Leveling Off

keithcw_the_first

Right up front, I know the answer is "Increase your intake by another 100 calories and see if that does it. If not, do it again."

Cool, okay, that's out of the way.

So why is it that when you're bulking, the body seems to reach out and absorb a higher portion of extra calories than you'd expect. I'm definitely leveling off and I've incrementally adjusted my intake twice already and, depending on how the next few days go, I'm going to have to try to tack on another 100 calories/day.

What is the mechanism of action here? Is it really just an increase in NEAT? Is my body achieving homeostasis with what I assumed was a very generous surplus?

Anyone else experience this?

auddii

It's also the fact that as you increase your mass, your maintenance calories increase; it takes more calories to sustain the higher weight. Same issue with losing; you periodically will need to recalculate your calories as you get lighter because you need fewer calories to sustain the lower weight.

LolBroScience

auddii wrote: »

It's also the fact that as you increase your mass, your maintenance calories increase; it takes more calories to sustain the higher weight. Same issue with losing; you periodically will need to recalculate your calories as you get lighter because you need fewer calories to sustain the lower weight.

This, and your work capacity has increased as well more than likely. Another component is that people tend to have higher NEAT due to the increased energy intake - more fidgeting, more movement in general, etc.

Brolympus

Also OP, consider that you are never going to log your calories exactly every day; it's just not possible, especially since exercise cals expended are hard to measure accurately. If you are pretty careful, weigh everything, etc, you can probably get in the range of 100-200 of what your net intake was for the day (cals in - cals out). Given this possible logging error, you can see how it might take a couple weeks of 100 cal bumps to start seeing the 0.5lbs per week you are looking for. Highly possible you overlog food cals/underlog exercise cals and you aren't getting what you think you are.

keithcw_the_first

That all makes sense.

@Brolympus I use the calories fed in from my FitBit Charge HR, which aren't going to be 100% accurate but should provide some measure of consistency. So a rest day where I go home and read is going to look different than a rest day where I wake up, mow the lawn, and run errands. I eat a surplus based on that. Although I'm realizing that strength training calories are just... nearly impossible to pin down. To your point though, wouldn't I be underlogging food and overlogging exercise if I was flatlining?

@auddii You mean an increase in lean mass? I weight the same as I did about a month ago. That's after a pretty decent rally but at this point, by any rolling average I pick, I'm leveling off.

auddii

I mean total mass. If you start a bulk weighing 170lbs and you're bulking at 3000 calories and 3 months later you weigh 180lbs, the extra 10lbs of weight requires additional energy to move it around along with the rest of you. You'd have to increase the bulking calories to compensate for that.

It definitely doesn't explain all stalls, but it's a contributing factor.

Brolympus

keithcw_the_first wrote: »

That all makes sense.

@Brolympus I use the calories fed in from my FitBit Charge HR, which aren't going to be 100% accurate but should provide some measure of consistency. So a rest day where I go home and read is going to look different than a rest day where I wake up, mow the lawn, and run errands. I eat a surplus based on that. Although I'm realizing that strength training calories are just... nearly impossible to pin down. To your point though, wouldn't I be underlogging food and overlogging exercise if I was flatlining?

Nope, overlogging food, giving you the impression you are putting in more calories than you are. And underlogging exercise cals, giving you the impression you are burning less than you are. Which, in total, would cause your actual net cals be lower than what you calculated your net cals to be. Which could very well be taking you from a slight cal surplus (if that is what you are aiming for) to just plain old maintenance.

I usually tell people on the forums that if they are starting a bulk, and are aiming to "clean bulk" by using a slight surplus, to add 500 cals per day as their initial first bump instead of the 300 everybody recommends for this very reason. It's better to be a couple hundred over than stall your first month or two of your bulk and waste a bunch of time. You can tell pretty quickly by watching the scale if you overshot, and can cal down your calories until you are cruising along at ~0.5lbs per week, but at least you will have been building muscle the whole time.