Hosking thinks I'm a pig but is dirty bulking brilliant or f&%king stupid?

An article on diet, exercise, and why you should never listen to your teenage son's health advice.

Mike Hosking thinks I’m a pig.

Dirty Bulking, as it was sold to me by my son, involves eating everything you like in the hopes of providing your system with the building blocks it needs to produce the muscle you desire. You combine gluttony with a hardcore weightlifting program and become subterraneanly jacked. You are taking in alot of rubbish that is of no use at all but in the mix you get what you need. Then, when the time is right, you cut out the bad foods, count calories, and lose your excess flab. In the same way, the greedy caterpillar eats everything it sees, jumps in a cocoon, and returns as a butterfly; the dirty bulker’s beautiful body emerges from beneath the chunk.

The beautiful metamorphosis of the caterpillar.

The beautiful metamorphosis of the dirty bulker.

I entered into a dirty bulking regime the second I heard of the concept. Like many Kiwi males my age, I’ll jump on anything that promises an easy path to a better bod - even if that advice comes from a known prankster like my eldest son.

Thanks to the removal of all food restrictions the first few months of dirty bulking is a great time. You go hard on fried chicken, doughnuts, ice cream, chips, crisps, lollies, and booze – as long as you also go equally hard at the gym. There’s nothing better than swinging through a drive-through all sweaty in your gym gear, buying bags of burgers and chips, chucking a cheeky cheese on top and feeling no guilt at all.

However, constantly stuffing your face can lead to problems in your workplace. I recently became a host at Newstalk ZB. Tyler Adams and I do our afternoon show from the studio that Mike Hosking broadcasts from in the mornings. My in studio dirty bulking has lead to Hosking describing me as a ‘pig’. Apparently, I’ve been leaving a disgusting mess of crumbs and stinky leftovers on the shared desk and in his personal rubbish bin. He accused me of getting very little of what I eat in my month. There were also allegations that I’ve been throwing sandwiches around. In my defence, surely, the mess I make is a small price for everyone to pay if it gets me the carbs, fat, protein, and sugar I need to bulk up. I can’t be expected to stop eating just because I am broadcasting to the nation. Hosking on the other hand believes that, my diet is my problem and I should clean up my disgusting mess in our shared working environment. There are often strong and opposing opinions at ZB.

One of the main advantages of dirty bulking is its ability to motivate. Usually, when you start a fitness routine, you set yourself a program of nutrition and exercise. You have to eat well and work hard. Those are two things you need to make yourself do. Eating well takes a lot of effort, and so does getting fit. You’re fighting the fronts of greediness and laziness simultaneously. With dirty bulking you only need self-control in one area – getting your arse to the gym. It’s simple. Attack the fridge and then attack some tin, and then you punish the fridge again, repeat. Dirty bulking has a similar energy to Fatboy Slim’s party anthem ‘Eat Sleep Rave Repeat’. Replace ‘rave’ with weights and you get the dirty bulking vibe..

Fatboy Slim ‘Eat - Sleep - Weights- Repeat’

The only major downside to dirty bulking is - it doesn’t work.

I’ve been going to the gym nearly every day this year (hardcore 24) and I’ve been dirty bulking that whole time. While I’m sure there is some muscle inside me somewhere - I do not look or feel healthy. I look chubby and ill. The problem is the cut. I have put on so much weight I may never complete the beautiful metamorphosis. I am trapped in the catapiller phase. My rocking bod is buried beneath a sea of tubbiness. Worse still, the constant intack of delicious foods makes healthy stuff taste aggressively dull.

My 17-year-old son, on the other hand, who has been running the same dirty bulking/gym-going program as me, is in no need of the cut at all. He has been eating more than me and working out less. Yet the guy is getting buffer by the day.

Teenagers like him are finely tuned machines primed for success. In comparison, I am a broken-down old wreck. The marching hand of time catches us all. The stage of life you are in gets laid bare when you enter a duelling exercise and eating competition with a young man. If this dirty bulking has taught me anything, it’s that my testosterone levels are falling off a cliff. I might even have oestrogen dominance. It’s so easy to put on fat now and much harder to build muscle. Lifting weights helps fight the decline, but you can’t get it back to teenage levels. All you can do is slow the slide. Sure this lack of a powerful young man’s engine has some behavioural advantages. The anger has gone. You become an easier dog to keep on the porch. But in terms of your health, you have to work so much harder to get much less.

The truth is there is no easy way. If you want to get in shape, you have to do the boring stuff like eating healthy, bland food. More protein and less sugary, fatty, deep-fried foods. Anything yellow is probably bad, and delicious white bread and pasta is off the table. You need to focus on whole foods, fibre, drinking less, sleeping more, doing a sensible weight routine that won’t lead to injuries, and getting up off the couch every half hour, even when you're watching something good – all the cliched but honest ways to lose weight and get buff. Clean bulking.

In the dream world, dirty bulking would work. Unfortunately, in the same way that drinking gives you a hangover, everything easy, delicious and fun exacts a toll.

IN CONCLUSION

Don’t listen to teenage health advice.

Boring food FTW.

Anyway, bless, bless, you seem busy. I’ll let you go, give em a taste of Kiwi from me. I’ll see paid subscribers on Wednesday for another faux fireside chat.