gain muscle eating at maintenance



building muscle or losing fat. it's usuallyrecommended to do one or the other, especially if you're not a beginner. but is it possibleto do both at the same time? two training routines dominate most fitnessand bodybuilding circles. bulking, where you eat a caloric surplus to gain weight and buildlean mass, and cutting, where you eat a caloric deficit to lose weight and burn fat. usuallyyou have to choose between one or the other for months and cycle them back and forth toreap their benefits. but, there are some experts that have touted and promoted the possibilityof reaping both benefits at the same time. now, for beginners, it's very possible todo both simultaneously because their body is at a state in which there is a lot of roomfor improvement on both ends of the spectrum.

especially overweight beginners, even if theyeat a caloric deficit, they are primed for building muscle since they don't have muchto begin with and burning fat since they have so much stored away.for non-beginners, however, this is much harder to achieve. you might have to resort to recompositioning,or as fitness expert alan aragon calls it, "culking," a play-on word of bulking and cutting.and such a routine comes in all different shapes and forms. some recomp routines suggesta small bulking for a few weeks alternating with a moderate cut for one week. some routinesrecommend switching between the two on a daily basis. some try to influence the effects ofp-ratio, which deals with how your body breaks down or stores fat relative to muscle mass.some recommend weekly re-feeding phases, or

"cheat" days. some suggest eating just maintenancecalories while maintaining some form of resistance training. and others suggest eating at a surpluson your lifting days and a deficit on your cardio or off days. the concept for all arepretty much the same. no long phases of bulking nor cutting and maintaining a specific desiredweight range year-round while burning fat and building muscle.and for the most part, the science supports this possibility. in fact, the physiologicalchanges in a recomp routine is not much different than the changes from bulking and cutting.during bulking, hormones and body chemicals all start to shift towards anabolism, whichis to say that your body becomes very good at growing. only problem is that this meansnot only growing muscle but also growing in

fat. also muscle building slows down the closeryou are to your genetic myostatin limit, the protein that inhibit muscle growth, whichmeans you end up storing a lot more fat than building muscle the more fit you are. duringcutting, the opposite is true. the body's hormones shift to catabolism, which meansbreaking down body stores to use as energy, and initially most of it is from fat. butonce you reach a level of leanness, your hormones begin signaling your body to keep as muchfat for survivability's sake while shifting to protein and lean mass for energy instead,which means you'll lose muscle. when doing both at the same time, your bodydoes indeed shift between anabolism and catabolism. the only problem here is that this repeatedshifting doesn't allow much time for your

body to respond to the hormonal changes. you'llend up getting the benefits of anabolism, as well as the bad, and the benefits of catabolism,as well as the bad, but not at its most significant rate. you can build muscle, but it will takea longer time to do so compared to someone bulking and you can lose fat, but take a longertime than someone cutting. and it only gets tougher and tougher the more lean and muscularyou become. so to say that it can't be done would be alie, but doing so, you have to understand

gain muscle eating at maintenance,that getting it to work takes careful planningand will be a slower (pause) process. ask your health and fitness question in thecomments. please also come check picturefit on patreon and support this channel to keepmoving forward and answering all of your great

questions. thanks for watching!