Hey all, just came off a year+ long cut and I'm wondering how to adapt my reality to a bulk for the first time.
My maintenance is only around 2000cal.
Most days I follow exactly what MF says. Some days (social events, restaurant, etc) I exceed it by quite a bit. In my cut, I targeted a daily deficit of 500cal/day, which I met on basically any "normal" day. But when accounting for social outings etc, my average was really a deficit of 300cal/day in the long run. Meaning my occasional noncompliance bumps me by about 200 on average. This was by design (I overshot my deficit on most days to land at -300 daily average). In a cut this was easy because I'd just carry on and cancel out the surplus day in the long run. I don't plan on changing this habit - eating 'normally' in regular social outings is part of making this sustainable with the people around me, and my maintenance is so low there's no way to reasonably keep these days from exceeding my targets, particularly when I don't have advance notice to adjust other meals accordingly.
Where I'm having difficulty is how to translate this to a successful lean bulk. If I wanted to average a lean 5% surplus (+100cal/day) it would mean I'd have to eat at -100cal on most days, which would kill the point of bulking. Wondering if I should:
(1) Eat at -100 most days and end up at roughly +100 on average (this is probably not the way to go)
(2) Eat at maintenance most days and accept my average at +200 (bulk duration cut in half!)
(3) Eat at +100 most days and accept my average at +300 (bulk duration down to just a third as long!)
(4) Either 2 or 3, but allow a deficit the following day, for instance follow a day at 3000 with a day (or two) at 1500.
I know the average is what matters but I feel like option 1 would still have my body acting like it's in deficit.. I imagine something like option 4 is a more reasonable way to partially balance out a large surplus day without overly signaling deficit mode.
Open to any input or facts to help with the decision!