test them or reset them. They’re fine. But this is about recovery. Bulking is about recovery. So you’ve got to make sure that your sleep is perfect. Your oxygen is perfect. Your nutrient intake is perfect. You’re you’re lifting is perfect. Like that how you bulk. You don’t just eat a bunch of, you know, empty, stupid sugar calories. So and I think this all the time me like, oh, right. I doubled my calories so I could gain more muscle tissue. Really? That you thought that was that? That’s all you gotta do. There’s just oh, no calorie surplus that has that up over here. No, it’s not it’s not like you got to feed it, but you have to feed it to the actual chemicals it needs the amino acids it needs.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:53] You’ve got to make sure that it has the ATP to function through. Now the cool thing about and again, you don’t have to be in a fat oxidizing state or in ketosis or whatever to grow muscle tissue. The reason I think it’s easier is because if you’re in a glucose fed faith and you start to lose glucose, what ends up happening is that you start tipping off, tipping off, tipping off, tipping off until you get to a point where you’re not producing enough ATP in the pancreas for, glycolytic ATP. And then when is that happening? Because your body recognizes that and it shuts off taking in more glucose. And then it’s to parents help produces glucagon. And then we go back through the the look at your juices and refill the, the sugars delivers holding on to. And so your body’s still running on that stuff. If you move into a fat oxidizing state where your body’s constantly burning a fuel source of fat, it never dips. Why? Because you have lots of fat. And so it’ll just run on that. And so it’s it’s a 5 or 10% type of bonus thing. But when you’re trying to gain muscle tissue, you want every little advantage you can get. And so that’s why I recommend that one. Now if you’re trying to run and do endurance sports and things like that, you’re most likely going to have to have more carbohydrates because that’s more of a type one muscle tissue thing. But if you’re trying to gain muscle tissue regardless, then it depending on the person.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:11] Like I said, I just went for a ride, but it’s not the best thing for everybody. But being a fat actually is in fact oftentimes the best way to go. So even fasting like I did to make to maintain that fat actually state, will grow muscle tissue faster than eating a bunch of sugar. So, you know, if you guys were really kind of trying to figure out how do we put on muscle tissue, that’s how you’ve got to abandon the calories thing because it doesn’t allow for chemistry. I believe the calorie system, just like the BMI system, was designed to confuse people, so they couldn’t actually functionally do what they wanted to with their body, and they had to go take drugs for. That kind of awareness. There’s a lot of things I think we’re lied to about so that we didn’t know how the body works. So we had to go ask somebody else. And so thrilled that power and control over us. But that’s kind of where it is. So, so that’s what’s going on with that. If you guys have any other questions, here’s the questions at Thomas Qualcomm. If you’ve been having struggles with this, call the office. And we can put you through a program that actually, you know do this stuff properly. So we have a lot of chemistry this week I think we’re talking about something. We’re talking we’re talking about first thing that it oh, there was a quick little something else we’re to do. Anyway, I’ll talk to you guys later. Have a nice day. Thanks for your time.

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