Lean Bulk for Women: Why the Scale Goes Up When You Eat More

Nikkiey: I have taken the strategies and methods and mindset that I've learned from my bodybuilding phase. I've woven them into a lifestyle that has helped over 100,000 women take those strategies and implement them as a lifestyle, right? Often I hear, okay, what are signs that you're ready to cut? Signs that you're ready to cut, you guys, is that your metabolism is healthy. Some of you that go into programs wanting to go immediately into fat loss or a cut, that may not be the first step for you. Again, 90% of people that I see coming through WarriorBabe have to go through a retrain because they've been in a cut for too long, or they've been in a deficit for too long, or they're not eating enough.

What's going on, everyone? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show. And you know what we do on these episodes. We talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. Today's episode was requested by one of you guys. It's so helpful to do this sometimes: I put the question box on my Instagram story asking you what topics you would want to hear on the podcast.

So this is from one of you. You wanted a refresher on the phases: cut, reverse, maintenance, build. But more importantly, you wanted a deeper dive into what a lean bulk actually is. And there was also a similar question in all of the responses that I got, which was about seeing posts inside of the WarriorBabe community from women who are in the maintenance phase and are panicking about the scale going up.

And you guys asked me to address that. So I'm going to do that here on the episode. If you're inside of our community on Facebook, I've done this there. We're in a current series right now that's actually wrapping up, the metabolism repair series. Inside of that has been the strategy of repairing your metabolism, using our steps, retraining your metabolism, getting up to maintenance, and what you can expect when you are inside of maintenance. With that being said, both of these two things that you're asking about are connected.

And I'm going to address both of them in one episode, clearly and directly, just giving it to you straight. So if you've ever been confused about what phase you should be in, what a lean bulk actually means for women specifically, or why your weight may be moving up in maintenance, a phase when you're supposed to maintain it, then this episode is for you. So let's first jump into running through the four phases quickly.

I've done at least three or four episodes already diving into them either solo or all together. So I would recommend going back through the episodes and looking for them if you want deeper dives into each one specifically. But I want to make sure that we're all working from the same foundation in this episode before we go even deeper. So, a cut, or a fat loss phase. It is a structured period of eating in a calorie deficit with the specific goal of losing body fat while at the same time preserving lean muscle, as much muscle as possible.

Now that may sound different already. I didn't say anything about weight loss. I said fat loss. When you lose weight, you lose muscle. That is not the primary goal of fat loss here, okay? The primary goal of fat loss is to preserve as much muscle as possible. So this deficit is more moderate. It's not aggressive, like a 500 calorie deficit or a 600 calorie deficit when you're trying to lose weight, right? And in this, which you won't find in a weight loss strategy, protein is the highest priority macro, because it is what protects your muscle while your body is burning fat for fuel.

Carbs and fat fill in the remaining calories outside of it. But the priority is protein. In weight loss strategies, you're focusing on calories, okay? You're focusing on the overall amount of calories that you're eating in a day, not really down to the macronutrients. Macronutrients are what's going to truly help you have a successful cut. And again, a successful cut is you preserving as much muscle as possible. Now, a cut is not forever. It is a season.

I would say people could experience results in about eight weeks, upwards to maybe six months max. And it's different for everybody, okay? So that is a wide range. Some people will experience things fast. Some people may have a longer season to go through with fat loss. But I will tell you, you have to come out of a fat loss phase. Staying in a deficit indefinitely is going to destroy your metabolism. And I say this now:

some of you may not get to your goal in your first cut. And that is okay. Which is so counterintuitive to what you've heard, right? Some people go until they've lost all the weight. Kudos to you if you've done that. That's amazing. But if you want to do it the right way, in a way that you can also sustain the weight loss or the fat loss that you've experienced, then you must exit the deficit, because it will repair your metabolism,

or it will at least give your metabolism a break, and also your hormonal health. Women who live in a permanent cut, don't think of them as, oh, they have this willpower, they have this discipline. They're stuck. And their bodies are paying for it. So often I hear, okay, what are signs that you're ready to cut? Signs that you're ready to cut, you guys, is that your metabolism is healthy. Some of you that go into programs wanting to go immediately into fat loss or a cut, that may not be the first step for you.

Again, 90% of people that I see coming through WarriorBabe have to go through a retrain because they've been in a cut for too long, or they've been in a deficit for too long, or they're not eating enough. If you try to go into a fat loss phase and your body isn't healed, it's going to be like you're clashing heads. You're throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping it's going to stick. Your body is basically going to be telling you, hey, we're not ready to be in this. And your body may fight back against you. So when your metabolism is healthy, when you have a solid muscle base,

when your energy and your hormones are functioning well, and fat loss is your genuine primary goal, then that would be the time for you to focus on it. That means you are ready to be in a cut, okay? I could talk about these all day long. I could spend half an hour on each one of these phases. But going through it really quickly, that's a fat loss phase. The reverse, or retrain, or metabolic repair, whatever you want to call it, is intentional. It is a gradual increase of your calories back toward your maintenance level

after a period of being in fat loss. So for the majority of you who have been in a fat loss phase or a calorie deficit, or you've been dieting for the majority of your life, you need to enter here. The goal is to bring your metabolism back up. The goal is to make a strong foundation for you to go into a cut later in the right way. It's meant to heal things inside of your body that have been slowly getting whacked at over years and decades of dieting, said nicely. And you're bringing your metabolism back up to speed week by week,

slowly, and this is the key to it, without storing fat. Because people come out of a diet, start eating like their normal habits before they went into the diet, and start gaining all this fat back. When you do a retrain or reverse the right way, you're doing it slowly, you're bringing up your calories week over week, and you're allowing your body to not store significant fat in the process. This is a phase a lot of women skip. They finish a cut, they feel good about their results, and either they immediately want to stay in a deficit,

or they want to go straight back into a fat loss phase again. They finished 16 weeks or eight weeks, and they're like, no, no, no, I want to keep going, I want to keep going. And that is exactly what keeps them in this restrict, plateau, restrict, gain weight back spiral. The reverse, you guys, is this bridge in between your cut and everything else. If you have 50 pounds to lose and you want to do it the right way, you'll lose maybe 20 pounds,

you'll give your body a break, you'll work back up a little bit, build a foundation, then you'll go back into a cut to lose the next 20 pounds. Maybe you've got to do it again, reverse back up before you lose the next 10. Or even along the way, when you are giving your body more food, over 50% of women inside of WarriorBabe experience this: they get more food and they actually start losing more weight. Everybody's body is different. But it's a non-negotiable for you to do a reverse if you want your results to actually stick and your metabolism to remain functional.

Now, maintenance is eating at approximately the number of calories your body burns in a day. Not above it, not below it. People's maintenance range can be very wide or very narrow. It's so different for everybody. But mainly, the goal is to sustain your current body composition while giving your metabolism time to stabilize, which I've been talking about. Also giving your hormones time to regulate. And being able to look back and reflect on the cut and recognize the things that got you there along the way,

your mindset, your habits, allowing those things to solidify, which is huge in the long-term game of having this as a sustainable lifestyle. Maintenance is also the phase where body recomposition happens: losing fat and building muscle simultaneously. This is most likely to occur for women who are strength training consistently and who are hitting their protein. And I'm going to talk more about this in a little bit,

especially when it comes to your weight. Because like I said earlier, I want to address why people are experiencing weight gain when they're in maintenance. Now for the lean bulk, right? The building phase. A lean bulk is intentional. You're focusing on a controlled calorie surplus designed to fuel the muscle growth process. So it's small. It's typically 200, maybe 300 calories above your true maintenance.

This isn't an excuse to eat everything. I want to talk about this in a second. It is a precise, strategic increase in the food that you're eating, combined with you doing strength training, progressive strength training at that. Focusing on high protein intake, right? And creating the conditions for muscle development. This is a phase that most women are afraid of, but I truly and confidently believe that it is a phase that can change everything.

This was also a question in the responses that I got: for people that have a tinier frame that need to build muscle, how to do it appropriately. I would insert you into this category here. So let me go a little bit deeper with this, because one of you specifically asked for it. And I always say, if one person's asking about it, a lot of people have questions about it. So a lean bulk, like I just said, is not eating everything in sight. It is not a free-for-all.

It is not an excuse to abandon your habits. You'll probably hear this in the bodybuilding world. And a lot of you may say, oh, well, Nikkiey's a bodybuilder, and she has taken these concepts from her bodybuilding. Well, first of all, it's been almost 10 years since I've been in the bodybuilding space. I have taken the strategies and methods and mindset that I learned from my bodybuilding phase. I've woven them into a lifestyle that has helped over 100,000 women take those strategies

and implement them as a lifestyle, right? So anyway, side note, rant. Male bodybuilders call it a dirty bulk: eating in a massive surplus and accepting significant fat gain alongside muscle gain. This is not that. And a dirty bulk is not the approach for women, ever. The hormonal environment, the rate of muscle protein synthesis, and the metabolic differences between men and women mean that a large surplus in women will produce mostly fat gain.

If you were to do a dirty bulk like men in the bodybuilding space do, or if your husband is into building muscle, yada yada, and you follow his lead when you're out to dinner and you're eating as much food as him, you are going to produce fat gain. And not the proportional muscle gain to fat gain that men will experience in a dirty bulk. They will put on fat and they will put on muscle. But a dirty bulk for women is just fat gain dressed up

with gym verbiage and gym language. Quick break. If you're finding this episode helpful so far, it would mean a lot if you could hit pause for just a second, leave a quick rating or review, or share it with someone who could benefit from it. Your support helps more women discover these tools to build muscle, lose fat and feel confident. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey with me. What a lean bulk is, is a controlled calorie surplus.

Like I said, typically you're looking at around 200 to 300 calories above your true maintenance, and you are maintaining that consistently over an extended period of time, and you are combining that with progressive strength training and high protein intake. I have many episodes on progressive strength training, and you've heard me say how important protein intake is. This is all for the specific purpose of building muscle as efficiently as possible while minimizing fat gain.

And that's it. It's a small surplus. It's consistent training. It's high protein. And it's doing it on an extended timeline, because you know the gist here. It takes time to build muscle. I would say give yourself three years for that to happen. Three years, if you're doing it right. The most important thing that you need to understand about a lean bulk is that muscle is built slowly, especially in women.

Three years is the realistic timeline for muscle gain. Again, that's doing everything right: training hard, eating in a controlled surplus, hitting your protein. You are looking at that type of timeline. So this isn't a four-week phase, guys. This is a commitment, often a longer commitment, because changes happen slowly. And the only way to see them is to stay in the phase long enough for them to accumulate and be seen.

Now, a lot of women are afraid of this because of the scale. And I just want to touch on what the scale does during this type of phase. This is one of the reasons a lot of women will abandon it before it has the time to actually do the work that is so rewarding in the end. They abandon it because the scale goes up. And for a lot of women who have spent any time in diet culture, or decades dieting, who have been conditioned to believe the scale going up is always bad, I get it.

It's terrifying. It's defeating. It's deflating. It makes you want to give up. But here's what is actually happening when the scale moves up during a lean bulk. You are eating more food, and food weighs something. Keep that in mind. More food in your body on any given day means more weight on the scale, especially if you're weighing yourself at the end of the day. Please stop doing that. This is not fat. It is the physical mass of what you ate. Again, the scale is only showing you one number,

and it's not telling you what that number is made up of. At the same time, with you eating more, your glycogen stores are increasing. That means carbohydrates are being stored in your muscles and your liver as glycogen. More carbs come with more calories, which means more glycogen is being stored. And glycogen holds onto water, roughly three to four grams of water per gram of glycogen. That is going to show up on the scale as weight.

Again, it is not fat. You'll hear people say, oh, it's just water weight. When coaches and people in the fitness space say water weight, it's everything I just said. It's the carbs being turned into glycogen and stored, and glycogen holds onto water. And that water shows up on the scale in the form of a number. Again, it's not fat. You are also building muscle, and muscle is denser than fat.

So a pound of muscle takes up less space than a pound of fat does. You can gain weight on the scale from muscle and simultaneously look leaner and more defined. I've shared this story with you multiple times: I weigh the same now as I did when I started my journey. I weighed between 140 and 145 pounds when I started my journey 10 years ago, and I weigh exactly the same, if not sometimes a little bit more, up into the 150 range.

That right there would make any woman give up, because nothing has changed on the scale. Yet my body looks drastically different. Okay. So these two things can happen at the same time, and the scale cannot tell them apart. Just keep that in mind. And yes, over an extended lean bulk, some small amount of fat gain will occur alongside building muscle.

That is completely normal. That is completely to be expected. And it is the trade that produces the body composition change most women are actually after. You cannot build significant muscle without being willing to accept the small amount of fat gain that comes along with fueling that process. So the women who get lean bulking right are the ones who pay attention and track their performance.

They can see that their numbers and their strength are going up. They can see their measurements changing. They're taking the photos, and they see that over an extended period of time there's a drastic difference in their photos, but maybe not so much in their weight. They can see definition increasing, right? It's not just the scale. Guys, the scale is one data point during a lean bulk. It's not the whole story.

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Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com/apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com/apply. All right, let's get back to the show. The question I'd anticipate coming from this is typically, okay, well, what do my macros look like when I'm in a lean bulk?

Your protein will stay either the same or go slightly higher than where you were in maintenance. So about one gram per pound of body weight. Now, those of you that are older, I will push to 1.2 grams per pound of body weight. You are building new muscle tissue, and protein is the material that's going to help you do that. You do not want to reduce your protein intake. Carbs are going to go up intentionally. This is where most of the additional calories come from.

And immediately people go into thinking, I can't, I'm insulin resistant. I have this, this, and this. I have this thing with carbs, it doesn't help me, my blood levels tell me that I can't eat carbs. I would get your labs tested further, because there could be some type of metabolic health issue to address. I'll point you back to the episode I just recorded on the conversations to have with your doctor.

Because metabolic health would probably be something to look at as to why your body isn't processing carbs the right way. And I could totally go off on a tangent about all of the other things. I know people say, I'm diabetic, type one, and so on, and yes, that is a world that does exist. Yes, truly. I'm talking to more of the broad population here. If I were going to go deeper with that, I would say check out WarriorBabe VIP and work with one of our coaches one-on-one, because they'll be able to take lab work, look

at things, go in deeper, and say, okay, this is what we need to do. Right? I'm on a podcast talking one to many. So, going back: carbs are your primary thing here. They are so important when it comes to fueling. They are a primary fuel source for muscle. They power your training, they support your recovery, and they drive the performance improvements that progressive overload requires of you. So more carbs in a lean bulk means better training sessions, better

recovery, and just a stronger muscle-building signal overall. Fats in this phase will stay at a healthy baseline, mainly to support your hormone production. They do not need to increase significantly. Now, this dives a little deeper into a smaller category of people: if you know you run better off of fats than you do carbs. The way I look at carbs and fats is that they are two energy sources. If you know you feel better with a little bit higher fats, not going full

keto mode, with your carbs just slightly lower, then do that. If you know that works better for you, I'm not going to insist you have higher carbs and lower fats. This is where it gets very individualized. Now, I'm not saying cut out carbs completely, because they do have a primary role in building muscle. So the surplus can come from either one. I just say focus on your protein intake primarily and let the carbs and the fats fall into place, but make sure you have your protein and you're

eating in a slight surplus of 200 to 300 calories above your true maintenance level. That's a lean bulk. That's what a lean bulk is, what a lean bulk is not, how I would address it, what it looks like with macros, and what to expect from it. Now, addressing what I've seen inside the community. I think there's been real confusion happening there, and I want to clear it up. I've also talked about this on the community calls, but maybe you can't attend them or you haven't been able to watch the recordings, and you love coming to the podcast.

So this is just another way of getting to those of you who are inside of our program. Women in maintenance are posting that the scale is going up and they are panicking, and I feel them. They feel like they're doing something wrong. They feel like maintenance is not working, and some of them are considering dropping their calories back down. I understand that, especially given the diet culture a lot of women have come from: if it's not working, then I need to eat less. And I want to say this clearly. Do not do that. And I'm going to tell you why.

Please don't cut your calories down. One, allow it to work. First and foremost, allow time to make it work. Two, or really first, let's talk about what maintenance actually is, because I think the confusion starts there. Maintenance is not a guarantee that the scale will stay perfectly still. On any given day, your body is changing. Maintenance is eating at the level of calories your body burns on average, and your body's calorie burn fluctuates daily.

I can't look at one individual and say, yes, that person burns 2,200 calories consistently every single day. You'll see this on your trackers. You'll see that you burn 1,700 calories one day, 2,300 calories one day, 2,000 calories one day, 1,600 calories one day, right? It's based on your activity level. It's based on your stress, your sleep, your hormone cycle, and a dozen other variables. This means your weight will fluctuate in maintenance, my friends. It will go up some days. It will go down other days.

A snapshot of the scale on any given morning is not your maintenance weight. Your average weight over, say, two to four weeks is your maintenance weight. So, my friends, the scale is going to go up, down, up, down. It's going to fluctuate on a daily basis. But you look at the average over the course of seven days to 14 days, and if the average is going down... I'm sorry, I'm thinking about a cut.

If the average is staying around the same, then you're good. You're good. And even if it fluctuates a little bit, which I'll talk about in a second, that's okay. That's going to happen. So the second thing is, if you are genuinely gaining over a sustained period of maintenance, then write down these questions to ask yourself. And look at them honestly, you guys. Because when I ask so many women these questions, a lot of honesty

comes out, and they're not actually doing maintenance the right way. My first question would be: are you actually at maintenance calories? Or did you overshoot during the reverse and end up in a slight surplus? Because this happens more than people realize, especially if a retrain was done too quickly or without careful tracking. So I would say go back to your numbers and just look. Am I actually at my true maintenance numbers? Did I take my reverse seriously?

I just had a conversation with the WarriorBabe community on one of our community calls about this. Women try to go through a reverse or retrain in a matter of three weeks. They follow the calorie recommendations for one week, then they bump up. In the second week, they only follow them for three days out of the week, and then they bump up to the next step in the third week. And I'm like, yo, pause. You're about to bump up to a calorie number that your body hasn't fully adapted to yet. Then you're going to experience weight gain.

So did you do it? Did you do it too quickly? Did you do it without carefully tracking? Did you do it honestly? And guys, this is where I would say give yourself grace. A lot of what happens in a retrain is typically done with a coach by your side. I love to give, and I love to tell you all the things that we do with our WarriorBabe VIPs. These are the strategies we use. But the reason they've done it so successfully is because they have a coach by their side calling them out when they're not doing it correctly,

or, if they are doing it correctly, telling them when we maybe need to pull it back, right? My second question would be: are you tracking accurately? Are you tracking everything? Oils, sauces, condiments, restaurant meals, weekend eating. These are where maintenance calories most commonly get exceeded without the tracker reflecting it. A week of honest, tight tracking will tell you whether you are actually at the calories you think you are. Because people will be in the second week of a reverse, on their calories for three days,

and the rest of the week they're completely off. And they'll say, well, why am I gaining weight? Well, you went off tracking honestly. You let a weekend of eating habits deter you from the goal we're working toward, right? Then there are tons of other variables. Are you in the early weeks of a new training program? Because increasing training volume causes muscle inflammation. It causes water retention. And that's going to show up on the scale.

Where are you in your cycle? If you're still getting your period, the week before your period, we all know this, you could see anywhere from two to five pounds more on the scale. Again, that's not fat. It's fluid. So just pay attention to when your period starts. It's not representative of you gaining weight. Are you sleeping well? Are you under stress, right? All of those things will show up as a higher number without actually representing fat gain.

Okay? The answer to almost every I'm-gaining-in-maintenance post in our community is one of the things I just walked through. It's not that maintenance is broken, and it's not that you need to cut your calories. It's that one of these variables may be driving temporary, non-fat-related scale increases. So my ask to the women in the community who are experiencing this is: give it a full month.

Track honestly for those weeks. Look at the actual average before you make any changes. You step on the scale one day, you post in the community that you're gaining weight, and then you're freaking out because you stepped on the scale one day, or even two days. Play it out. See what the average looks like before you consider making any changes. The data will tell you what you need to know.

Remove your emotions, which is hard to do, but I'm telling you right now, remove your emotions from this and let the data guide you. So overall, guys, we covered a lot today. In summary of going through the phases: a cut is a moderate deficit with high protein to lose fat while preserving muscle. It's extremely important. There's a massive difference between weight loss and fat loss.

Reversing or retraining is a gradual, intentional increase that gets you back to maintenance. It's a non-negotiable bridge that most women skip. Maintenance is eating at your burn rate. It's not a flat line on the scale, but a sustainable, hormonally healthy baseline that allows recomposition to happen. A lean bulk is small and controlled, adding a surplus of 200 to 300 calories.

It's combined with progressive strength training, and you focus on eating higher protein. It is literally designed to build muscle slowly and intentionally over a certain amount of time. The scale will go up, but that means the process is working. You're going to gain a little bit of fat while you build muscle. And lastly, to the women inside the WarriorBabe community who are listening to this and seeing the scale move in maintenance: look at the data honestly before you panic.

Right? Pay attention to your cycle, pay attention to new training, pay attention to water retention, to tracking accurately, to being honest about your tracking habits, and to whether you're doing maintenance the right way. Pay attention to the averages, give it a month, and trust the process. Don't just step on the scale and freak out. Don't let the scale dictate your emotions, whether you're going to have a good day or a bad day. Allow it to play out. And to those of you who requested this episode or wrote in the question box, thank you.

I appreciate these types of topic ideas, because they give me insight into meeting you where you're at, and they help me with ideas, because sometimes I have no idea what to talk about in these episodes. So thank you. Keep sending them. Keep DMing me topic requests and ideas, because this podcast truly exists because of you. All right. I love you all, and I will see you in the next episode. Peace out. Hey, really quick before you go, I have one small favor to ask.

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