How come you don’t gain muscle even when working out if you have a calorie or protein deficit. Maybe my understanding is an oversimplication but I thought muscle growth was from repairing tiny tears you get from working out. If these tears still occur why does growth not occur? Does it occur? Does it just happen but less efficiently?
In: Biology
You can, you just won’t get huge on a calorie deficit. And yes, the fact that you’re not ingesting enough calories to most efficiently repair your muscles is why. You’ll just feel sore longer.
You can still gain muscle on a calorie deficit. It takes energy to build muscle, calories are energy. So you either need to eat more (calorie neutral or surplus) or you need to break down fat reserves for energy (calorie deficit). It is generally more difficult to build muscle in a caloric deficit but it is still possible as long as you eat enough protein and don’t have too large of a caloric deficit (at some point you wont be able to build muscle and also other bad things will happen, large caloric deficits are dangerous).
If you’re protein deficient, you aren’t taking in the raw materials – amino acids, nutrients – necessary to build muscle. Your body can’t do much with fats besides burn them and carbs besides burn them or convert them to fat.
If you’re in a calorie deficit, the body has a very strong preference for not adding muscle because it only makes the problem worse, in evolutionary terms. In most cases this will be extremely slow if it happens at all. Inadequate food slows down recovery from everything.
muscles are made of protein. How do you expect to get larger protein tubes on your arm if you have no protein to put in them?
You got 20 workers and enough money to pay them to finish a 3 month job
You have 1 month worth of brick and mortar
There just aint enough to build the house up.
i been building muscle on 1400 calories a day. its more of a toned and lean physique rather than bulky. think book 3 zuko rather than book 1 zuko
In a calorie deficit, your body basically shifts priorities to maintaining more critical systems, like your brain and organs. Budget’s tight, your body won’t approve any additional construction projects. Any protein is converted to energy to help you not starve; if the deficit is high enough, it may even consume existing muscle tissue to survive.
In a protein deficit, even if you are eating enough calories, your body just doesn’t have the building blocks it needs. You can’t build buildings out of paper, no matter how much of it you have; likewise, your body cannot build muscle out of fats and carbs.
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