building muscle...

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Okay. I've read that you can only build muscle on a deficit if you have a lot of fat to lose. What is the line between when you stop building muscle on a deficit? Is it more important to eat a surplus on the lifting days or the recovery days (during muscle repair)?

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  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    If you want to go for the body recomp method, which means slowly trading out fat loss with LBM and hopefully muscle gains (slow meaning less than 1 lb a month if at maintenance, longer if at deficit), then you'd want the 24 hrs post workout to be higher.

    You can accomplish that by using the MFP method first, still with reasonable deficit though, to at least eat more on days you exercise, calling a day 24 hrs post workout.

    That may require just shoving more of the days calories in to that range of time, unless you lift in the morning.

    But ever better, is slide 250 calories 24 hrs prior to lifting time, and in to time 24 hrs after the workout, so even more during repair.

    That's about as good as you'll get without bulking by eating above TDEE.

    As to when your body is too stressed to do that with low fat, never seen any studies point out when it happens exactly, you just kind get what you'll get, since everyone is different.
  • chuckles9189
    chuckles9189 Posts: 343 Member
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    thank you thank you for a reply!
    do you mean longer if at a deficit for muscle building and body recomp? as in I will lose less than a pound of fat a month with recomp at a deficit? It feels that way since my weight is the same.

    I've been at the same weight now (actually up from when I first started lifitng). I'm fairly certain I'm eating at a reasonable deficit, or really small based on my non changing weight. this has inspired me to take measurements. it's been a while. I'm going to make sure i'm not getting bigger.
  • ANewLucia
    ANewLucia Posts: 2,081 Member
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    Along with measurements take pictures. Pick an outfit and use same outfit, angles, poses, and distance from the mirror. During recomp you can measure and not change in spots you consistently measure, but have fat loss above or below measure point. So pictures are crucial during process.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    thank you thank you for a reply!
    do you mean longer if at a deficit for muscle building and body recomp? as in I will lose less than a pound of fat a month with recomp at a deficit? It feels that way since my weight is the same.

    I've been at the same weight now (actually up from when I first started lifitng). I'm fairly certain I'm eating at a reasonable deficit, or really small based on my non changing weight. this has inspired me to take measurements. it's been a while. I'm going to make sure i'm not getting bigger.

    Actually, if you got the TDEE close enough, with deficit, you'll lose fat still, but the improvements in LBM and perhaps muscle will be slower.

    So for a study with men eating at maintenance, 3.5 lbs of fat lost, 3.5 lbs of LBM gained, in 16 weeks.

    If you have a deficit then, just for example say 3 lbs of LBM gained in 16 weeks, but 4 lbs of fat lost. So you'd see 1 lb on the scale, and a bunch of inches gone, because 4 lbs takes up a bunch of space.
    That would be one minor deficit though, barely there.