Build muscle in a calorie deficit

Nothing significant. That said, since you have to eat at a surplus to realize the kinds of gains you really want, take the time now to cut to your goal bodyfat % before lifting. Otherwise after you gain all the fat that comes with a bulk, you'll have twice the work to do when cutting.

Continue to lift heavy to maintain what you have, and consider any size gains to be a bonus. Muscle glycogen storage (chemical energy) and water retention also makes them look bigger, without having actually built any new muscle tissue. This is what creatine does, fyi. And what creatine giveth, creatine taketh away.

So if your wanting to lose weight and get more defined muscle you can lift and eat at a deficit. but once you have lost enough weight, then you can up to a small surplus to build that muscle and not lose anymore????

Yes. And the smaller your surplus, the more your gains will be muscle. They will be slower tho.

Most research and the experience of people much more experienced than I indicate that (absent chemical enhancement) under completely optimal conditions, eating at a large surplus and lifting regularly following a solid program, that adding about 2 lbs of muscle a month is about the most that anyone can hope for.

So, if under optimal conditions you are limited to 2 lbs a month of muscle, how much do you think you can add under suboptimal conditions?

Adding muscle is _hard_.

Yeah for example, when I started I weighed 160lbs with *around* 20% bodyfat. Then I continued to lift weight to maintain the muscle, and lost weight down to 142 at 15% bodyfat.

Woah. You didn't "maintain" anything, that's a loss of about 8 pounds of LBM, or nearly half of the total lost weight.

In a non-athletic individual, it's possible to gain noticeable muscle quickly (even in a caloric deficit).

In a non-athletic individual, it's possible to gain noticeable muscle quickly (even in a caloric deficit).

I can even attest to this, as it happened with me, but it's miniscule, and I'm not even sure it wasn't just my current muscle showing through as the fat came off. Be smart...

You noticed it, that's all that matters.

How much muscle in pounds is irrelevant to how you feel when you look in the mirror and see those peaks and feathers.

it's possible in 4 different scenarios. And note I said possible. Even with these 4, it's more likely you're not gaining anything.

1) You're really fat

2) You're completely untrained

3) You used to be really muscular, lost it, and are trying to regain it

4) On roids.

As you can see, the above are all temporary situations that will eventually result in plateau. Once that happens, the only way you're gaining lean mass is eating above your tdee with a proper resistance training template.

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So if your wanting to lose weight and get more defined muscle you can lift and eat at a deficit. but once you have lost enough weight, then you can up to a small surplus to build that muscle and not lose anymore????

Yes. And the smaller your surplus, the more your gains will be muscle. They will be slower tho.

Thats what I guessed, too. I'm cutting, but I want to get strong and maintain whatever muscle I do have. After cutting, I can focus on bulking if I want to....thanks for the clarification!

BUMP BUMP

I said *around*... my bf% was higher when I started. I didn't bother with the math for that figure, but I guess it was closer to 24%.

Even if it was all the way up at 24%, you still lost lean mass. And the difference between "around 20%" and "around 25%" is huge, especially visually, it would be quite difficult to confuse the two.

Here's the math genius:

Start:
LBM: 121
TTL M: 160

1 - (121/160) = 24.4%

End:
LBM: 121
TTL M: 142

1 - (121/142) = 14.8%

I wasn't tested at 160 lbs, only at 142 after I dropped the weight. I might have had a bit more LBM at the start, but all the legitimate literature I've read indicates that lifting heavy during a deficit maintains muscle, and for exactly the same reasons that lifting heavy during a surplus builds it.

Here is one article in particular, from a bodybuilder, who has a PhD in the field: http://www.simplyshredded.com/layne-norton-the-most-effective-cutting-diet.html

A quote:
"As a general rule of thumb, losing 1 lb of bodyweight per week will allow one to retain most of their muscle mass. One can probably lose up to 1.5 lbs per week and retain most, if not all of their muscle mass (provided their training and nutrition are optimized)."

And before you chime in, my training was sufficient, and my diet was too. If I lost anything, it was negligible, and you're just being a pain in the *kitten*.

I think what's really missing from this is how we aren't necessarily after "muscle gain" in the sense that we want total lean mass to be higher. I mean, yeah, we do. But probably, or at least in many cases because it will give you a more desirable appearance. Of course it's enhanced by fat loss but that's not the only thing going on.

Or at least, that's confused with "your deltoids, lats, forearms, traps, biceps, and triceps will be bigger". Because even if you lose some total muscle, those might grow. So you take a measurement, and say "I gained muscle". It's true. And, not true. You lost a bunch "somewhere" from the cut. But that doesn't mean the muscles you never used in your life before didn't grow.