05/10/2021
Because we love you and we want you to succeed.
How do you eat for muscle gains without getting fat? Understand the metabolism isn't a great multitasker. It likes to be building up fat & muscle (anabolism) or tearing them both down (catabolism). Trying to do both at once is the metabolic equivalent of patting your head & rubbing your belly. You can do it, it's just not so easy. The trick here is to understand you have 4-different metabolic toggles to pull:
1 – Eat less, exercise more. This will burn fat and muscle because it creates a pretty intense & wide calorie gap through both exercise & food. Think marathon runner or skinny fat.
2 – Eat more, exercise less. This will put on both muscle & fat through creating a calorie gap in the other direction. Think powerlifter or muscle-fat. That scenario is what most people try to do when they want to gain muscle. It works, but it often makes you look like you just put a jacket on top of two sweaters. It's not the best approach. This is usually creating a 500-calorie surplus or more, and that may be too much if the training isn't right.
3 – Eat less, exercise less. Think the little old lady in Paris who climbs four flights of stairs six times a day, but eats only half a baguette, a cup each of coffee and wine, a radish, and some cheese. She stays lean because she drives the calorie deficit through diet and moves enough to not become a skeleton.
4 – Eat more, exercise more. That's the toggle you want for muscle gain. Ramp up your food intake to a slight surplus so you can gain some muscle, somewhere between 15-20 times body weight in pounds depending on whether or not you're a hardgainer. If you tend to get "muscle-fat" easily, stay near 15 to start.
Now set your macronutrients to 40-30-30 (carbs, protein, and fat). You'll need the extra carbs. Insulin is, after all, the most powerful anabolic hormone in the body. If you can't get that fuel in the cell, you're not going to grow no matter how much testosterone you have.
Now turn on the training intensity using big lifts & high volume. This will amplify energy flux, reduce fat (or at least minimize its accumulation)& put mechanical pressure on the muscle to grow.