I just spent 6 months building muscle.

Or at least doing everything possible under my control to make that happen.

The purpose of this article is to walk through my process, my results, and the lessons I learned about what I did right and what I could do better next time.

It’s not just a personal journey.

It’s a prescription based on sound, evidence-based principles, plenty of patience, and most of all, consistency—that you can implement yourself.

You’ll never be perfect. I’m definitely not perfect.

But when you string together many days, weeks, and months following a process that works, you’re bound to grow, change, and produce results.

Results that transform your body into a stronger, healthier, more muscle-packed version of yourself—despite the inevitable interruptions and setbacks along the way.

Ready for the ride? Here we go…

About Me 🙋‍♂️

My name is Philip Pape, owner and head coach of Wits & Weights.

I’m a male, 5 ft. 9 in. (1.75 m) tall.

I turned 42 years old partway through the building phase.

I’ve been “seriously” and “intelligently” lifting weights for about 3 years, so I consider myself an early intermediate lifter with plenty of gains for the taking.

I’ve gone through two full building and fat loss phases “the right way” and have some experience with this.

I’m a certified nutrition coach who helps others do this successfully, so if at any point you have questions or need help doing this on your own, you can always reach out.

Tracking 📲

My go-to app to track food, weight, and expenditure (metabolism) was MacroFactor.

Most of the screenshots you’ll see below are from this app.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a user since launch, and I’m also an affiliate. There’s no other app like it. If you want to download it and extend your trial while supporting me, download it from your app store and enter affiliate code WITSANDWEIGHTS to extend your trial to 2 weeks.

To learn more about MacroFactor, read this article.

I prefer this app over any others because of its energy expenditure calculation, which detects daily changes in your metabolism. It then uses smart algorithms to personalize your calorie and macro intake targets and updates them weekly. Also, its database is verified (unlike most other apps).

Let’s define three terms I use from MacroFactor:

• Scale Weight: The actual weight on the scale

• Trend Weight: The 20-day exponential moving average of Scale Weight calculated by MacroFactor. This is a better indicator of your “true” weight trend at any given time.

• Expenditure: Calories burned per day, as calculated based on the “dynamic maintenance” algorithm in MacroFactor. This adjusts daily based on food intake and change in Trend Weight and informs the weekly calorie/macro adjustments.

For other tracking (like circumference measurements), I used a spreadsheet or my phone.

Timeframe 🗓️

I always recommend at least 6 months in a muscle-building phase, up to 9-12 if you prefer, but never less than 3, to allow sufficient time to build strength and size.

I decided on 6 months, for a few reasons:

• It would start right after a family reunion vacation (which I had gotten lean for)

• It would carry me through the indulgent end-of-year holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas here in the U.S.) so I could enjoy eating with limited restriction

• It would end in time to give me 3 months of fat loss before the spring, which coincides with wearing shorts and t-shirts (showing more skin)

Here was the final timeframe:

• Start date: June 27, 2022

• End date (goal achieved): January 8, 2023

• Total duration: 28 weeks (6 months + 2 weeks).

Timing your bulk/cut cycles with the seasons and holidays is a very practical approach.

Always consider your schedule and lifestyle when planning these out!

Starting Weight ⚖️ (and Body Fat*)

My starting Scale Weight on June 27 was 165.5 lb (Trend Weight of 167 lb).

This was moderately lean for me, at around 12-14% body fat*.

*The caveat to body fat is that I don’t use any devices because they are completely inaccurate (DEXA, Bod Pod, impedance scales). But I do measure my neck and waist circumference weekly, plug that into the Navy body fat formula, and use the trend over time as one of many ways to measure change in body fat—in addition to progress photos and how I feel in my clothes.

I previously experimented using the Navy formula along with two skin caliper formulas over several months and discovered that, for me at least, while the absolute numbers are way off from each other (varying by 6 or 7%), the trends were closely in parallel.

So for the purpose of this article, I will reference the change in body fat percentage over the building phase.

Target (Ending) Weight

My target weight was 185 lb, or an increase of about 20 lb.

My ending Scale Weight on January 8 was 185.8 lb (Trend Weight of 185 lb).

Therefore, I successfully gained about 20 lb in just over 6 months.

Target Rate of Gain 📈

The evidence recommends gaining 0.1% to 0.25% per week, though newer lifters can push this a bit at the risk of slightly more body fat gain (closer to 0.3 to 0.4%).

I chose a slight overshoot (aggressive) approach since I consider myself an early intermediate lifter with plenty of gains left, and I’m comfortable having to lose a bit more fat later to ensure maximum muscle gain during the building phase.

Therefore, I aimed for a rate of gain of 0.3% (0.5 lb) per week.

In reality, I gained a bit more quickly, at an average of 0.35% (0.7 lb) per week.

Therefore, I also gained a bit more fat, as you’ll discover later.

Expenditure (Metabolism) 🔥

Here is a graph of my expenditure throughout the building phase:

As mentioned earlier, this is updated daily based on calorie intake and change in Trend Weight by MacroFactor’s smart algorithm—one of the best reasons to use this app for gaining, losing, or maintaining weight very precisely.

I started this phase at the end of a previous fat loss phase (cut), so my expenditure was bottoming out at 2,773 kcal per day

Note the gradual increase over the 6 months, with some dips along the way, with a peak at 3,347 and ending at around 3,300 kcal.

Expenditure can change like a roller coaster—which is why it’s important to calculate it for proper weekly adjustments.

My expenditure increased by over 500 kcal per day due to:

• Eating more (digestion)

• Weighing more (moving more mass around)

• Adding muscle (burns more than fat)

• Pushing more in the gym (higher intensity, more calories burned working out)

• Metabolic adaptation (body becoming “less efficient” with so many calories coming in)

This is one reason I love building muscle: you burn so many more calories.

You get to eat more, and then eat even more than that, over 6-9 months of the year.

Then you start a diet from a higher place with more muscle and get it over in 3 months.

I talk more about food in the next section.

Nutrition (Macros and Food) 🥩

Here is a graph of my macros throughout the building phase (the total of each bar is calories):

As you can see, consistency is the name of the game.

Despite the occasional spikes for a party, a night out, or just an “off” day, the vast majority of my days were pretty routine.

Average calories were 3,400 to maintain a surplus over my average expenditure of 3,100 kcal.

I kept protein at an average of 190 g, or close to 1 g/lb of my target body weight of 185 lb.

Fats and carbs fluctuated a bit but stayed close to my targets (and increased as calories increased slowly over time with the increase in expenditure). I like fat at 30% but a quick rule of thumb is a 3:1 ratio of carbs to fat.

My starting macros, totaling 2,875 calories, were:

• 170 g protein

• 95 g fat

• 332 g carbs

My final macros, totaling 3,493 calories, were:

• 190 g protein

• 116 g fat

• 420 g carbs

Notice how “high” those carbs are. But are they really?

Not at all. My fats were almost precisely 30% of total calories, exactly where I want them to be.

My protein is covered.

That leaves all those sweet carbs for performance, energy, and recovery!

Food tweaks

As far as my overall dietary pattern, I had to make some tweaks coming out of my fat loss phase to ensure I had sufficient calories by increasing fats and carbs:

• Re-incorporated calorie dense foods like nuts, fattier cuts of meat, higher-fat dairy and cheese, white potatoes, white rice, and a variety of grains (yes, even bread and pasta)

• Continued eating plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains

• Continued getting plenty of hydration and electrolytes

• Added an extra mid-morning snack and often a pre-bed snack

• Scaled up my pre- and post-workout carbs (perhaps 2 bananas instead of 1, double the oatmeal and peanut butter, or extra highly-branched cyclic dextrin postworkout for quick-digesting carbs)

• Scaled up my food portions at lunch and dinner, especially carbs like rice or potatoes

• Added more olive oil to foods like salads and roasted vegetables

• Allowed myself more treats to satisfy my cravings without going off the plan

• Was diligent about getting my first meal in as early as possible and not waiting too long between meals to avoid feeling stuffed trying to “make up” the calories

I’ll be honest, it’s not super difficult to eat a lot of food when compared to keeping calories low during dieting.

But occasionally I would start a bit late (on a Sunday if I slept in, for example) and then not eat as much per meal as I should, and before long I would have to have 4-5 meals in the evening to catch up.

Protein is usually not the issue, but getting enough high-quality carbs can be a challenge if you simply don’t have enough [rice, potatoes, grains, fruit] in the house to get a few hundred grams later in the day because of poor planning. This is when you’re tempted to reach for processed foods.

Long story short: meal timing, frequency, and planning are always important, whatever phase you’re in!

Strength Training 🏋️

What would a muscle building story be without talking about building muscle!

Every time I fuel my body with more food than it “needs”, my lifts go up and gym life becomes much rosier.

At the same time, it means I need to really push those lifts, get in the workouts (lest I detrain, thus wasting the opportunity to build muscle), and use intelligent programming.

After a week off for a vacation in June at the end of my fat loss phase, I was ready to get back it!

I started running Andy Baker’s Conjugate track from his Barbell Club and stuck with that for the entire phase (except the last 2 weeks to prepare for transitioning to a new fat loss phase).

The Conjugate method is based on Westside Barbell’s approach. I won’t go into details here other than the basic structure of the week.

It’s a 4-day split:

• Monday: Max effort upper body

• Tuesday: Max effort lower body

• Thursday: Dynamic effort upper body

• Friday: Dynamic effort lower body

Here is an example week:

On Monday and Tuesday (“max effort” days), you test one-rep maximums (1RM’s) of variants of the main lifts (squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press), rotating through a handful of lifts to avoid overtraining any one lift.

On Thursday and Friday (“dynamic effort” days), you work on bar speed and volume to maintain strength into the next week on squat, deadlift, and pressing movements and also get a different stimulus from the lower weight but faster bar speed.

On all days, there are 1-3 accessory movements for physique development (bodybuilding/hypertrophy).

I increased my 1RM on many of the big lifts relative to the start of the building phase. Some were PRs and some were clawing back from previous resets due to my surgeries in 2021.

The goal was always to either increase weight or reps weekly, and to push my 1RMs on variants of the main lifts (front squat, safety bar squat, close grip bench, incline bench, sumo and snatch deadlifts, and so on), one of the best ways to gauge progress in both strength and muscle.

Injury / Overtraining 🤕

For almost 2 months during the building phase, I was dealing with shoulder pain, eventually diagnosed as bicipital tendinitis, that limited me from progressing on pressing movements.

I also had a flare-up of my autoimmune condition (mixed connective tissue disease) and had to make a change to my medication to reduce overall inflammation.

During this time, I didn’t avoid those movements, but I scaled them back in terms of load and worked my way up to help repair the tissue.

In particular, I worked up barbell and dumbbell overhead presses, though I did avoid isolation movements that directly targeted that area (face pulls and lateral raises especially).

This set me back in terms of PRs but was the right thing to do for health and longevity.

Eventually I got back to pressing bigger numbers, setting a new bench PR before the bulk was done.

Finally, I could have used more sleep throughout the entire building phase. Shifting to a lower-frequency program during the upcoming fat loss phase and being more efficient with my work schedule will give me an extra 30-60 minutes of much-needed sleep for improved recovery.

Walking and Cardio 👟

I don’t do cardio. Especially in a muscle building phase. Sorry, it’s just not necessary.

I aim for about 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day. This will increase to closer to 12,000 during fat loss.

Walking does plenty for your heart and overall health. But I don’t need to go crazy in a building phase or else my metabolism would climb even further, requiring me to eat even more to keep up!

For cardiovascular conditioning (heart health), my dynamic effort workouts are plenty rigorous to keep my work capacity high. I can easily be in the 140-160 bpm range for long stretches during one of these training bouts without a lick of “cardio.”

That works for me.

Biomarkers 🩸

I like to pay attention to how my biomarkers like heart rate and blood pressure change as I’m gaining or losing weight. If I can, I’ll even get my cholesterol tested.

From past experience, these biomarkers tend to improve when you lose and decline when you gain. This is one reason I don’t like to gain significant weight at my age (early 40’s) because lifting the most weight is not as important as maintaining overall good health.

Resting heart rate is a good indicator of overall heart health, and it correlates very well with your weight and activity level. If you weigh less and move more (walking and conditioning work), it should decrease.

You can use a wearable (watch or ring) to measure this.

My resting heart rate increased by about 4-6 bpm over the building phase, based on my Apple Watch (daytime resting heart rate) and Oura Ring (nighttime). It’s still under 50 bpm, which is in a healthy range.

My blood pressure seemed to stay the same, averaging 120/60, in a healthy range.

My starting cholesterol was total 156, HDL 46, LDL 94, but I didn’t get it measured after the bulk. If do so very soon, I will update this article.

Body Fat Change 💪

As described in the “Starting Weight” section above, I used the Navy formula to measure my change in body fat percentage. I don’t trust body-fat measurement devices one iota. But I like to use circumference measurements relative to my own body that give me a good idea how things are changing over time.

I can also use those numbers to estimate gain in lean mass.

My body fat increased by about 6%.

When applied to my weight, this means I gained about 13 lb of fat of the 20 lb gained, leaving 7 lb of lean mass (including muscle). So about 35% of the gain was muscle.

I would love to get a 50/50 gain between fat and muscle, but that would require a slower rate of gain and may have resulted in about 4-5 lb of lean mass gain (but less fat too).

It’s always a trade-off.

I’m fine making the trade-off because I know I’ll commit to losing the fat diligently over the next 12 weeks and have done it before several times.

Also, although I don’t “care” about the individual body fat datapoints, here’s a graph showing the trend in those values, with a darker trendline to show the overall 6% increase.

Navy Formula

Quick tangent: if you want to do the calculation yourself…

If you use a spreadsheet, here’s the formula for men (requires WAIST and NECK measurements):

=(86.01 * LOG10(WAIST - NECK)) - (70.041 * LOG10(HEIGHT)) + 36.76)

For women (requires WAIST, NECK, and HIP measurements), it’s:

=(163.205 * LOG10(WAIST + HIP - NECK)) - (97.684 * LOG10(HEIGHT)) - 78.387)

Summary (By the Numbers) ✅

Scale weight change

• Starting weight: 165.5 lb

• Ending weight: 185.8 lb

• Total change: +20.3 lb

• Weekly change: 0.7 lb/wk (0.4%/wk avg)

Body fat (based on Navy formula)

• Change: +6% (to around 19% bf, no visible abs)

• Fat gain: ~13 lb

• Lean mass (including muscle) gain: ~7 lb (35% of total gain)

Body (circumference) measurements

• Waist: +3 in

• Chest: +1.5 in

• Biceps (avg): +1 in

• Thighs (avg): +1.5 in

• Neck: +0.25 in

Takeaways 🚀

Here are some takeaways to consider for your next muscle-building phase:

1. Build muscle for at least 6 months at a rate of 0.1-0.25% gain per week (or slightly larger if you’re a beginner or even early intermediate)

2. Time your building phase with periods of the year where you naturally eat more, such as the  holidays, and/or you’re wearing more layers of clothing and don’t care about physique as much.

3. Use multiple data points to measure progress: progress on your lifts, scale weight (to calculate trend weight), circumference measurements (which can be used for body fat trends too), progress photos, and how you feel in your clothes, to name a few.

4. Keep protein at around 1 g/lb but scale up fats and carbs as calories increase (about 3:1 carbs:fat ratio).

5. Scale your nutrition to get in all the calories without veering too far into ultraprocessed foods. Shift toward more calorie-dense options but still incorporate the foods you would normally eat, even in a diet (like fruits and vegetables). Include nuts, fattier cuts of meat, higher-fat dairy and cheese, white potatoes, white rice, and a variety of grains to increase your fats and carbs.

6. Cardio is optional. Walk at least 8-10K steps for overall health and baseline conditioning, and include some dynamic or volume-based training in your lifting (this could be as simple as some accessory movements with shorter rest periods) to get higher heart-rate conditioning.

What’s Next? 🤔

Now it’s time to start a 12-week fat loss phase.

My goal is to lose the 20 lb I just gained, but almost all of it as fat, resulting in a net gain of about 5 lb of muscle from this 9 month cycle, which I’ll be totally happy with.

To lose 20 lb in 12 weeks, my rate of loss is 1.67 lb/wk or 0.9%/wk, the upper end of the fat loss range.

This will be a deficit of about 450 kcal per day, which should end up at around 2,300 kcal intake by the end of the cut (after my expenditure declines/adapts), which is perfectly doable. Especially since it will be a lot higher than that at the beginning and should gradually trend downward.

The 3 years I’ve spent seriously building muscle have increased my expenditure by several hundred calories, so now each diet gets easier.

Isn’t that where we all want to be?

Thanks for reading!