Teen Age "Bulking"

[(Silent)]

Teen age “Bulking”
Written by Me

I often see around the forms people my age and younger wanting to “bulk”. The usual question is, “is it safe for me to Bulk?”. The common answer is yes it is perfectly fine so long as your eating healthy foods. However, more and more i have been putting thought into the matter. I now wonder how good it is for a young person to “Bulk” in the long term.

There is a theory on weight called the “Set point Theory”. The Set Point Theory (now SPT) is the idea that every person has a “normal” fat weight. In other words the amount your body believes to be healthy or “normal” for you. It is believed that the body might base your Set point on how many fat cells you have. Well see when you are born you inherent a certain number of “Fat Cells” then continue to produce more until one is out of their teen years. After these growing years, you will no longer create fat cells only enlarge or shrink those you have.

Bulking, while good for body building, does add fat to the body. And in turn adds more fat cells to a young persons body.

Now, if a young person “Bulks” it will add more fat cells that will never vanish from his/her body. If one continues an active life style for the rest of his/her life then his will not soon become a problem. However, most people simply do not keep it up forever. For those that do not keep up this life style it could mean their body's now naturally have a higher “Set point” for fat. Thanks in part to the added fat cells do to the the bulking in their growing years. Which means they are more likely to become overweight because their body's “Fat Set Point” is now higher then it would have been naturally, so the body now tries to store more fat to accommodate its "artificially" increased number of fat cells.

In simple terms, When we create more fat cells during the growing years, we tend to have a slower metabolism, and a higher “Fat Set Point”. Which in turns means we have greater tendency to become overweight throughout our life.

------------------------------
BTW i am in no way saying one should not bulk, but i do think this is possibly a concern one might want to think about prior to bulking.
------------------------------
Any thoughts,comments, and so on are welcome.

 

[Typhon]

That's an interesting post, do you have any sources that you could post which suggests a teen eatting a high fat diet will develop new fat cells at a faster rate than those eatting a low fat diet? I always thought that fat cells developed at a pace set by genetics and just got bigger or smaller as happens with adults.

As a parent this would be great to know, many thanks

 

[acdc554]

Hey, that was a well written artical and pretty interesting. I'm with ccr on this one too, can we get some sources? Thanks

 

[(Silent)]

That's an interesting post, do you have any sources that you could post which suggests a teen eatting a high fat diet will develop new fat cells at a faster rate than those eatting a low fat diet? I always thought that fat cells developed at a pace set by genetics and just got bigger or smaller as happens with adults.

As a parent this would be great to know, many thanks

well see thats the thing, there are many different theory on "Fat Cells".
I would like to give a link to a Pure scientific study however i am unaware of any. Hense why they call it a "theory" rock hard scientific proof may or may not exist some where, though it is strongly believed to be true.

Im glad you enjoyed reading it, thank you

Here are just a few articles that "Preach" the same theory as i.



Fat cells: size and number determine body fat.
If enlarged, fat cells will divide; once the number of fat cells increases— due to genetic predisposition, early childhood eating patterns, or adult overeating—it never decreases. Dieting shrinks fat cells but they never disappear.
Fat cells require less energy to maintain (metabolize slowly). Once fat, less food to needed to maintain high weight than to attain it.



Fat cells appear to increase in number when caloric intake is increased beginning before birth and continuing at a reduced rate through puberty. During adolescence, when periods of weight reduction normally occur, the size of fat cells decrease, but the number of cells does not decrease.


Fat tissue is made up of fat cells. Each fat cell is a tiny pouch containing lipids. After puberty, the body stops making additional fat cells. The body accumulates fat by adding to the fat in each fat cell.

 

[Starcraftmazter]

I totally disagree that "bulking" adds fat to your body. Maybe it does in some ways, but I have a hell of a lot less fat now than I ever had previous in my life

As for fat cells not changing in number after teenage years, well some guys on the biggest loser come in being fat as anything, and leave skinny as anything.
All I can say is that DAMN, if they didn't lose any fat cells, they must have shrunk to microscopic levels?

But I guess it depends on what you mean by bulking.
My goal is to have as much muscle as possible and as little fat as possible. Nowhere there does gaining fat come into it >_>

Also, consider that Spartan boys were taken away for military training from the age of 7. And we've all seen (at least the trailer) of the 300

 

[LeiYunFat]

Bulking is the process of consuming excess calories in order to have enough there to build muslce with. Fat is added along with the muscle, because with this caloric surplus, you are going to get fatter.

Yes, fat cells are limited in number and have the capacity to bloat to huge sizes or to be reduced and have very little volume. But they're always there, unless you remove them through lipsuction or something. When lipo patients get their misdections sucked, they won't get fat there at the same magnitude as before. They will start to see their body fat gain in their face, arms, legs, or whatever.

I hope you play SC better than you reason. You throw fallacies around like there was no tomorrow.

 

[Typhon]

Thanks for the response (Silent), that's something I'm very glad I read. I bet my daughter's gonna be very upset I read it though

 

[davidjr74]

Oops, guess I should of read this before I binged today...

 

[Starcraftmazter]

Sorry for the late reply, but I somehow didn't get an email for this thread.

Bulking is the process of consuming excess calories in order to have enough there to build muslce with. Fat is added along with the muscle, because with this caloric surplus, you are going to get fatter.

This and that, this and that - seems everything I read contradicts everything else I read. I remember reading, that it's virtually impossible to put on fat (long as you eat properly) approx. 36 hours after a workout, because your body demands everything you eat for muscle repair & growth. Is this true or false?

Yes, fat cells are limited in number and have the capacity to bloat to huge sizes or to be reduced and have very little volume. But they're always there, unless you remove them through lipsuction or something. When lipo patients get their misdections sucked, they won't get fat there at the same magnitude as before. They will start to see their body fat gain in their face, arms, legs, or whatever.

So are you saying, people are born with a set amount of fat cells, and always have that number of fat cells - and they never ever disappear or get destroyed, and likewise new ones never develop, and the only thing which happens is that they either get bigger or smaller?

I hope you play SC better than you reason.

Oh yes.

 

[(Silent)]

Sorry for the late reply, but I somehow didn't get an email for this thread.



This and that, this and that - seems everything I read contradicts everything else I read. I remember reading, that it's virtually impossible to put on fat (long as you eat properly) approx. 36 hours after a workout, because your body demands everything you eat for muscle repair & growth. Is this true or false?

This is false, sure would be nice if it were true though.

So are you saying, people are born with a set amount of fat cells, and always have that number of fat cells - and they never ever disappear or get destroyed, and likewise new ones never develop, and the only thing which happens is that they either get bigger or smaller?
I already explained this in the first post. Your born with a certain number, your body will "create" new fat cells as needed during the growing years. However, once puberty has run its course you are in a "Set" number of fat cells. That only shrink and expand. Meaning you do not grow more or loose any after this point.


Oh yes.

Read bold...

 

[Starcraftmazter]

Then why not cut before the "setting" occurs, so as to make sure you have minimal fat cells around...say 17-19 age? Or 18-20 or something like that.

Seems like an easy solution to the problem.

 

[goergen1]

Most science that I have read. (I have not found it online but have seen it on paper) State there are three X in a child's life that the number of fat cells increase. Those are -

1. The third trimester of pregnancy. If the mother is plowing big macs the baby will increase the number of fat cells.

2. An infants first year. In the first year, depending on how the child is fed, can increase the number of fat cells.

3. The puberty years. During puberty an adolescent can increase the number of fat cells in their body. Again, if they are eating a bunch of garbage.

That being stated, real life does not always follow basic rules. There will be people who gain fat cells despite having avoided the above scenarios. There will also be those who do not gain fat even though they "should have."

Most likely the average person can increase and decrease both the size of fat cells, and the number of fat cells (to a certain extent.)

The same rings true for muscle hyperplasia. (the ability to increase the number of muscle fibers.) Over the past 30 years of research muscle biopsy's have been taken on weightlifters, bodybuilders, as well as the "average" person. The biopsy show that the size of the muscle fibers in weightlifters and bodybuilders is relatively close to the size of the muscle fibers of an "average" person. They do have more muscle fibers though. The argument is, that it is unlikely that the vast majority of bodybuilders and weightlifters all happened to be born with a higher number of muscle fibers. At some stage in the training process the body will increase the number of muscle fibers.

The number of fat cells follows the same theory. Even though there are thought to be basic guidelines, they tend to be broken by people who take their training and fat loss seriously. And that a decrease in number of fat cells takes place at some point in the training process.