Can you gain muscle with a caloric deficit?

matbas98
matbas98 Posts: 25 Member
in Introduce Yourself
A very good afternoon, Matteo here.

A week ago I started my gym journey and I’m wondering now as a beginner, can you gain muscle while in a caloric deficit?

I’m a skinny fat and I would love to do a body recomposition.

I’m 163 cm and 62.8 kg at the moment.
I’m eating 1800 kcal (40% carb, 30% fat, 30% pro.).

As I go to the gym 4x a week and I’m not doing cardio, I set MFP with an active level, is that correct or should I set it as light active?

My tdee should be around 2200-2300.

Please help me as I’ve got lots of doubts ahah!

Replies

  • 1ns1d3_0u7
    1ns1d3_0u7 Posts: 48 Member
    edited September 2023
    Yes - I've been on a calorie deficit since I started and am doing a powerlifting program. I'm also the strongest I've literally ever been. You need to prioritize your protein intake to ensure the weight you lose is fat and not muscle. I shoot for 150-200 grams of protein per day. You can calculate your needs online by weight or height, it's up to you. I work out 5-6 days a week and do a mile walk roughly 3 times a week.
  • nossmf
    nossmf Posts: 12,057 Member
    First off, welcome @matbas98, to not only MFP but also the brotherhood of iron. Glad you're here!

    Is it possible to gain weight in a dietary calorie deficit? Theoretically, yes. Growing muscle requires calories; those calories can come from food eaten, or from body fat releasing stored calories. So long as you keep your protein high and activity level high enough, a body can do what you're wanting.

    However, here's the bad part: very, very few people actually are able to make this happen. In part it's a discipline thing, but in larger part it's because of the way body fat releases its stored energy. As a general rule, only people who are morbidly obese can actually make this process work, and with your stats of 163 cm / 62.8 kg (or 5' 4" by 138 lbs for us Americans), you certainly do NOT qualify as morbidly obese.

    Some people like the above poster can make it work, but even if you have the perfect genetics, the perfect diet, the perfect workout routine, and perfect discipline to stick with it all, it's gonna take a looooooong time, many months at least. If you're hoping for faster results measured in weeks, you're better off concentrating on one thing at a time, either eating in a surplus and trying to gain muscle, or eating at deficit and trying to keep the muscle you already have while losing the fat which is hiding it.

    As for which settings for MFP, I think "active" is too aggressive for your situation since it'll have you eating more every day than you may need, unless your job has you on your feet all the time (teacher, waiter, construction). If you sit at a desk, "lightly active" is better, though I personally have mine set to "inactive". I then manually add my workout calories burned when I want to maintain/gain weight, or do not add workout calories if I'm looking to lose weight.

    Were I in your situation, I would have MFP set to inactive, goal of losing half a pound (one quarter kilo) per week, keep protein high (at least 100g per day with a goal of 140g on days you lift), keep on lifting, and within a few weeks you'll be amazed at how much "bigger" your muscles appear. The reality is they haven't grown, merely stayed the same while the fat blanket concealing them has receded. Once you get your body fat percentage down to the low teens, then you can reverse course to gaining a quarter kilo per week, keeping all other things the same (maybe a tad more protein, easy to do with the extra 500 calories per day, increasing to 120g by 160g on non-training and training days respectively), to begin trying to add muscle.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,598 Member
    Good advice from nossmf above as usual.

    One thing I'd add: As a beginner to strength training, you could reasonably expect a fairly quick increase in strength early on. Strength is not exactly synonymous with muscle mass gain.

    Initial strength gain comes from better recruiting and utilizing existing muscle fibers (neuromuscular adaptation, NMA). Generally, that has to be mostly tapped out before the body will start to add new muscle fibers. Strength is useful in itself, so this is a good thing.

    Also, you're not very overweight at this point - BMI 23.6, well within the normal BMI range. While BMI isn't a perfect system, it's quite common for men to be at a healthy weight toward the upper end of that range. (The normal range is 18.5 to 24.9.) You may have a little extra body fat, but as mentioned above, you're far from obese.

    As you start strength training, at your current body weight, you may even notice that you start having more visible muscle definition early in the process. Strength challenge causes need for muscle repair, and muscle repair involves retaining some water in the muscle to support that repair. That can give a person a more defined appearance, which is also a nice thing.

    That relatively quick improvement in muscle definition may be especially likely for a man. (Women often have more of a all-over-the-body fat layer, whereas in men it can be more localized, often midsection. That means men's upper body can look more defined more quickly because that fat layer isn't hiding it as much.)

    The combination of early strength gains plus improved muscle definition sometimes makes people think they've gained new muscle mass when they haven't (yet). But those early changes have functional and appearance benefits, so they are good things in themselves.

    Even if you gain little muscle in a calorie deficit, you'll get benefits from your strength training, not least among them keeping relatively more of your existing muscle mass while losing mostly fat.

    General fitness/strength improvement can also improve posture, and from cases here where men have posted photos that they thought looked "skinny fat", it's pretty common that they have non-ideal posture that exaggerates the appearance of their abdominal fat. Improved posture can improve appearance even before fat loss or muscle gain.

    I'd encourage you to consider doing at least some cardio, too: Cardiovascular (CV) health is important, too, and cardio will burn a few more calories so that you can lose weight at the same rate while getting better overall nutrition. It's a myth that reasonable cardio burns muscles.
    Keeping the pace moderate will still have CV benefits, but will not have as much potential to interfere with your strength training recovery as more intense cardio may possibly do. (Recovery is where the magic happens, as the body repairs.)

    Best wishes!

  • matbas98
    matbas98 Posts: 25 Member
    I really appreciate you took your time to write your comments guys. Thank you very much! 💪🏼

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