Your Strongest Body

What To Do If You Feel Like You're "Bulking Up"

• Betsy Foster • Season 1 • Episode 53

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If you feel like your training is changing your body and not in the way you want it to, this episode is for you. In this episode I'm talking about "getting bulky" as a societal concept but also as something you might be experiencing. And if you feel like you are putting on muscle in ways you don't want, I have 3 common causes and what to do about it. As always, I offer perspective AND tactical solutions!

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Speaker 1:

You are listening to your Strongest Body. Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach. I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles, as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest. Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body. Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of your Strongest Body. I hope you're having a great week.

Speaker 1:

I want to talk today about the myth of bulking up and the realities of bulking up. What do I mean by that? Well, you probably have heard that sort of adage I want to lift or I want to train, but I don't want to get bulky and I know I've spoken about this on the podcast before. But this kind of concept or idea that building muscle makes you look bigger, you don't see definition, you don't look lean, and this concept of bulky as sort of a real negative. This is particularly pervasive in sort of the culture around women in exercise, women in lifting weights, and there's a lot to it. There's a lot to it first, starting with the sort of context around how we put these labels on women, as if there is some ideal body type versus a non-ideal body type, and that's an important thing to get off the bat right away. Whether or not this phenomenon is real, whether or not looking bigger because you have muscle is real, we have to understand that. At least our feelings about it are charged by this idea that is societally placed on us that women should be small, that the appeal of women is smaller, or that there is just a standard or an appeal to women in general, that there is a concept where whatever a woman's worth is is tied to how they look and specifically about how their bodies look, objectified as something to be looked at and to have opinions about with their body. Be looked at and to have opinions about with their body. So that's number one.

Speaker 1:

The challenge there is that we've got to understand that first. We've got to understand that our beliefs about this bulky idea come from a lot of different places. Now we also have to understand and what we want to talk about here is that growing muscles in size is going to make things bigger. There is literally a physiological response to training that is creating muscle hypertrophy, or muscle growth that can make someone appear to be larger. Now the idea that you know we've created this term around it bulky looking bulky. Why do some people look like they are bigger and their muscles take up more space, versus people who have a more lean figure and muscle definition? There are ways in which we can train and build muscle without focusing on losing body fat. That can actually just be about that. The goal is to bulk up. The goal is to grow in size, so some people may intentionally be training for that. Then there are folks who are trying to build muscle size while losing body fat and creating what many people call a more toned look or a more defined look. However you define this, we train differently for these different things.

Speaker 1:

But let's talk about why and how you, as an individual who is training to build muscle, might feel like you are bulking up. So the important part here is that I want to validate your feelings. You're the person who's looking in the mirror every day. You're the person who sees your reflection and you can tell whether or not your body is changing. And you may feel like your body is changing in a way where your muscles are looking larger and they're not looking larger in the way that you would like. We have to understand that our perception is reality, and our perception is shaped by lots of different things. Our perception is shaped by the light, it's shaped by the angle, it's shaped by our particular mood, our particular hormones that day. There is a lot going into it, but it doesn't mean that your feelings aren't real.

Speaker 1:

And there are cases and there are reasons why a person who is focused on building muscle and losing fat might be struggling to lose fat and might be putting on muscle really quickly, creating that look where the muscles are big, but you're not necessarily seeing definition. I hope that makes sense. So what I'm going to talk about are three common reasons why you might feel like you're bulking up and how to assess that, how to possibly change your strategy so that you can get the results that you want. All with the caveat of like, sometimes our mind plays tricks on us, sometimes our ideas about bodies are coming from other people versus us, but I also want you to know that you can do something about it. There are just certain things that we can't. There are certain things we can't change, but there are certain behaviors and strategies we can change. So, if you're starting to train, starting to focus on building muscle. The things that it takes are progressive overload, so you are increasing the difficulty and the load on the muscles so that they are growing in size, and then you are feeding yourself enough to help maintain or increase that growth.

Speaker 1:

What could be happening if you're feeling like you're bulking up? Number one you could have a genetic predisposition or just a general predisposition for being able to put on muscle one place faster than another. We all have different bodies. We all have different genetic makeups. When I am working with clients, the most common thing I see when people are having growth in one place and growth and not as fast growth in another is this sort of genetic predisposition for one place versus the other. And that makes a lot of sense. If we think about how all of our bodies are different and how they all look different and where our body shapes and sizes and the natural places where we store fat or muscle are that come from a long line of family members and cultures in front of us and before us, we can start to understand why, for some people, when we try to shape our bodies, they're not going to shape exactly the same way.

Speaker 1:

I think that is a concept that gets really misconstrued, particularly on the internet. Do these three exercises for these kinds of glutes. Well, your glutes might be shaped one way and that person might be shaped another way because you got different parents and you got different grandparents and you got different great-grandparents. We carry with us this genetic history, this genetic story that is going to shape our bodies. We can do a lot with training to change the shape of our bodies, but we can't change our genetics.

Speaker 1:

So you may have a genetic predisposition for putting on muscle faster in one place than another. I tend to see this either in like someone has a genetic predisposition to putting on muscle on their upper half, or someone has a genetic predisposition to being able to put muscle on on their lower body faster. Again, you kind of don't know this unless you've been observing your body pretty regularly or when you start training you see it. This is very, very probably the most common thing I see in terms of how people's body shapes are responding to training. Now, what do we do about that? If you are concerned about the way things are bulking in one place versus another, good question. What we would probably do working with a trainer or working with a coach or designing your own programs is, you might change the ratio of the exercises that you are doing. So, for example, if you are a person that puts on muscle quickly on your upper body, you might decrease the frequency that you train your upper body and increase the frequency that you train your lower body. Or vice versa, if you put on muscle very quickly on your lower body and you want a more balanced look, you might do less lower body and more upper body.

Speaker 1:

For a lot of us who have been trained or understand fitness in sort of a whole body, always balanced concept, this can be hard. You're like oh, I should be working all this, the exact same amount, and certainly for overall health. There are a lot of advantages to training everything pretty equally. If you're trying to change your body shape, there is great advantage to using your genetics as a guide to how much you should train one thing over the other. I'll give you a personal example. This is with a lot of clients as well, but for my own self, I have had such incredible speed and predisposition to putting on strength and muscle on my upper body and my lower body takes a lot longer. I do three to four lower body workouts and I do two upper body workouts per week. I'm still maintaining and growing in my upper body. That is just what is naturally my inclination, while I While it's not even it is helping me create the physique that I want by changing the ratio. That's very common in sort of like the bodybuilding space.

Speaker 1:

People who are like professional bodybuilders or who are trying to change their shape in a very targeted way will change the amount and the frequency and the difficulty that they train certain body parts or certain areas of the body. It's just up to you. You just probably want to, at the same time as sort of changing that ratio, also be aware that if you're training for health and you're training for vitality and energy, that you're getting at least some of that full body work in. Another thing that could be happening if you feel like you're bulking instead of sort of changing your shape in a more targeted way, is that if you are tracking calories, you could be poorly estimating. So there is this concept out there where somebody says you know, I'm in a deficit, I'm eating less calories, but I'm not losing anything, can be very difficult and the measuring and the weighing can be really time consuming and can run your mind ragged. So it isn't like it's not an admonishment of you, it's just saying that probably if you are tracking, you may be tracking incorrectly, because if you are truly in enough of a deficit, you will see that change.

Speaker 1:

So what we tend to look at is where are the places we're missing things? Are we missing little condiments here or there? Are we not eyeballing things well and could probably use a more accurate scale? Again, that's up to you whether or not you want to take that on. For me and for a lot of my clients who aren't training to compete in a physique competition, I'm telling them to just generally track so that it doesn't cause stress. But you might be unknowingly poorly tracking or underestimating, and that can be a place where, if you're training well and you're eating, but you're eating a little bit more than you intend to you could be adding a lot of muscle and it could give you that sort of bulky feeling. That's the second one, and the third way in which you could probably be seeing some added bulk that you didn't intend to is that in changing your training to especially if you've just switched to a more hypertrophy style training, you may have cut out some of the calorie burn that you've been doing it. So if you've replaced those workouts for your cardio or you're just generally moving less, you could be burning less calories. Now I'm not saying I want you to go do hours of cardio. I just want you to notice that you might have changed your activity level and if you want to continue to train the way you're training, you might need to increase your daily movement. So increase your step count or increase some cardio in there low-intensity cardio, if you can fit it in.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes we don't realize that when we swap a workout for a high-intensity workout, for a strength training workout, we're getting a ton out of our strength workout and it's doing what we want for our muscles, but the general calorie burn of the workout might be less and so you might be burning less calories than you think and so your tracking is a little off. That could be a place where you are missing something and you're putting on a little bit more size than you intend. Again, if you want to put on size, these are the things that you could do to make that happen if you wanted. If you wanted, you could increase your calories, you could decrease your cardio, but if you're not trying to put on size and you're trying to build muscle and simultaneously lose body fat or change your physique, creating you know a lot of people call it toning or something like that. If that's the look and I don't mean to impose that on you, I'm just saying if that's what you're looking for a lot of people are looking for that Then we want to look at that genetic predisposition and shift our program to put more emphasis on the places that we want to grow and pull back on the places that are growing quickly.

Speaker 1:

We want to track calories as accurately as possible. So look at the places in which your measurements may be a little off and then make sure that you're getting that movement in and that you haven't cut out your regular daily movement or you haven't reduced your movement and your cardio to the point where you're not burning as many calories as you want. Those are some of the places. As always, I encourage you to take a step back in any of these scenarios. Try to measure your progress in a lot of different ways and realize that again, our ideas about our body are deeply influenced by societal ideas, and this fear of bulking is both valid and I hear you and it's also created by an industry trying to keep you small. So see if you can kind of think through that and then use these strategies. It's very possible that you could have something where you're building a little muscle, more muscle than you want, or you're not losing the fat you want, and we're going to use the strategies that I just mentioned.

Speaker 1:

Okay, if you have questions about this or anything else, you can always email me, betsy at BeFosterStrongcom, that's the letter B, FosterStrongcom. You can send me an Instagram DM at Foster underscore strength, or you can just call out into the sky and maybe I'll fly there. You can just call out into the sky and maybe I'll fly there. I guess I want to encourage you. If this is helpful for you, if you're learning something, I would love it. If you shared the podcast, you can send it to a friend, you can share it on social media and you know that on Apple Podcasts you can scroll down and leave a rating or review. Okay, until next time, go build your strongest body and I'll talk to you later. Bye.