Building Muscle - How to Eat

inlander

I hope this is an appropriate forum to post this. The ladies that run this forum are my new role models, seriously.

Anyway -- I am currently in the process of losing weight/maintaining my current muscle mass but once I reach my goal weight (23 pounds away), I'm not really sure what to do. My goal is to maintain my weight at 160 (I'm 5'10") while trying to strengthen the muscles I have. Is this possible while eating at maintenance (plus eating back exercise calories)? Or do I need to eat at a caloric SURPLUS to strengthen my muscles/"tone"? Will I be gaining muscle weight just by strengthening the muscle I have, or would I only gain muscle weight if I were gaining new muscle?

I have read conflicting things about this so I'm not sure what to do. I guess there's a difference between building *NEW* muscle (which isn't that important to me) as opposed to strengthening what I already have?

I hope this makes sense. I would prefer answers (and not mere speculation) from people who have actually done this because I keep reading conflicting information all over the interwebz and I don't want to ruin my progress by taking the wrong advice.

Thanks in advance!

Raynn1

I think Kiki or Lucia are better suited for this than me, but I do believe that they eat at TDEE when they are working to build muscle. Then they cut to 15% after a long period of time, to burn the fat off and help the muscle "come out"...

I hope they can explain better for you, so this is more of a bump for them:)

inlander

Thanks. I'll wait it out, then, but thank you for your contribution! I get very confused, haha.

jenniekw

I heard it's at a slight surplus.

harlanJEN

Hey hey !!!

To BUILD/ gain muscle ...need to eat at surplus. Over TDEE/ maintenance.

Eating at surplus is needed to build muscle ...will also be gaining some fat. This is BULK. After bulk you CUT to get rid of fat you gained while building muscle. Cut must be controlled to minimize loss of muscle u just worked to gain.

Your question was ..you want to strengthen muscle you already have and/or recomp fat to muscle? Is a bit diff from triying build/gain muscle. I Think this is what u meant.

Just re-read your post. Yep! Want to maintain weight, strengthen/maintain muscle u have. Some recomp will be going on . Eat at TDEE.

Jen

harlanJEN

Here you go !!! Nice article to read on subject of losing fat/ building muscle. Is a fine line here ... But basically is what I'm trying to do during this phase of my journey .

http://scoobysworkshop.com/gain-muscle-lose-fat/

inlander

Thanks so much! I'll take a look at that.