"You can't build muscle on a calorie deficit"

As I've said, though, it's mostly a moot point. If one can get stronger, add muscle size (due only to water+glycogen), and also have his/her muscles look dramatically bigger still merely due to uncovering them, then that's probably good enough to most people who are trying to lose fat. As a practical matter, that's a reasonable facsimile to 'adding muscle' for the non-bodybuilder, I'd think.

Well, now we're into the difference between 'building muscle' and 'creating a reasonable facsimile of more muscle mass'.

The latter is absolutely, 100% possible in a calorie deficit. But doesn't lead to the conclusion 'you can build muscle at a deficit'.

I've wasted many months of my life listening to people on these forums and getting no results because of it. I now trust MFP recommendations for the most part.
I've always wondered about this particular thing though. So when you get muscles while in a calorie deficit, are you revealing the ones you already had by burning the fat around them or building some muscle while burning fat?
In my experience I could see more muscle definition, but I had not lost any weight AT ALL while eating in a calorie deficit, so I wondered "Is it possible that I burned fat and built muscle simultaneously"?

You can gain Lean Body Mass (LBM) while in a deficit, because LBM is everything that is not fat, and that includes water, and muscle, and a bunch of other stuff.

Which is fine if it's just water, because that is increased metabolism too. Water usually stored with glucose, because now you are doing more and body needs immediate energy source.

So for a while you can gain LBM, if newbie to lifting and enough fat to spare maybe 1 or 2 lbs of muscle over 6 months if doing the lifting right and eating right at reasonable deficit too.

While LBM is increasing, you can be losing fat - weight stays the same.

And it don't take much fat loss to make inches of difference, you've probably seen the pictures comparing 1 lb of both, and the volume of both.

Here's study of men making a trade of LBM and fat at equal rates while eating at maintenance level even no deficit for 16 weeks, mere 3.5 lbs traded. They didn't scan for actual muscle mass changes though.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/778012-potential-muscle-gain-lifting-and-metabolism-improvement

Please look over my first post (its on page 5). Thermodynamically, its really not possible to build muscle while on a deficit. Your boddy is not going to store more glycogen if its maintaining its mass

I've wasted many months of my life listening to people on these forums and getting no results because of it. I now trust MFP recommendations for the most part.
I've always wondered about this particular thing though. So when you get muscles while in a calorie deficit, are you revealing the ones you already had by burning the fat around them or building some muscle while burning fat?
In my experience I could see more muscle definition, but I had not lost any weight AT ALL while eating in a calorie deficit, so I wondered "Is it possible that I burned fat and built muscle simultaneously"?

You can gain Lean Body Mass (LBM) while in a deficit, because LBM is everything that is not fat, and that includes water, and muscle, and a bunch of other stuff.

Which is fine if it's just water, because that is increased metabolism too. Water usually stored with glucose, because now you are doing more and body needs immediate energy source.

So for a while you can gain LBM, if newbie to lifting and enough fat to spare maybe 1 or 2 lbs of muscle over 6 months if doing the lifting right and eating right at reasonable deficit too.

While LBM is increasing, you can be losing fat - weight stays the same.

And it don't take much fat loss to make inches of difference, you've probably seen the pictures comparing 1 lb of both, and the volume of both.

Here's study of men making a trade of LBM and fat at equal rates while eating at maintenance level even no deficit for 16 weeks, mere 3.5 lbs traded. They didn't scan for actual muscle mass changes though.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/778012-potential-muscle-gain-lifting-and-metabolism-improvement

Please look over my first post (its on page 5). Thermodynamically, its really not possible to build muscle while on a deficit. Your boddy is not going to store more glycogen if its maintaining its mass

There is confusion of terms - I said LBM - which is NOT just muscle mass.

There is a big difference.

You can gain LBM on a deficit. Every single person losing inches and not losing weight proves it.

You just won't be gaining much if any real muscle mass. Unless you want to count the glucose stores and water in the muscle as muscle mass, which it's not.

Well I don't really understand why we are talking about "lean body mass" then, considering the title of this thread is "you can't build muscle on a caloric deficit". I didn't read through everything, I just put the fact of why we lose muscle mass while on caloric deficits

I've wasted many months of my life listening to people on these forums and getting no results because of it. I now trust MFP recommendations for the most part.
I've always wondered about this particular thing though. So when you get muscles while in a calorie deficit, are you revealing the ones you already had by burning the fat around them or building some muscle while burning fat?
In my experience I could see more muscle definition, but I had not lost any weight AT ALL while eating in a calorie deficit, so I wondered "Is it possible that I burned fat and built muscle simultaneously"?

You can gain Lean Body Mass (LBM) while in a deficit, because LBM is everything that is not fat, and that includes water, and muscle, and a bunch of other stuff.

Which is fine if it's just water, because that is increased metabolism too. Water usually stored with glucose, because now you are doing more and body needs immediate energy source.

So for a while you can gain LBM, if newbie to lifting and enough fat to spare maybe 1 or 2 lbs of muscle over 6 months if doing the lifting right and eating right at reasonable deficit too.

While LBM is increasing, you can be losing fat - weight stays the same.

And it don't take much fat loss to make inches of difference, you've probably seen the pictures comparing 1 lb of both, and the volume of both.

Here's study of men making a trade of LBM and fat at equal rates while eating at maintenance level even no deficit for 16 weeks, mere 3.5 lbs traded. They didn't scan for actual muscle mass changes though.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/778012-potential-muscle-gain-lifting-and-metabolism-improvement

Please look over my first post (its on page 5). Thermodynamically, its really not possible to build muscle while on a deficit. Your boddy is not going to store more glycogen if its maintaining its mass

There is confusion of terms - I said LBM - which is NOT just muscle mass.

There is a big difference.

You can gain LBM on a deficit. Every single person losing inches and not losing weight proves it.

You just won't be gaining much if any real muscle mass. Unless you want to count the glucose stores and water in the muscle as muscle mass, which it's not.

Well I don't really understand why we are talking about "lean body mass" then, considering the title of this thread is "you can't build muscle on a caloric deficit". I didn't read through everything, I just put the fact of why we lose muscle mass while on caloric deficits

Because that is exactly what confuses people. And that includes the post I was actually responding to.
And if you read through the posts, you will clearly see the confusion thrown out by both sides actually of the argument.

Someone says they aren't losing any weight but they can see their muscles better, or fat is dropping off their waist.

And almost everyone on their friends list says .... "Oh, you are gaining muscle and dropping fat" or similar thought.

There is this other huge category of what is actually happening - gaining LBM and maybe not a spec of muscle, while dropping fat and maintaining weight.
Happens to many starting up cardio exercise, because body is storing more glucose to meet the endurance demand placed on it.
The reason some can actually GAIN weight while in a deficit. Great, required, metabolism increasing water weight.

Bump to read later

I think that if you are pretty fat, flabby and weak, that you can definitely trim fat and get stronger and harder muscles...for a while. I certainly have in the nearly six months that I have been exercising at the pool (which is a combination of cardio and resistance work) and lifting. But, when I started exercising, I was at 32-33% body fat (currently at 27%). I suspect that to make any further gains though, that I would have to eat at a surplus, which I am hesitant to do until I get my body fat down to 25%. But I will continue to challenge my muscles in order to try to keep the muscle wastage to a minimum and fat loss to a maximum.

I read this weight-lifting study that they did at a nursing home somewhere. They had to supplement the residents' diets with protein drinks (because of poor appetite) and then they started them lifting weights. They all lost body fat (on average, four pounds) and most of them gained, on average, four pounds of muscle during the two-month study. This is great news because it means that you CAN sometimes build muscle and lose body fat at the same time, depending on how fat/flabby you are. I'm guessing this example is likely illustrating what they call "newbie gains". One of the main health problems with the elderly is sarcopenia (loss of lean body mass) due to lack of exercise and loss of appetite. This leads to falls, fractures and many other assorted health problems as a result.

Then why did you make your comment if you understand...as I was not saying what you said I was?

He said he gained muscle and gained strength. He wasn't saying that he had gained strength because of the muscle. Which is what I was presuming you meant by 'Strength gains =/= sarcoplasmic hypertorphy'.

/smh

=/= means does not equal.

He assumed that he had gained muscle due to strength, I was correcting him.

Perhaps you're right, but it just seems counterintuitive. About 4 years ago, I lost about 40 lbs over the course of several months and my bench press went from about 210 to exactly 310 during that same period of time. It's just hard to fathom that happening without any gain in muscle at all.

I agree that you can't add a ton of muscle at a deficit, that it's far easier to add in a surplus, and that bodybuilders (who have little excess fat and who are near their muscle growth peak) will necessarilly lose muscle in a cut, but I'm just not so sure the average MFP user who has excess fat can't build a little muscle while also losing fat.

Suppose without body scans, we'll all just have to agree to respect each other (if not each other's opinion!) and to recognize that the right course of action is the same either way (keep lifting). Have a good rest of the day.

The point is that fuel is needed to create muscle.

By eating at a deficit, you are exhausting all that fuel just in the process of living, so the body has none left for niceties like building non-essential muscle. Your body's concern is survival, not how good you look on the beach, so it will not expend precious energy on non-essential muscle.

There are three things happening to you -

1. You are losing fat, which is revealing muscle.
2. A small degree of 'newbie gains' which are possible at a deficit.
3. A small degree of water retention in healing muscle. i.e. a 'pump'

Weight loss = body in a catabolic state
Muscle gain = body in an anabolic state

Catabolic and anabolic are opposite. While many professionals believe it is possible to rapidly switch between the two states in order to bulk and cut simultaneously, this is out of reach of most of us who aren't highly trained athletes with a team of trained coaches and nutritionists behind us.

You can also get muscle gains if you were once in shape but then lost it.

I lost 14 pounds of fat and gained 2 pounds of muscle on a 12-week deficit, measured by a hydrostatic weigh-in. It's really rare to be able to do that - you cannot do it losing quickly - and I'm eating at maintenance + to build some additional muscle before losing the last of my fat because I know building muscle on a deficit is not sustainable.

Is this kind of like the same "scientific theory" where they claim that saturated fat causes heart disease?

To be honest, I really don't think they really know 100% what the deal is. All I know is that I HAVE put muscle on while on a deficit and continue to do so.

Yep. I have done this too. It is not easy to put on muscle while losing fat, but it can be done. I drink the whole milk too.

in 5 months time i lost 13.5 lb of fat and gained 3.5 lbs of muscle, all while eating at a deficit with 1450 calories (this included exercise calories burned). this was measured both times by the bod pod. during that time i worked out 3-5 hours a week with strength training and some cardio.

EDIT: that should be 3.5 lbs of LBM, not necessarily muscle. i hope it's muscle