Because of this new 6 months challenge I’m doing I figured I’d be best to get things started by eating healthy. As well as the training sessions of course. ‘Who can probably give good diet tips’ I thought. Every now and then I’ll have a little looks at Mike Thurston’s videos, he’s a fitness YouTuber that, in my opinion, seems quite normal and down to earth despite the exotic lifestyle he seems to live.

Obviously he has a good physique too. As luck would have it he recently posted a video showing exactly what he eats to get get in 3000 calories a day. With me being rather waif like right now that’s more calories than I would need but a great amount for bulking up a little.

The general idea is you bulk to help grow the muscle and then cut (usually nearer to the summertime) to shred the excessive fluff/fat. My plan was to copy what he ate in his day of eating video but to eat that same thing every day to make it more challenging. This is what what some might right refer to as a lean bulk. I’d be getting more calories than I need but all the right amount of protein fat and carbs to help build weight and mass.

I got to work. I was eating eggs at breakfast, salmon at lunch, beef teriyaki at dinner and rice cakes with lashings of peanut butter every single day. I’m sure someone like Greg Doucette would have a good rant about this being a terrible idea and I should have a varied diet. He did create a cookbook afterall. But where would the challenge be in that!? Who wants to watch me eat like a normal person everyday. Nobody I imagine.

So here you have it, my attempt at eating enough salmon to feed a small village. I certainly got sick of eating the same thing but surprisingly the eggs and salmon were still quite tasty by the end. It was only the beef teriyaki I was really tired off. It had started to taste like rubber. Not that I’ve tried eating tyres, but you can imagine.

The peanut butter rice cakes never got any less dryer either but I did cheat slightly half way through and switched to caramel rice cakes. That made a world of difference and made that challenge a lot more bearable if I’m honest.

As you can see from the end result in the video I put on both a slight bit of muscle and a slight bit fat, or maybe its water retention, it wouldn’t surprise me with all that rice. Two kilo’s I put on in 30 days. After a more scrutinous look at the before and after I’ve come to the conclusion that the change is actually barely noticeable on the video. It’s a bit disappointing really, especially for you, the viewer, but I’d rather we be realistic about what can be achieved than to start oiling myself up and flexing in some vain attempt to look better than I did. A lot of you tubers do this. I do still think it was a success though, and after all that healthy eating I think it’s time I got to indulge in some high protein junk food instead.

So as of tomorrow I’ll be eating KFC for the next two weeks. No half measures here. It’ll effectively put me in my ‘dirty bulking’ phase of the 6 month challenge, but it’s only for a fortnight. Then I’ll be back to bulking clean again.