don't you need protein to bulk up?  If so, I'm not sure that avocados are your friends...

not avocado

chicken  yes

you dont just eat protein but I get significant protein intake already, thats a given.

But stuff like Avocados gives a good level of calories and good fats with minimal bad stuf...equally almonds pecans etc. 

I am thinking I will take 3 or 4 foods and just force add them to my diet throughout the day ,. 

I find pizza and dough balls are generally the answer to bulking up when I'm feeling a big scrawny.

avocados are great but not for bulking up m8

*rolls eyes*

1. Bulking and staying lean is completely fine its just a lot harder in terms of organisation and will power

2. avocado has a lot of good fat in it and my understanding is a large part of daily calorie intake should be fat

Maybe I should have left this on bodybuilding.co.uk 

do you think?

I'm currently doing a fitness challenge where they're making me keep a food diary and giving me nutritional tips.  Want to clean my diet up but I cannot be arsed with getting obsessive about food and will just have the odd burger I don't tell them about.  Want to lose some weight and tone up but I'm not trying to become a professional athlete.

honestly the best thing I ever did was take the carbohydrates thing seriously. It really doesnt take much, I am not super strict about it but I just dont eat bread, chips, rice noodles etc

It was hard at first but I am in a bit of a habit building zone at the moment. The weight drops off in chunks, ill eat good for 4 days staying roughly the same weight and then pretty much over 2 days 2kg will drop off. 

Once you are over the initial cold turkey it gets a lot easier and the significant changes in my weight keep it super motivating

the only negative is that I have inadvertently become addicted to diet coke, not good. 

I've always had a Coke Zero problem.  I love carbs and there is no way I'm giving them up.  If I do a week of eating reasonably healthy and doing a bit more I can lose several pounds so over 8 weeks of eating reasonably and doing some proper training sessions should achieve what I'm after and still fit in the odd pizza.

I love the carbs tpo but I would say having made an effort to massively reduce them over the last 10 weeks I feel sooooo much better. energy levels have increased, I feel more positive, I feel sharper in my head if thats not a weird thing to say.

And I really miss them way less than I thought I would and feel fuller without them then I ever thought I would. 

I am sure there is an addiction element with carbohydrates and even if just as an exercise to see what happens its an interesting experiment to ditch them. The idea of just eating 30 small tubes of beige pasta now to fill up on seems a bit odd. 

But that beige pasta is so good covered in butter, salt, pepper and parmesan.

Yes you can in theory do the bulk/cut same time thing you're talking about but it's much harder. Why make it so hard on yourself? Just bulk to whatever level  you want, then worry about cutting. 

Are you getting 1gm of protein per lb of body weight? (the range is between 0.45-1gm per lb, but if you're seriously lifting better to go higher). 

Sleep? 8 hours may not be enough - 9/10 better. 

If you're over 30 and def if over 35 - you need to take your warm up and exercise super seriously. 

What program are you following? SL? SS?

Im doing a 5 day split (likely to change this soon) doing on average 5/6 weights sessions a week and 3 cardio

protein is at about 130-150g a day 

sleep is shit at the moment 

warm up etc is all relatively good. 

I definitely want to do it the hard way as I have never been this lean and that is more important to me than bulking

I am just looking at the easiest foods to just add to my diet for additional calories so any interesting shouts on the food front would be good. 

Pie