bulking & body fat question

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millaxoxo
millaxoxo Posts: 30
in Health and Weight Loss
okay, this might sound dumb but i wanted to clarify. so let's say you clean bulk ( 100-300 over maintenece) for 5-6 months at 20% body fat. after the bulk, lets say you gained 6lbs muscle 11 pounds fat. Does this mean your body fat increased since you did gain some fat? or does the muscle "cancel" it all out? ( does that make sense? finding a hard time to explain)
so lets say i want to be at 16%bf ( female) and that im around 21% now. I do a clean slow bulk and gain 3 pounds muscle 5 pounds fat, if my body fat percentage increases wasnt this bulk a waste of time? and if i cut wont i just have to work twice as hard to lower my body fat percentage back down to where it was since its higher because of the bulk or do the gains that came from the bulk increase the speed?

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  • terizius
    terizius Posts: 425 Member
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    What you really have to decide is what exactly it is that you want to do. Are you looking to increase LBM (lean body mass)? If so, you are almost guaranteed to gain some body fat along with it and will have to cut to get rid of the extra fat you have gained (hopefully keeping the muscle mass in the process). Here is a link to a fantastic article that goes into this very question in detail. Let me know if you have any other questions after reading it :)

    http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/reducing-body-fat-percentage-by-gaining-muscle-qa.html

    Here's the summary:

    "Yes, gaining muscle mass can have an impact on body fat percentage but the effects are generally very small and I think it’s an inefficient way of approaching the goal [of lowering BF%]. Losing the same amount of body fat can not only be done much more quickly compared to gaining muscle, the equivalent fat loss has a much larger effect on body fat percentage compared to gaining muscle"
  • millaxoxo
    millaxoxo Posts: 30
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    thank you! that helped a bit, but I personally want to increase muscle mass/look more lean, I am going to try a clean bulk for a few months and just wondering if i'll be happy with the results. I am pretty skinny..have some fat but want more muscle mass. I know some fat gain is inevitable but hoping the muscle gain will make me look better?

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