Liver King Perfectly Explains The Difference Between Bulking & Shredding

Bulking vs shredding for dummies.

Liver King Perfectly Explains The Difference Between Bulking & Shredding

Image: @liverking

Anyone who steps foot in a gym will be there with a specific goal in mind. Most commonly, these goals will be to either build muscle or lose fat. In the gym world, these are known as bulking and shredding, respectively. The general consensus is that you can’t do both at the same time, but you could, for example, bulk and build muscle and then shred, to help give you greater muscle definition thanks to a lack of body fat.

In order to bulk, you need to consume more calories than you burn through working out, also known as a calorie surplus. To shred, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn, otherwise known as a calorie deficit.

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Although, these basic facts don’t necessarily paint the full picture – and indeed, bulking isn’t always as simple as just stuffing yourself silly with whatever foods you want. It can be possible to build muscle, whilst also burning fat, with diets such as the ketogenic diet proving particularly effective. With the ketogenic diet, you deprive your body of foods high in carbohydrates, but continue to eat foods high in protein. And, because your body isn’t getting energy from carb-rich foods, it believes itself to be starving, so goes after the fat stores instead.

However, because you’re also still consuming protein-rich foods, and getting a healthy amount of calories in the process, you’re still able to build up your muscle.

The Liver King – the incredibly jacked American bodybuilder who lives like an ancestral lifestyle, dining on liver and bone marrow for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with a side of raw testicles – recently explained his methods for bulking and shredding in incredibly simple terms. Taking to TikTok (see the video at the top of this article), he runs his followers through his dinner for that night – consisting of liver, bone marrow, beef patties and avocado – he adds: “I don’t count macros, and I don’t count calories.”

“If I want I want to get more ripped, I just do more work and cut the carbs. If I wanna add some bulk and some strength, I add in the carbs.”

It’s certainly food for thought and certainly gives rise to the argument that we shouldn’t necessarily have to worry about weighing out the foods we consume to the gram, to make sure we hit our macro targets. Although, the Liver King’s method of simply cutting out, or adding in, carb-rich foods, may only be applicable to those who are well-versed in calorie counting.

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His teachings certainly have truth to them, but whether or not you can abide by them may also depend on your body type. Ectomorphs, for example, have a tough time putting on weight of any kind, be it fat or muscle. If someone with this body type wanted to bulk they would need to consume a far greater amount of carb-rich foods compared to an endomorph. Endomorphs, according to Healthline, have slower metabolisms, so if they were to put themselves into a calorie surplus, they may not burn the excess calories, so the calories would then be converted to fat.

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Healthline adds, “Some believe you’re also less tolerable to carbohydrates, so the best diet for your body type may be one with a higher fat and protein intake and a lower carbohydrate intake, such as the paleo diet.”

You could also get really technical and make sure you consume the right type of carbohydrates, such as complex carbs compared to simple carbs.

Ultimately, everyone is different and so the diet or meal plan you need to live off, in relation to your training program, will be unique to you. But, as a basic explanation, the Liver King is right on the money.

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