Muscle weighs more than fat

rileysowner

You cannot gain muscle in a calorie deficit, either.

Yes you can. It is just difficult. An completely untrained body can do amazing things when it is exercised, thus using bodybuilders as an example falls down because they are very trained. The reason they need such a huge caloric surplus is 1) They want to pack on as much muscle as they can that is the whole purpose of what they do. 2) They are already trained and trying to add more muscle. Neither of those is true for a couch potato whose largest energy expenditure in the day was getting up to get another chocolate bar or bag of chips. Provide a good level of protein and exercise and some muscle will be built. Not the slabs of muscle bodybuilders put on, and not the muscle a person could put on in a caloric surplus, but I know for myself in the past year I put on muscle for the first six months while losing fat. Once I was at a fairly fit level the muscle gains stopped, but coming from only exerting myself to fill up my plate from the all you can eat buffet one more time, the exercise I did was a complete change and the effect on my muscle mass was to increase it. Of course that was not pure cardio but a mixture of cardio and strength training.