Here is my case for why traditional bulking and cutting works, instead of "lean bulking" or trying to bulk with minimal fat gain. Prior to finally doing a proper bulk, I was an "ectomorph" and a "hard gainer" who thought I was stuck as a skinny dude for the rest of my life. But then I started eating. Most of the guys I know who tried to minimize fat gain over the years are sitting in the 170 - 190 range and look less lean than I do in the 200 lb picture, and I am not that lean in that picture.
I can talk about this all day, but to some folks, words mean nothing. So here are some visual proofs of what I have been saying. This is what a hard gainer can do when he finally starts eating like a person would who is the size he wants to be.
140 lbs - This is where I started out before I realized you have to eat to gain muscle, not just lift.
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to this:
200 lbs
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to this:
~235 ish
Obviously I'm not all that lean in the last two pictures, but I'm not massively fat, so clearly bulking until I was a fat hog then cutting down to a decent bodyfat percentage didn't do anything bad to my body. To be fair, I do have stretch marks on my shoulder/pec are and on my quads, but that's not from getting fat. Obviously none of these pictures are of my legs so you can't see the change there, and my legs grew very easily, so you could have see an even more dramatic change there, but I wasn't big on getting pictures of my scrawny white legs back then, so nope.
Clearly this is just my own anecdotal experience but to some people, anecdotes are apparently more important than facts. So here you go.
