What happens when...

[slayy98]

You consistently stick to your workout regimen, but you don't meet your caloric needs for bulking, and instead, you just meet the caloric needs for maintenance? Do your muscles still grow and you stay leaner?

This has been happening to me for the past few weeks and my chest seems to be more developed.

Any ideas?

[zGwild]

Do your muscles still grow and you stay leaner?

Maybe

It depends on to many personal variables to give you a straight answer. Try it and then you will know. If you are more interested in the topic do a search for recomposition.

[SuffolkPunch]

You might be able to notice some fat loss in a few weeks but there is no way you could tell if you are still gaining muscle at a reasonable rate or not.

It's possible to gain muscle efficiently at just under maintenance but you need to pay extra attention to protein intake timing.

[Wildtim]

At the current time you are lucky to be gaining anything. Shortly, if you are really eating at maintenance, your workout will stall, you will not be able to add weight to the bar and you will not gain new muscle. You simply can not add significant muscle while eating at maintenance.

[slayy98]

At the current time you are lucky to be gaining anything. Shortly, if you are really eating at maintenance, your workout will stall, you will not be able to add weight to the bar and you will not gain new muscle. You simply can not add significant muscle while eating at maintenance.

Thank you! I'll go back to bulking then.

[davik]

youll get nowhere eventually

[RK42]

The fatter and less trained you are, the easier it is to recomp.

For example, if you're completely untrained, and say over 20% body fat, you should be able to get stronger while losing weight without much trouble.

If you take the other extreme, for example an advanced lifter at 10% body fat might not be able to gain any strength/muscle at all without being in a surplus.

I also think that there will most likely be individual differences. Not all of our bodies respond exactly the same. If you look at pretty much any study that measures strength or muscle gains relative to differences in training or nutrition, there tends to be a large variation in the data points. You may be able to see trends from analyzing statistics, but not everybody will respond the same.