can i build muscle at maintenance calories (im newish)

[21sd]

Can i build muscle if im eating at maintenance? im still new i guess because i can only bench like 170 and only been lifting like 7 months or something. ALSO i dont follow macros or anything i just eat like a normal person... would eating tons of protein carbs and fats my body needs make me build muscle and strength faster??? ive asked this a couple times but noone seems to give me a straight forward answer - idk if it matters but im 5"10 200 pounds male 20 years old thanks a lot been wondering this for a while

[SuffolkPunch]

Yes, I'd say so

Eat 3-4 meals a day at 4-5 hour intervals. Each meal should have a minimum of 30g of protein. Eat at least 2g of protein per kg of bodyweight each day.

[21sd]

Yes, I'd say so

Eat 3-4 meals a day at 4-5 hour intervals. Each meal should have a minimum of 30g of protein. Eat at least 2g of protein per kg of bodyweight each day.

wow i had no idea protein intake makes u build muscle faster and how much faster would i gain muscle and strength if i started bulking? (am i wasting my time eating at maintenance)? ALSO eating calories vs getting in enough carbs fats and proteins.. whats the difference in speed with muscle and strength growth?

[SuffolkPunch]

You will gain muscle more efficiently with a small surplus. IIRC, research seems to say that more than a 2-300 calorie surplus will mostly be fat gain and is not worth it.

With your stats, recomping is entirely viable.

I don't really understand the second half of your question.

[borislavsabchev]

You could even at a deficit, considering your stats. I would read the stickies here and over at the workout programs section and start tracking your diet and training though, if I were you.

[HStudio00]

You will gain more muscle eating in a slight calorie surplus than you will at maintenance. However, it's not an all or nothing situation. You can gain muscle at maintenance, it's just not optimal. Whether tracking macros or not, be sure to prioritize protein in all your meals, and if you're not going to track macros, at least learn to eyeball what 30 g of protein looks like because you should eat 5-6 meals per day with at least 30 g of protein per meal.

[mike33511]

It's hard to tell you for sure without you posting a picture, but if you're 5'10" and 200 lbs at your level of training, you most likely could stand to lose some fat.

If this is the case, I would definitely advise you not to bulk. Yes, you would probably progress faster in your lifts if you were to bulk, but there's a good chance you would gain quite a bit of fat, as well. I would try to recomp for a few months by eating at maintenance.

Note: you cannot "eat like a normal person" and expect to make any significant progress in the gym. For your stats, you need to shoot for at least 160g of protein every single day. I'm generalizing here, but I highly doubt that most non-lifters ever eat that much protein on a consistent basis. Try to eat about 40g of protein over 4 meals spaced throughout the day. This will take some effort on your part. Good luck.

[21sd]

You will gain muscle more efficiently with a small surplus. IIRC, research seems to say that more than a 2-300 calorie surplus will mostly be fat gain and is not worth it.

With your stats, recomping is entirely viable.

I don't really understand the second half of your question.

so recomping is where you just eat at maintenance and still build muscle? what i meant by my second question is if i eat random food without counting how much protein carbs and fats i eat ( just count calories and eat anything) how much slower will i build muscle and strength compared to if i got in however many macros my body needs?

[R5GT]

You will gain muscle more efficiently with a small surplus. IIRC, research seems to say that more than a 2-300 calorie surplus will mostly be fat gain and is not worth it.

.

How much more efficient is it gaining with a surplus over maintenance?

[SuffolkPunch]

How much more efficient is it gaining with a surplus over maintenance?

I've never seen a reliable answer for this. Since it has to be offset against time spent cutting too,

It probably becomes a particular issue for people close to their genetic limit. For example in a recent interview, one of the biggest proponents of recomping Menno Henselmans states that he only gained 1lb of muscle in the last year. He did this by bulking and cutting - and doesn't believe that a recomp would have worked at all.

[AntonisD]

It’s unlikely that you can recomposition at a good rate unless one, or more, of the following applies:

1. You are overfat and relatively new to resistance training – muscle building happens at a faster rate in beginners, while concurrent muscle building and fat loss is more likely to happen when you are carrying too much body fat because of improved calorie partitioning
2. You have recently corrected something you were previously doing very wrong with training/nutrition
3. You are returning to exercise from a long layoff – for reasons related to myonuclei numbers in training and de-training, concurrent muscle gain and fat loss is possible when getting back into exercise after a layoff.
4. You are using drugs that have repartitioning effects

[badz1337]

I've never seen a reliable answer for this. Since it has to be offset against time spent cutting too,

It probably becomes a particular issue for people close to their genetic limit. For example in a recent interview, one of the biggest proponents of recomping Menno Henselmans states that he only gained 1lb of muscle in the last year. He did this by bulking and cutting - and doesn't believe that a recomp would have worked at all.

Meno could also be right or wrong as usual Especially after a podcast with him on frequency and his take on deloads lol... " for lazy ppl and not needed" . If anything .. my suggestion is to listen 3dmj podcasts and also Mike Israetel .

[Mrpb]

Some examples of simultaneous lean mass gain and fat loss:

Obese beginners gained ~10 pounds of lean body mass while dropping ~16 pounds of fat in 14 weeks: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9309627

Lean beginners gained ~7 pounds of lean body mass while losing ~6 pounds of fat in 10 weeks: http://jap.physiology.org/content/85/2/695.full

Athletes gained ~2 pounds of lean body mass while dropping ~10 pounds of fat in ~8 weeks: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21558571

Experienced lifters gained ~3.3 pounds of fat free mass while losing ~3.5 pounds of fat in 8 weeks: http://www.jissn.com/content/12/1/39

Can i build muscle if im eating at maintenance? im still new i guess because i can only bench like 170 and only been lifting like 7 months or something. ALSO i dont follow macros or anything i just eat like a normal person... would eating tons of protein carbs and fats my body needs make me build muscle and strength faster??? ive asked this a couple times but noone seems to give me a straight forward answer - idk if it matters but im 5"10 200 pounds male 20 years old thanks a lot been wondering this for a while

Can you upload a picture?

If not, I'd recommend a small deficit for you. Then you can build muscle and lose fat. That's the fastest way to improve your body composition.

Meno could also be right or wrong as usual Especially after a podcast with him on frequency and his take on deloads lol... " for lazy ppl and not needed" . If anything .. my suggestion is to listen 3dmj podcasts and also Mike Israetel .

And Mike Israetel recommended bulking at 2 pounds per week for intermediates.

3DMJ usually give solid advice.

Menno believes in reactive deloading, which can work. The way Menno deloads makes sense in the way he trains. It doesn't make sense in the way Israetel trains.

[SuffolkPunch]

^ Slightly OT: I like to listen to Israetel as a counterpoint to the more radical stuff that Menno espouses.

One very good point he made about the hype around high frequency training is this: the data cited about experienced lifters not being able to cause as much muscle damage as beginners has a serious flaw in that it used equivalent workloads - but advanced lifters tend to use far higher workloads so it's not a good comparison.

Having said that, I still use high(ish) frequency - but based on the principle of 2x overloading and 2x non overloading sessions per bodypart per week. This has come about using the JTS principles (SRA cycle length) so it's consistent with both viewpoints.

[AntonisD]

From Eric Helms' Pyramid book:

"It’s also important to point out that these “body recomp” changes, where slight deficits or surpluses produce changes in both muscle mass and fat mass simultaneously, happen slowly. Even in the study example I used with overweight elderly men training for the first time, the changes occurred over a 4 month time period. It’s not as though large amounts of muscle can be gained while large amounts of fat are lost in a few short weeks, especially in well-trained individuals. This is why dedicated periods of purposeful fat loss and muscle gain are recommended."

He then goes on to recommend these numbers for a 180 pound male:

Beginner: surplus of 200-300 calories per day
Intermediate: surplus of 100-200 calories per day
Advanced: surplus of around 100 calories per day

[Mrpb]

I don't know, I would be quite happy with these rates of changes:

Obese beginners gained ~10 pounds of lean body mass while dropping ~16 pounds of fat in 14 weeks: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9309627
Lean beginners gained ~7 pounds of lean body mass while losing ~6 pounds of fat in 10 weeks: http://jap.physiology.org/content/85/2/695.full
Athletes gained ~2 pounds of lean body mass while dropping ~10 pounds of fat in ~8 weeks: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21558571
Experienced lifters gained ~3.3 pounds of fat free mass while losing ~3.5 pounds of fat in 8 weeks: http://www.jissn.com/content/12/1/39

Stu Phillips on recomping:

Do you believe that it is possible for people to gain muscle while in a calorie deficit to lose body fat? If so, does that ability differ from novice to very trained lifters with multiple years of experience?

Yes, it’s possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, but it requires a few things to be in place. First, protein has to be higher – up to around 2-2.5 g/kg/d [0.91-1.14 g/lb/d] (05.-0.6 g/kg/meal x 4 meals) – and timing of protein post-workout is perhaps more critical in this situation. I favour cutting carbs to promote fat loss, but wouldn’t say a drastic reduction is necessary. I’ve come to realize that weight loss is a very individual practice and what ‘works’ for some folks doesn’t work as well for others. I don’t think there’s any evidence that one method of weight loss is vastly
superior to another.

If you’re a novice and have, in all likelihood, more fat to lose then there’s more room to make changes so you may notice bigger relative shifts than if you’re an experienced lifter. Nonetheless, I think the simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain is possible in both, but if you’re already down to a low body fat level to get lower you may be compromising some lean mass since there is a point when no amount of protein and lifting can ‘rescue’ muscle loss. I don’t know where exactly that threshold is, but when your dietary energy drops below 20-25 kcal/kg my guess is most will start to struggle with muscle retention!

http://www.leanbodiesconsulting.com/...uart-phillips/

[SubWooferCooker]

Summary of a few studies in both trained and untrained people building muscle and loosing fat at the same time, some of these studies show SIGNIFICANT amounts of muscle also

[AntonisD]

Probably a good idea to take also into consideration the methods used to assess body composition as well as what "lean body mass" means

[Mrpb]

Yeah that's the problem. Very few studies actually measure muscle with the best methods; MRI or muscle biopsy.

This goes both ways though. People who say you can gain much more muscle by eating a surplus are also using LBM measurements to back up their point.

In reality we have very little studies that can really shed light on this question.

[AntonisD]

When in doubt, I always go with Lyle's advice

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/mus...ass-gain.html/

[Mrpb]

I'd rather go with Brad or Stu

The guys that actually perform the research and often see recomp happen even in advanced lifters.

[SuffolkPunch]

I'd rather go with Brad or Stu

The guys that actually perform the research and often see recomp happen even in advanced lifters.

I think so too. I prefer to look at calories as yet another tool to help produce an overload - if you are at maintenance or below and you can't make progress on the current calorie level, you can try increasing it to continue making gains. For experienced lifts it's often more a choice of small or no gains rather than large or small gains.

[Mrpb]

It probably becomes a particular issue for people close to their genetic limit. For example in a recent interview, one of the biggest proponents of recomping Menno Henselmans states that he only gained 1lb of muscle in the last year. He did this by bulking and cutting - and doesn't believe that a recomp would have worked at all.

I think that's true, someone who's been lifting that long will have a very hard time.

On the other hand, I remember Menno eats a fairly low protein diet with only 3 meals per day. If he would want to have any chance at building that ~1 pound of muscle per year without a real bulk, he'd probably have to maximise MPS through nutrition.

Also good to keep in mind: that estimate of 1lb per year is based on skin fold measurements, not very accurate.

[AntonisD]

I don't see how Brad disagrees with Lyle:

"The solution of course is to simply alternate shorter periods of mass-gaining (let’s not use the term bulking since it seems to cause people so many mental problems) where the goal is maximal muscle gains while accepting small amounts of fat gain before dropping into a short dieting phase to strip off the fat without losing any of the muscle gain.

Please read the bold bits carefully, they are the key to all of this. What’s ideal for most situations in my experience is to try to maximize muscle gain (smart training, slight caloric surplus) by allowing a small amount of fat gain to occur. While this causes the trainee to get fatter (this should be done without getting outright FAT), this also maximizes the rate of muscle gain. "

Note how many times Lyle says "maximize".

[AndroMuscle]

Yes, although it could depend on your activity level, metabolism, your workouts, how consistent you are how heavy you lift, etc. However, I am a believer in a few good meals a day, as opposed to six or seven, This will cause controversy but I freely admit i am not Phil Heath, I dont compete in bodybuilding, I simply want to be muscular. I can go into some details about my belief in aging and how a caloric restriction can delay aging as well if you want.

[SubWooferCooker]

There is always a small trade off

Eat at a surplus and you end up with some fat gain

Eat at maintenance and you "might" not build muscle at the optimal rate as you would in a surplus.

Eat at a deficit and you are constantly hungry all of the time and may gain less muscle than even at maintenance or not at all in a big deficit.

In the grand scheme of things ultimately in any given time frame each scenario likely works out to the same results,

Bulk at a surplus and you then have to diet to loose the excess fat accumulated and sacrifice time muscle building to do so, If you eat at maintenance and build muscle while simultaneously loosing fat, even tho it might appear to be slower in the end it works out basically the same . You can even bulk at a small surplus and then re comp without dieting again.

The body is an amazing thing overall energy balance always wins in the end.

[EjnarKolinkar]

Summary of a few studies in both trained and untrained people building muscle and loosing fat at the same time, some of these studies show SIGNIFICANT amounts of muscle also

You also have to be smart enough to recognize the actual data in some of these studies.

For example one can review the excellent figures in this study which often gets posted in this forum, and is in this thread somewhere I am sure:

http://jissn.biomedcentral.com/artic...970-015-0100-0
A high protein diet (3.4 g/kg/d) combined with a heavy resistance training program improves body composition in healthy trained men and women – a follow-up investigation

We could give all the credit to high protein, or we could recognize that for half of the data roughly, the lifters gained kilos. Fig 1 and fig 2 are worth a moment of analysis.

One very good point he made about the hype around high frequency training is this: the data cited about experienced lifters not being able to cause as much muscle damage as beginners has a serious flaw in that it used equivalent workloads - but advanced lifters tend to use far higher workloads so it's not a good comparison.

The hype did hit a fever pitch. I thought Israetel made good common sense points on high frequency.

[Mrpb]

I don't see how Brad disagrees with Lyle.

Different shades of grey. Brad and Stu confirm more readily that recomp happens in intermediates, Lyle is more of the opinion that you'll only see it in overfat beginners and people returning from lay off.

Also, while it's interesting to compare opinions of the 'experts', in my opinion it's also interesting to look at the literature.

For example, Lye said: "This phenomenon doesn’t happen in lean beginners for reasons I’m going to explain in a second."

The study I mentioned previously shows lean beginners gaining ~7 pounds of lean body mass while losing ~6 pounds of fat in 10 weeks: http://jap.physiology.org/content/85/2/695.full

Of course these guy were helped by noob gains, but their body fat pre training was only 12%. Hard to call that overfat.

[AntonisD]

Different shades of grey. Brad and Stu confirm more readily that recomp happens in intermediates, Lyle is more of the opinion that you'll only see it in overfat beginners and people returning from lay off.

Also, while it's interesting to compare opinions of the 'experts', in my opinion it's also interesting to look at the literature.

For example, Lye said: "This phenomenon doesn’t happen in lean beginners for reasons I’m going to explain in a second."

The study I mentioned previously shows lean beginners gaining ~7 pounds of lean body mass while losing ~6 pounds of fat in 10 weeks: http://jap.physiology.org/content/85/2/695.full

Of course these guy were helped by noob gains, but their body fat pre training was only 12%. Hard to call that overfat.

Interesting study, thanks.

I wish we had a little more info on what kind of training they were doing before. This is all the info given:
"Inclusionary criteria were1) training for at least 3 days/wk for at least 1 yr, 2)V˙o 2 max ≥40 ml ⋅ kg−1 ⋅ min−1, and 3) BF between 9 and 20%."

[muruku]

couple of questions...

OP, are you happy with the way you look?

What are your goals?

Do you mind posting up a picture?

What's your current gym routine?