Bulking Sanity Check Please (with numbers)

Okay, so I finally got around to plotting my calculated LBM as measured by cheap calipers against my weight gain.

Do these numbers seem reasonable? The dotted lines are 21 day rolling averages; the points are measurements taken from the scale and the calipers.

It's a three site measurement so I don't expect it's 100% accurate, but I would hope the upward trend is at least reasonable. If I extend the graph backwards it shows my LBM more or less holding steady as I was cutting calories and keeping protein up so, again, that seems reasonable. If the measurement is inaccurate I think the inaccuracy is consistent.

The big green square is the start of the bulk.

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unknown

Seems pretty good so far. Are your lifting numbers going up? Was this bulk following a cut, or did you just start one from maintenance?

unknown

It was following a cut, where I kind of saw that a few more pounds weren't going to unearth any incredible muscles.

So I switched to a bulk.

All lifts are not increasingly consistently, but I am seeing slow progress here and there. I just came off of a deload week too; I never really felt like my lower back was recovering fully and I just kept hitting it.

I can do more dips and pull-ups than before so... I'll say yes, but slowly.

unknown

Keep in mind, you have just a month of data here, and bulking is a slow process compared to the relatively quick results one sees on a cut. If you did it right, you stopped your cut at 10-12% bf and it should take you a year or longer to get up to +20% (where the P-ratio kicks in hard and makes it difficult to gain lean mass as fast as you can at a lower bf%).

As long as you keep a log of your lifts, and follow basic overloading principles, you should be a-ok. Remember to make your cal bumps small when you take them also; 100 cals, never more than once every 4 weeks. Should keep the fat gains relatively low and let you bulk longer before you need to cut back down again.