used to religiously get down 5000 cals everyday when i first started gear. after several months i was big and thick but didn't look good. haven't gone above 3500 (guestimate) for years, bigger now than back then.
up the dose (within reason, growing into it) cycle calories, no need to go above 3500 for most believe it or not, see the results.
good tips from Zack Khan:
- Bulking-up diet programs won’t produce any more muscle growth than ingesting an ideal amount of nutrients. Sorry, but it’s simply not possible to force additional muscle growth by overfeeding. work with your body not against it mofo's (if your phoo is not solid then you are not digesting your nutrients properly)..
- Bulking up develops insulin resistance, which makes it harder in the long run to gain muscle. What happens when you bulk up is that carbohydrates will go preferentially to fat stores, not to muscle tissue nah am saying... if you don't am sorry lool..
- Bulking up will make it harder for you to get leaner because insulin resistance is hard to reverse. The fatter you get, the harder it becomes to get lean. Female bodybuilders learn this fact quickly, as it is considerably harder for women to reach the low body-fat levels required for competition. So ladies don't get too much junk on your trunk!!!
- The fatter you get the uglier you get, the more aromatase enzyme your body will produce. In the extreme terms, getting fat could be considered a form of self-castration, as your own testosterone will be converted into the female hormone estrogen and you will suffer many unwanted side effects. If you’re a man and you enjoy wearing a bra, go right ahead and get fatter.
- The lower your percentage of body fat, the better your body becomes at nutrient partitioning. This means individuals with low body fat are more effective at storing the ingested nutrients in the muscle (as muscle tissue or glycogen) or in the liver (as glycogen) and less effective at storing nutrients as body fat. To put it in simpler terms, leaner individuals can eat more nutrients without gaining fat.