Should Women Bulk? The Mindset of Gaining Weight on Purpose

Nikkiey: Was that the picture from 2016 where you were 126 pounds to 2023 where you were 142 pounds?

Amber: Yeah. So I went through some phases, but the 126 was when I was my leanest, when I had my six pack. And then, like you said, I cut down and there actually wasn't a lot of muscle there. I realized I needed to add the muscle. So then I did end up going into a bulk. I think that was probably 2017, 2018, when I did my powerlifting competition and really added.

I went from 126 to like 147, 148 and really did it. And then I was able to cut back down so that I could get into my weight class for my powerlifting competition. Bulks are hard mentally and physically, but they're awesome.

Nikkiey: There are all the things right there that I want to unpack. There are two things mainly. One, I want to get to the scale in a second, because obviously I have a very similar story. I was 140, dropped down to 120, and now I weigh 155. So I want to talk about that number with you.

But first, let's talk about that mindset, because I know a lot of women in the community that I have, WarriorBabe, where we teach bulking. But we teach it in the sense that it is a mental game that you're going to go through. If you want to build muscle and you have a smaller frame, jumpstart, accelerate results. Put yourself in that phase for a little bit so you can build muscle at an optimal rate. So talk to me about that mindset that you had to endure while you went through that.

Amber: It's super counterintuitive for most women to intentionally gain weight. That just blows their mind. Your goal is to have the scale go up? That makes no sense at all. It goes against the last 50 years of Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, all of the things.

Nikkiey: That's right.

Amber: But I think the first thing to break down there, and this gets into that scale mentality, is that the reason people just cannot grasp that is because they have taken fat and weight and collapsed them together. They've said, if the scale goes up, that means I've gained fat, and if the scale goes down, that means I've lost fat, which is not actually the case. You can lose weight and gain weight without having any fat leave or enter your body.

So when we can start to break that apart and help women understand that the scale is a data point, that it gives us some information but not a clear picture of what's going on, which is why we include lots of data points, then we can start to separate that idea of why would you ever want to add weight. Well, because when I'm adding weight, my goal is not to add fat. My goal is to add muscle.

And yes, some fat's going to come along with it. That's the expense of doing a bulk. You're going to hopefully maximize muscle gain and hopefully minimize fat gain, but there's going to be some fat along with it. So when you start to understand that you're wanting to add weight on the scale because your goal is to add more muscle, people can start to wrap their head around that process a little bit more: okay, now I see why you actually wanted to see the scale going up, because you wanted to add more muscle to your body.

Nikkiey: And damn, that picture, guys, definitely check it out. We'll have her Instagram and all the things below the podcast. That picture was so cool to see. You're still an athletic figure, right? So it's not like you gained fat, you gained muscle. And boy, is that muscle present when you're giving that flex. You're going to add more muscle.