Title says it all, i want to lose weight and also build some muscle, ive have been hitting the gym and cutting my calories by 500-900cal for the past two months, while i am seeing some muscle growth, its not very substantial or something people around me will notice, ive also lost about 2kgs which is not much so i am thinking of doing a 200cal surplus for a month to see how it goes I wanted to get some advice as well as read other people’s experiences
my best advice is: keep going. Dont stop. Your doing great. Remember if you are building muscle mass you ought to get heavier. The scale is not the best indicator for your fitness. Ive even heard this as a reason to go diet only. If “diet” for you means healthy eating, go ahead, but dont starve yourself.
What i am trying to figure will/is being on a deficit will hinder my muscle growth… coz i feel like 2 months is a long time, i feel like i should have atleast have somewhat noticable muscle growth from what i have heard…
Someone Brand new to working out will get newbie gains, in the first year of working out a young male can expect to put on around 10lbs of muscle. So around 0.8lbs of muscle a month. But it’ll be front heavy, but even at like 1.5-2lbs a month, fat is less dense then muscle so if you’re losing more fat than muscle you are gonna look smaller.
Look for tone not muscle growth, muscle growth isn’t fast, it’s a slow process and one day you look back at year old pictures and go “damn…”
I’m not well versed in recent research in this area. But muscle growth is expensive, keep your protein intake up. Have a good dose of protein within 2hrs of exercise.
What is your gym routine? You need to be consistent, at least 3 times per week and lift to fatigue at least 3 sets of ‘x’ .
Edit: Most importantly this will take quite some time. So do it in a sustainable way. Don’t worry about scales for weight as your weight loss and muscle gain won’t give you accurate representation of your body’s changes
Yeah gym is expensive lol, as for the routine i lift weight 5-6 times a week and do cardio 3-4 times a week
Are you a beginner? Lifting 5-6 times a week is a bit much, even for an experienced lifter, but especially for someone new.
What kind of lifting are you doing? Olympic lifts? X sets of y? Keeping track of your weights and increasing when you can?
Yeah i am, actually i (was) on a vacation and started hitting the gym just because i was bored and also wanted to get in better shape, so thats why i went 5-6 times a week, i dont do olympic lifts, i only use 4-5 machines (Chest, Shoulder, leg press, pulldown etc)for each major muscle grp I perform 3 sets of 10-12 reps and when i feel like they are getting too easy, i increase the weight…
Yeah it will. Building muscle and losing fat can happen simultaneously and building muscle can help lose fat, but you need a surplus to maximize muscle gain and you need a deficit to maximize fat loss.
If you want to prioritize muscle building you can do bulk and cut cycles with extended cuts to keep losing fat, but you will probably gain fat during bulking.
To grow muscle you need fuel. There is a reason Brian Shaw eats 10+k calories a day.
If you want to lose fat you need to burn calories faster than you eat them.
That is why people looking to “get shredded” will run a bulk then cut cycle. Eat and train like a madman to build them muscle, then go into a caloric deficit (eat less than you burn) and train as hard a your body will let you.
Brian Shaw is also 6’8" and 400lbs of muscle and he didnt get there by eating 10k calories a day, he stays there by eating 10k calories.
Muscle is metobolcially active, about 20cals a day, so if (subtracting bone, organs, etc) he’s 280lbs of muscle, 5,600 calories is literally just to keep is muscle from melting away.
He also exercises as a job, probably close to 2k cals a day.
You need about 1200kcal a day for metabolic function.
So he’s burning ~ 8k calories a day, the 10k calories is also when he’s bulking up so he’s trying to put on size both fat and muscle tissure that already exists (it can take years to build 20lbs of muscle, but lose it and try and put it back on and you can do it in months).
Tldr: You do not need to eat absurd amounts of calories to out on muscle, just aim for ~200 calories a day more than your maintenance. Eating 5k calories a day when you are 5’9" and 170lbs at 20% body fat will not magically make you put on lbs and lbs of muscle a month.
My point was that you need to be in a surplus to build muscle.
I agree, you do not need to be in an 8k calorie surplus to build muscle. That is excessive, but that is why he the most successful currently active strongman and we are not.