Realistic Rate of Weight Gain During a Bulk

In this internet age, setting realistic fitness goals has become more challenging than ever before. Posts and ads scream about intense 30-day challenges and extreme results.

However, what you see online or in other media doesn’t always represent real results. There are smoke and mirrors in the form of angles, lighting, and straight-up photoshopped forgery.

So, tightening your grasp on reality is imperative to create a practical plan to achieve the desired results. That’s why I will share how much weight and muscle you can expect to gain on a bulk.

First, it’s essential to understand that once you’re through the “newbie gains” phase, significant growth in muscle takes a long time. In other words, don’t expect to pack on 30 pounds of lean mass in a matter of months.

So, what is a reasonable rate of weight gain during a bulk? And how much of that weight is muscle versus water and fat?

Well, as with weight loss, it’s common to see a big jump on the scale when you start a new diet or training routine. However, fast changes are usually the result of increased glycogen stored within your muscles and water.

Specifically, the typical adult can store a few hundred grams of glycogen within the skeletal muscles and the liver. And every gram of glycogen takes with it a few grams of water.

Therefore, you could theoretically gain 5-10 pounds of “lean mass” simply by altering your carbohydrate intake and hydration level. I’ve experienced fluctuations of this magnitude within a week of carb depletion and reloading.

As a result, we must distinguish between this fluff weight and actual lean muscle weight. One way to do this is with body composition measurements such as electrical impedance or body fat calipers. However, these methods are not 100% accurate either.

When your diet is more stable, it’s easier to see the subtle changes in lean mass. Also, weighing yourself multiple times each week and taking an average helps to filter out non-muscle weight variation.

By applying those practices, I’ve found that the actual rate of muscle gain for an experienced lifter is generally in the range of 2 to 3 pounds per month or 0.5 to 0.7 pounds per week. Those may look like small numbers, but they can add up over time.

	Per Week	Per Month
Muscle	0.5-0.7 lbs	2-3 lbs
Fat	0.25-0.7 lbs	1-3 lbs
Body Weight	0.75-1.5 lbs	3-6 lbs

For instance, extrapolating the average monthly rate of 2.5 lbs over a year adds up to 30 pounds of muscle. Of course, your ability to achieve this depends on your experience level and adherence to an effective diet and training routine.

In my recent bulk, I set a fairly aggressive goal of gaining 8 pounds of total body weight in 8 weeks. But I came up a little short and only gained 6.4 lbs.

One reason is that I refused to overreact to the scale and increase my calorie intake to more than a 20% surplus. What I learned from this experiment is that I should set my goals based on an average rate of 0.6 lbs/week.