I need help. I'm confused. Please respond

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tenzinlodoe40
tenzinlodoe40 Posts: 15 Member
in Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
So right now. I'm cutting and I'm thinking of bulking in about a week. Right now am around 12-13 % body fat. So my question is why do I need eat a surplus to build muscle. Thnx

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  • mbryon
    mbryon Posts: 130 Member
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    The Muscle has to be created from something. Physics, Dear Watson. Physics.
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,393 MFP Moderator
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    mbryon wrote: »
    The Muscle has to be created from something. Physics, Dear Watson. Physics.

    Essentially this. Without additional energy, how would one grow?
  • letsgain01
    letsgain01 Posts: 106 Member
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    mbryon wrote: »
    The Muscle has to be created from something. Physics, Dear Watson. Physics.

    Be basically said it all. Everything needs to be made from something.
  • letsgain01
    letsgain01 Posts: 106 Member
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    letsgain01 wrote: »
    mbryon wrote: »
    The Muscle has to be created from something. Physics, Dear Watson. Physics.

    Be basically said it all. Everything needs to be made from something.

    Things don't appear out of thin air for no reason
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
    edited February 2016
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    Think of it this way: You have a 3-foot high brick wall in front of your house (your existing muscle mass). You want to make it into a 5-foot high brick wall (add muscle mass). Problem is, somebody is coming and stealing bricks from your 3-foot wall every night (calorie deficit), and you don't have any money (calories/protein) to buy enough bricks to even replace the ones that are being stolen, let alone buy more bricks (muscle) to build the wall higher. How are you going to build that wall (muscle) up without more bricks (calories/protein)?

    If you're going to build something, you need building materials. Calories and protein are the building blocks of muscle.
  • Wheelhouse15
    Wheelhouse15 Posts: 5,575 Member
    edited February 2016
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    To give a much abridged version, your skeletal muscles are the only ones that build up a substance called AMPK that actually reduces synthesis of protein in skeletal muscles. The two main ways to overcoming this are to workout and to eat more. Working out creates a powerful varient of IGF-1, called MGF, locally but also increases AMPK so you need to eat more to overcome this as IGF-1 and leucine are the main systemic compounds to overcome the AMPK buildup in your muscles. It is possible to eat at a very small deficit and gain some muscle but it's really hard so just eat a little more and you'll have to do a bit of a cut but it's not a huge deal.
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,139 Member
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    because you can't build a 5000 square foot house if you only have the materials to build a 2500 square foot house...

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