You Can Gain Muscle On A Calorie Deficit!!

There's no reason to believe you can't build muscle on a calorie deficit. Microtears still occur within the muscle tissue, and those tears must still be repaired. You've got all the fundamentals of building muscle mass.

With that said, it will go a LOT more slowly than if you were on a surplus. You will still have a net weight loss of course, since we're still bound by thermodynamics. I would suspect to see a slight muscle gain with a higher-than-normal fat burn, so you would have to work out substantially beyond standard cardio to make up the differences.

What about the 150lbs bench press improvement? He started at 135lbs. I wish I coulld improve that much w/o gaining any mass.

I think he provided as much info as reasonably obtainable. And it gets dismissed becuase it's not a quadrouple blind, havard funded test.

What this thread needs is more pictures of guys without their shirts on

The Bench Press Record (BPR) recognized the need for lifters and spectators to know all of the records across the nation and world with so many federations and The International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) is the governing body which overlooks most powerlifting and its federation.If you more interested in Powerlifting and want to know about the tips and suggestions to improve your bench press record ,Not only are we covering the Bench Press, but the Deadlift, Squat and Powerlifting in general will also be organized. I had gone through the post. Add one compound at most each cycle, as this sis the first keep less. If you start taking 2 pounds on your first cycle, and you have a reaction or side effect, You won't know which compound is causing it. First check all that consequences and then proceed. All the best.



bench press tips
Bench Press Max

tigersword & rtalencar85, I understand what you guys are saying about different, lighting, poses, angles camera's etc. can make a person look larger etc. But show me just one pic. out of the dozen or so pics I have posted that was taken in an earlier month that the camera, lighting, pose. angle etc. made me look larger than any pic. that was taken at a later date. Just one!!

2nd. Even if I got MRI.'s done it would not be considered proof here by people who doubt me. Why? Because I also posted that my measurements over the past 13 months have always stayed the same or increased. So my word isnt good enough and if my word isnt good enough about measurements than it wouldnt be good enough for MRI. results either. ( If my intent was to mislead people I could have easily made up MRI results and posted them) because they would just doubt the results just like they did the pics and the measurements. So basicly I have done all I could do. Thanks be polite and civil even though we disagree on this subject.
But I really would like to see some proof if anyone has some case studies etc. about how much LM. can be gained by gaining fat.
The knowledgeable people I have talked too said it is possible but not to the extent that people have stated here,

I'll see what I can find regarding LBM gain with fat gain and will get back to you. Also, I at least have been extremely careful not to post specific numbers. The problem with me saying 'You gained 80 pounds? Well 20 lbs of that was muscle' is that I have no basis for that claim. I have been very careful to say 'more of the muscle you have now is the result of your original weight gain than you probably think, and less of your current physique is the result of actual muscle increase during the cut than you probably think.' I can't speak to numbers directly without knowing a whole lot more about your circumstances. Yes you can gain marginal amounts of muscle mass in very specific scenarios (repair != new growth, and I'm also not going to specify numbers as they vary from person to person) but in comparison to the bulk/cut paradigm for that person it isn't much. You have already agreed with me on that, our difference in opinions is that you think weight lifting while cutting is important with the goal of increasing muscle mass. I think that weight lifting while cutting is important with the goal of maximizing muscle retention (and if you gain a small amount of muscle in the process that's great, but it shouldn't be the expectation). It's a small difference, but I believe it to be an important one.

I certainly recognize that my stance could be very frustrating for you. For all practical purposes you have posted absolutely everything that you could to define your point. I certainly don't expect you to have a slew of scientists following you around to peer review every meal/lifting session/bowel movement you may engage in. That's completely impractical. I also recognize that you have tried to provide more than just pictures (i.e. your measurements and such). While they are certainly impressive, I hope you can understand at least why I'm being skeptical (again, I don't think you're lying, just that I think the explanation for your results isn't what you think it is). I honestly don't think there's anything that you directly could have done that would change my mind in this regard; there are so many internal and external forces going on that could skew the results that no one under reasonable circumstances could definitively prove such a claim. It would take a 'quadrouple blind, havard funded test' for me to think otherwise.

I can think of scenarios in my own personal experience that are very similar. I've been lifting heavy again since January and have lost about 40 lbs thus far. My traps look WAY bigger than they ever did before I started lifting. Now I started at 315, power lifted in college, and am on a diet geared towards LBM retention (Rapid Fat Loss Handbook, it's a PSMF) so I have all the odds in my favor between obesity and coming off a long period of inactivity and getting adequate protein. The problem is that I didn't take specific measurements of my traps before I started this. I don't have any proof beyond the fact that they look a lot bigger and my clothes fit different now. Other things that were mentioned could also be at play here (water retention, glycogen storage, etc). It's impossible for me to separate actual muscle increases from the whole host of other bodily stuff that's going on.

I'm not going to try to come up with different reasons why your results mean you didn't grow new muscle. It certainly wouldn't change your mind and would, at worst, come off as a personal attack on you. That's not my goal. I just hope that, while taking into account the fact that I truly believe your progress has more to do with fat loss and pre-existing LBM than actual muscle gain on a deficit, you can recognize that I am not in any way trying to undermine your efforts or your progress thus far. Quite the opposite in fact.

Then how do you know you didn't gain muscle?

The direct answer is: I don't. In the same way I don't feel Pike's case proves muscle growth, my case cannot prove that muscle growth didn't occur. It's anecdotal. That was my entire point.



Also, the best study I could find (by 'find' I mean grab from one of Acg's posts) on short notice was:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/307/1/47.abstract

You can take this however you want, but the outside end of calories stored as fat in the study was 90%. In your case the worst case would be 7.4 additional lbs of LBM. If your diet had a lot of protein in it, that could be skewed more in favor of LBM. Take that amount, add a small amount of growth as a result of being overweight and a new lifter, and I think that would cover your results for the most part. That's my interpretation of the study anyhow.

Well you could also assume you did until you prove you didn't. But I'd think you rather assume you didn't and claim no one can.

I'd say he'd have a much harder time gaining muscle now vs before. But I don't think he was particularly obese and I also think a 150lb bench improvement on the basis of newbie gains and technique is stretching it a bit.

I never said you couldn't, just that they would be marginal and only under very specific circumstances. I have stated multiple times that I do think he gained some muscle mass, I just stipulated that I thought it was a very small amount. As for the 150lb improvement, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Under what conditions does he fall under? Obese? I can't see he was obese. Long layoff? That might account for his bench. I'm not sure if he's higher than before. I took a long layoff also but didn't lose 150lbs of my bench, nor did I gain 150lbs in the bench. Newbie gains? I don't think there is newbie gains if he's lifted before.

Seeing as how he started at 278, I think that qualifies as obese. Guessing his height at 6 feet, that's a BMI of 37.7. He'd have to be 6 foot 9 to have a bmi in the overweight range.