So for the last ten years I have been doing almost exclusively strength work with some hypertrophy for my arms and traps. I’ve had decently low body fat except for the trouble area around the middle. Not so much a spare tire as maybe a bike inner tube. Just could never get rid of the small love handles. Tweaked my back on deadlifts and had to back off for a little bit. Decided have two months until a vacation to Costa Rica so maybe now is the time to lean out. Look good in the pictures you know. So I’m a couple weeks away and I’ve dropped a significant amount of body fat. My abs are visible even after first thing in the morning. Love handles are pretty much gone. When I get back from this trip I want to return to my usual workouts as my body has recovered from the back problem. OK Long lead up but here’s my question. Obviously to add strength or to add muscle I need to be in a calorie surplus but of course, now that I’m lean, I want to stay lean as possible. And I’m not in a rush to be bigger or stronger. This is a life long journey for me. What are some recommendations on the calorie calculation to eat just enough to slowly gain muscle and strength, while not losing my lean physique. All tips and suggestions are welcome. Thanks.
Add 10% at a time and assess. The mirror is best, but you can also keep an eye on rate of gain. After the first week, more than 1/2 lbs a week and you’re probably getting fat.
If you want to share more specifics (meals, training plan, schedule, cardio, etc), I can give you my thoughts where/ how I’d add the calories; others likely will too. The key is a small change at a time and assess, though.
Congrats on getting lean!
This sounds like a job for our resident super hero @QuadQueen !
You’re losing weight, so you’re in a “Deficit.” To stop the weight loss, you’ll add calories to “Maintain” this new weight. And even though you’re calling it “maintenance” it will be more calories than you’re eating now.
So your metabolism will increase. You’ll have more energy, so you’ll do more work. And you’ll be able to build muscles. Which will mean more metabolism. And lower body fat.
As a result you will experience Magical Lean Gains. Bigger and leaner. It will be awesome. For 10 or so weeks.
After awhile you’ll get tired and hungry, so you’ll start to eat more. Staying fueled up for the big workload you’re doing. Or “Bulking.” It will be cool because you’ll be huge and strong. Then, after some time, 10ish weeks, you’ll start to feel fat.
So you’ll start Cutting calories to lose fat. And gradually cutting the workload so you can survive to low calories. At first it will be fun to see your muscles popping out again. Then after about 10 weeks you’ll start feeling scrawny and weak, so will will start the whole process over again.
Sounds like you want to do “maingaining”.
There’s already a lot of really good advice here, but I’ll chime in.
My first question(s) - You mentioned that you’ve lost weight/leaned out. Are you still losing weight or are you maintaining? If you’re currently maintaining, then just follow @TrainForPain 's recommendations. If you don’t want to calculate 10%, just start by adding 200-250 calories/week until you hit that 1/2 pound of weight gain/week. If you’re still losing, you can do the same thing to figure out where your maintenance level is, or you can take a more aggressive approach by adding 500 calories/week.
I would suggest weighing in once per week and don’t adjust anything day-to-day. Give any changes at least 1 week to register. Two weeks is even better, but since you’ve got a time limit here, go with weekly.
Since we don’t know what you’re current diet looks like, it’s tough to make recs there, but keep your protein intake consistent across your meals, focus your carbs around your workouts and shoot for a moderate fat level.
Keep us posted on your progress and/or provide more details as you go and we can get you dialed in better, but this is a good place to start.
Wow great advice and so quickly too! I’ve been running at a deficit of between 300-500 calories below maintenance. Just adjusting on how I feel mostly day by day. If I’m real sluggish I’ll eat up to only a 300 cal deficit. Macros are about 40/30/30 protein/carbs/fat but also adjusted that for how I feel. If I added calories it was protein. I have two weeks left before my vacation and when I return I’ll go back to my usual plan. Less focus on aesthetics and more on strength work with a little show muscle work. The cumulative advice seems to be to be: Add a little. Let it ride. See how it effects me and adjust as necessary. I feel real good about my connection to how my body is doing so I’ll take all of your advice into account. I love the term “maingaining” it’s literally what I’m trying to do. Great responses for my first post. I’ll revisit this with progress when I put it into action after my vacation. Thanks!