After getting into weight training, something is confusing me. They say that you cannot gain muscles by weight training if you are in a caloric deficit. But if someone is actively working on their muscles through weight training, why is this?
Would this rule carry over to someone who had a high % of body fat or does this only apply to people with low body fat %? If someone had a high body fat %, will they still not gain any muscles if they are weight training but in a calorie deficit?
I genuinely don’t understand! TIA!
In: Biology
Think of calories as money. Its a lot easier to do whatever you want when you have an excess. Sure you can dig into savings every month but you’re gonna be cutting corners.
The same thing applies to the body, excess calories can **maximize** muscle growth, is it absolutely necessary? No. You’ll still gain something like 70% of what you could without a surplus.
And as for high body fat individuals its a lot harder to study because of the natural variance in workout sensitivity, some people put on muscle the moment they look at a weight. This applies if they’re skinny or fat and we see this in the real world.
As far as we understand excess calories are a signal not a bank. Your body doesn’t have a savings account where it counts how much fat it has then calculates if its enough to count as a “surplus”. The excess calories you eat just activate the machinery that says “go ahead and use this, more’s on the way”.
You could spend hours reading up studies and watching videos. But it is indeed possible. So here is a quick general rundown.
1. Eat about 50 grams of fat per day. You don’t want to cut fat completely, since fat is important for testosteron production.
2. Eat about 2 grams of protein per kg of weight. If obese adjust this to 1 gram per cm of height.
3. Eat 5 grams creatin per day
4. Don’t slim too much too fast. The slimmer you are, the slower you should lose weight.
You want to eat the nutrients your body would normally get from eating your muscles. While eating too little of the nutrients your body gains from eating your fat.
Your doctor or a nutritionist with access to your body would probably give different advice. But these are close enough.
Its simple.
You can and do build muscle in a deficit. The problem is you also tend to lose muscle in a deficit. The rate of tissue loss in a cut often is going to counteract or at least cut into any muscle fiber turn over and growth. The best most people who are not new to training can hope for are marginal gains to complete muscle retention during a cut.
New to training bodies are so shocked by the work load, they can get around this.
So. You definitely can. But…
1. It’s not easy unless you’re overweight and somewhat out of shape. And if you’re overweight you might not notice it and instead attribute it to losing weight. But if you’re doing upper body workouts at a calorie deficit you are going to notice that your maximum lifts go up even as your weight goes down.
2. You’re still going to have to hit your protein targets (1 gram of protein per kilo of body weight per day minimum). Which is really hard at a calorie deficit! Unless you’re on high protein supplements (like whey powder or something) it’s going to be chicken and legumes all day every day.
You can, it’s just extremely difficult and inefficient.
It’s much easier to build muscle when you have the surplus of energy and material (protein) to do it.
How easy this is is up to each individual persons body. I think the biggest problem that people face with this concept is that you can’t really gain muscle and lose fat at the OPTIMAL level. Don’t expect great results in your gains if you are going on a 600 calorie deficit. But eat around 100 calories below your maintenance and you’d be suprised by how much progress you can make in both categories in 1 years time. Just keep up with protein goals and don’t miss out on low intensity cardio such as walking.
Your diet decides whether you build muscle or not. You can lift and eat at a deficit all you want, if you dont enough protien you will just lose muscle and fat weight. You are not properly doing the deficit correctly or you are not training hard enough.
I am eating at a 100-200 calorie deficit while maintaining a high protein intake at around 120-150g/day. I am slowly getting leaner and slowly putting on muscle. Either you are doing it wrong or you have a health issue that is preventing this. Also this will be very hard to maintain for people with eating disorders, If that is your problem then attend to that problem first.
I’m not a scientist, but my weight and muscle mass is directly limited by the calories and macronutrients I have.
I am like 130-140 and low body fat so if I’m in a calorie deficit my muscles just stagnate. I can work as hard as I want but at a certain point I can’t keep working out without just fainting. And my muscles begin to get eaten for energy.
Consistent calories are really important, especially protein and carbs. For me to feel strong at least
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