Can I gain muscle while in deficit
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StealthHealth wrote: »My understanding:
- Can you: Yes.
- Will you: Maybe, it depends on a lot of factors of which current condition is probably the greatest influence.
- Will it be a significant amount: No.
Certainly insignificant if we are talking about a 12-week timespan. What about an 8-month timespan with slight deficit, progressive weight lifting?0 -
CorneliusPhoton wrote: »StealthHealth wrote: »My understanding:
- Can you: Yes.
- Will you: Maybe, it depends on a lot of factors of which current condition is probably the greatest influence.
- Will it be a significant amount: No.
Certainly insignificant if we are talking about a 12-week timespan. What about an 8-month timespan with slight deficit, progressive weight lifting?
I'm assuming progressive lifting (or progressive strength work at least) to be a given. Without it, pretty much any muscle synthesis is going to be small to non-existent.
I suppose significant is a word that leads to interpretation and so is a poor choice. When I said significant I meant significant in comparison to the muscle gain when in calorific maintenance or surplus. In that respect the time span is irrelevant - for any given time period you could have gained more muscle (up to your genetic max) with appropriate stimulus, by eating at maintenance, and more still when eating to excess (subject to a law of diminishing returns - You don't gain 10x more muscle by being 10x more "in surplus").
So yep, you may gain some muscle in deficit over an 8 month period but I would expect that you would have gained more at maintenance and more again in surplus. Of course, there are pay offs. In deficit you may expect to see the reduction in fat being greater (over the same time period) than maintenance and in surplus there is going to be zero fat loss and probably fat gain.
I guess that there may be outliers to my simplistic assumption (it's not a theory or a scientific fact) but I would expect that even the touted "newbie gains" and the "18 Year old male" effect would be positively influenced (w.r.t. muscle gain) by more cals.2 -
CorneliusPhoton wrote: »StealthHealth wrote: »My understanding:
- Can you: Yes.
- Will you: Maybe, it depends on a lot of factors of which current condition is probably the greatest influence.
- Will it be a significant amount: No.
Certainly insignificant if we are talking about a 12-week timespan. What about an 8-month timespan with slight deficit, progressive weight lifting?
Would be worse most likely. The main issue is that their is a key down regulator called AMPK in your muscles and this actually accumulates in the muscle as your deficit is prolonged. A lot of people who think they are gaining muscle while in a deficit likely aren't even though they are convinced of it. Only a DEXA and/or biopsy can really show that for certain. Also, people who gain muscle in a deficit, if they are gaining are likely eating more than they think just like people who stall on weight loss are often eating more than they think.
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People will tell you no, but you can in fact gain some muscle. It won't be a lot, and it'll be your body trading fat stores for muscle as long as you keep your protein levels high enough. I gained quite a bit of definition while in a deficit (although not much strength), but trying too hard to progress in strength training while in a deficit will probably lead to injury. It did for me. Once I backed off and went to mostly body weight training I progressed a bit faster. I originally started a 5x5 weight training program, and every time I went up 5 lbs I thought I was going to die, and six weeks into it managed to injure myself. I was at a 500 calorie a day deficit at the time. Once your fat stores get low enough, it'll be much harder to gain in a deficit, if not impossible.
People will also tell you that you cannot gain muscle while in maintenance (not in surplus) which is also not true. If you carefully log your calories, eat more when you burn more, you can stay even on your calories and build muscle. I do it every day. Again, it's slow, probably 25% of the gains seen from someone in surplus. But it can be done. I simply refuse to gain any more fat, so if that means I bottom out in the muscle gains then so be it. In the last five months I've gained an inch or more on my biceps, can now do double the push ups, double the chin ups, etc. than I could when I started maintenance, and have not gained one single pound. As a matter of fact, I've lost weight but still gained muscle so I'm probably still in a slight deficit. Just don't expect it to be fast.1 -
Sure you can, but it depends. Not everyone can in every circumstance. If you are highly muscled now, but just have a high body fat and have been lifting over time you probably won't gain muscle. If you have not been lifting much you can gain muscle and be in a deficit. The thing you have to know is the body in a deficit wants to burn fat and muscle. There are some studies that show it can be done. Keeping yourself in a high protein diet while in a deficit is needed. I was at 1.2 grams per pound in the largest part of my cutting. Lifting heavy and getting your self into hypertrophy with your workouts. I lost 50 pounds of fat and added about 10 pounds of muscle. I stayed at about a 20% deficit overall calorie wise. This was over a year and a half or so. I didn't stay strict on the cutting path the entire time. Took a couple of vacations, got married, had a honeymoon where I added some pounds back on before cutting again. I would focus on getting the body fat down mostly, continue to lift heavy in a high protein diet and then if you want to bulk you can do that later. My two cents.2
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"Not being able to gain muscle in deficit" seems to be the new "Lifting weights makes women bulky" - everybody is claiming that everyone else is saying it, but there are hardly any people saying it (and none without clarification of the subtleties).
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StealthHealth wrote: »"Not being able to gain muscle in deficit" seems to be the new "Lifting weights makes women bulky" - everybody is claiming that everyone else is saying it, but there are hardly any people saying it (and none without clarification of the subtleties).
There are a lot of clarifications and mostly how big the deficit is and how new to lifting you are -- and what stack you run in some cases. The best that can be said is that it's suboptimal but is possible under the right circumstances but what we know of the biochemistry tells us that it is very hard and rather limited even when it does happen. Anecdotal evidence is unreliable and the study linked above is recomp so we don't have much in the way of controlled research that shows it's possible.
Note: I imagine drugs could have been involved in at least a couple of the trained research groups since the where often highly trained yet gaining over 2lbs of muscle in 2 months, which in natural lifting would be impossible. There was a huge range of lifting experience (from first novice to decade long) and the average for 8 weeks was substantial so I would like to see the individual data and see why this should be (remember according to Lyle's research even a newbie should only be getting about 4 to 8 pounds in 2 months of muscle when running a bulk). We should expect the average gain to be much lower if the average person was in their 5th year of lifting. It's likely that the newbie lifters really skewed the data unless drugs were involved. Either way, I don't like the research design since we know that newbies are much different from 5 year veterans so grouping them into tighter strata would have helped. I'm also not a huge fan of meta studies since I can't scrutinize the data and methodology for each study.
ETA I used to be in the "you definitely can" camp but my research has started to show that it's not so easy to say this without a lot of caveats.
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The last time around, a month ago, Iost 6 net lbs in a month on a deficit diet from 172 to 166 - - neg 7 fat and plus 1 LBM - - and increased my strength as well, which reduced my BF% from 20.3 to 16.9.
I'm now at 164 and am going back for another DEXA in a few days, which based on my appearance and further strength gains, should show a further reduction in BF and a hopefuly some increase in LBM while still on a minor deficit diet.
165 was my goal weight, which I just hit based o the 7 day average. So, I'll be switching to maintentance after the next DEXA scan.2 -
The last time around, a month ago, Iost 6 net lbs in a month on a deficit diet from 172 to 166 - - neg 7 fat and plus 1 LBM - - and increased my strength as well, which reduced my BF% from 20.3 to 16.9.
I'm now at 164 and am going back for another DEXA in a few days, which based on my appearance and further strength gains, should show a further reduction in BF and a hopefuly some increase in LBM while still on a minor deficit diet.
165 was my goal weight, which I just hit based o the 7 day average. So, I'll be switching to maintentance after the next DEXA scan.
Does your DEXA give you enough detail to show muscle vs other LBM? You are likely gaining bone and water mass too so that would be helpful to know. A lot of people jump at LBM and say LBM= muscle but nothing could be further from the truth.
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Wheelhouse15 wrote: »StealthHealth wrote: »"Not being able to gain muscle in deficit" seems to be the new "Lifting weights makes women bulky" - everybody is claiming that everyone else is saying it, but there are hardly any people saying it (and none without clarification of the subtleties).
There are a lot of clarifications and mostly how big the deficit is and how new to lifting you are -- and what stack you run in some cases. The best that can be said is that it's suboptimal but is possible under the right circumstances but what we know of the biochemistry tells us that it is very hard and rather limited even when it does happen.
This is a much less discouraging answer to the question than a flat "no". I get that you need to eat at a surplus to see significant muscle growth in a relatively short period of time, but I don't find it logical that muscles can't or don't grow for people who are doing progressive lifting over a long period of time. Do those people just come full stop in their progress? ETA: ... while at a slight deficit
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Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.3 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.
That's a really good result!0 -
CorneliusPhoton wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »StealthHealth wrote: »"Not being able to gain muscle in deficit" seems to be the new "Lifting weights makes women bulky" - everybody is claiming that everyone else is saying it, but there are hardly any people saying it (and none without clarification of the subtleties).
There are a lot of clarifications and mostly how big the deficit is and how new to lifting you are -- and what stack you run in some cases. The best that can be said is that it's suboptimal but is possible under the right circumstances but what we know of the biochemistry tells us that it is very hard and rather limited even when it does happen.
This is a much less discouraging answer to the question than a flat "no". I get that you need to eat at a surplus to see significant muscle growth in a relatively short period of time, but I don't find it logical that muscles can't or don't grow for people who are doing progressive lifting over a long period of time. Do those people just come full stop in their progress?
Unless you have an understanding of the underlying biology and biochemistry it might seem illogical but when you study some of that you can see where the limits come in. Our bodies don't want to maintain, let alone grow, energy/protein expensive skeletal muscle tissue in times of low food availability so we have substances that really throttle back on our ability to maintain and grow new skeletal muscle when we aren't eating enough. To easily allow us to maintain this tissue when there are more important systems in the body that require energy and protein would be the illogical proposition in terms of survival.
Another logic in biology is that we have to be able to structurally support our strength and getting to strong isn't conducive of this and the severe injuries that we see from steroid users is proof of this, thus we have a thing called myostatin that really throttles back on synthesis as we gain more and more muscle. Now, will you ever run out of gains? In natural practice no, maximum strength is an asymptote so you'll slow down and never really reach it unless you start using PEDs. However, we all come to a point where we slow down tremendously and as you age you will start going in reverse -- honestly, getting older was a bad choice!0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.
For those who don't want to click through my profile I went from this:
to this
and despite looking like I had gains and feeling much stronger measurement showed I didn't gain an ounce of muscle. I think people go off appearance and feel and think they are gaining muscle mass while losing weight when they aren't. If you actually track your lean mass you can tell its not going up even though uncovering your muscle from fat loss makes them look siginificantly more defined and training them makes you significantly stronger.
That said if the point is to look much more muscular and feel much more strong then yeah you can absolutely do that while losing weight.
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Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.
That's a really good result!
Thanks...that was two years ago. And now I'm back lol...whoops.0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.
That's a really good result!
Thanks...that was two years ago. And now I'm back lol...whoops.
Just like sports, there's always the next diet/season.
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.
Please excuse me if I'm going a little off topic, but if you can maintain the muscle you had when you were overfat, isn't it like an unintentional bulk? You have more muscle than you might have if you'd never gained weight, no?
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.
Please excuse me if I'm going a little off topic, but if you can maintain the muscle you had when you were overfat, isn't it like an unintentional bulk? You have more muscle than you might have if you'd never gained weight, no?
I like to think of my weight gain in those terms!
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.
Please excuse me if I'm going a little off topic, but if you can maintain the muscle you had when you were overfat, isn't it like an unintentional bulk? You have more muscle than you might have if you'd never gained weight, no?
Yeah technically I think thats true. I mean presumably if you become obese then day to day moving your mass around you are probably building muscle underneath and then if you manage to shed that extra fat without losing the muscle you basically bulked up. If I became 260 pounds I probably would have a higher lean mass than I do now and if I then managed to get back down to 160 without losing muscle I'd probably look better than I do currently. But its a lot more efficient and a lot better for your health if you do a cleaner bulk intentionally than if you just get obese and cut later. Can't imagine accidently becoming obese and then losing weight is a good approach to health.
Also I've never been obese, only been overweight. I imagine if you are truly obese and have like 100 pounds plus to lose its a lot harder to actually maintain your muscle during that loss.3 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Short answer is no. Long answer is you might make a tiny initial gain but that won't continue and it won't be a significant amount.
Personal experience (its an anecdote of course but may as well share). I trained hard including lifting for 6 months. I tracked both my weight and my lean mass through bodyfat percentage measuring (calipers). I lost 28 pounds (about a pound a week so 500 deficit like you) and my muscles looked considerably more defined and I was significantly stronger. See my profile pictures for the progress shots between February and July of 2014.
That said during that time my lean mass did not change at all. I dropped fat, I maintained my muscle mass. No gains.
Please excuse me if I'm going a little off topic, but if you can maintain the muscle you had when you were overfat, isn't it like an unintentional bulk? You have more muscle than you might have if you'd never gained weight, no?
I like to think of my weight gain in those terms!
Yep! When I put my weight on, I was just doing a very long bulk.
My weight loss has just been a long cut. Legit. 2
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