College Recomp?

[dax07]

Apologies for the length of my post but my situation and theory is complex.

Recently my diet has been anything but predictable. Some days I will eat a surplus (~3500kcal), some days I will barely get over my maintenance (~3000kcal), and other days I am in a deficit (<3000). All this is because financially I am screwed at the moment, my place of work closed down so I am basically doing whatever I can to eat as much as possible without spending too much money. My diet mainly consists of:

Full fat milk
Chicken breast
Pasta (with sauce)
Rice
Raisin Bran
Ramen Noodles
Canola oil (when I can stomach it and need more cheap calories)
Ground turkey
Wheat bread
Peanut Butter

Any day can be any random assortment of these things. It is the only way I can eat in college financially. I usually drink a half gallon of milk a day and eat a lot of peanut butter to get most of my protein and calories as these are really cheap sources. I am trying to bulk for the most part but I cannot eat above maintenance everyday because of time restraints and sometimes I don't have the appetite. My strength is still increasing quite dramatically (285 bench x5 up from 250 a month and a half ago) but my weight is stuck at ~190lbs. I have been up to 200 or so but I can't maintain it with my diet unstable.

What I have been noticing as well is that my appearance is changing. I am losing body fat while my strength is increasing, and also my lean body mass is increasing slightly. What I believe is happening is that on days I am in a surplus my body is building muscle ever so slowly, and on the days I am in a deficit I am maintaining my lean body mass and losing a little fat. Can anyone shed some light on this from personal experience? Also, I am lifting 6x/wk as Bryan suggests. (Either x2/day 3 day/wk OR 1x/day 6 day/wk) currently I am just doing upper body on mwf and lower on the days between, so I think it is really giving my body a stimulus to grow while at the same time burning a lot of calories ( I train fasted besides preworkout protein 20 mins before) because of such high frequency of exercise. Any info on similar situations would be great guys.

 

[Jester]

You aren't building muscle and losing fat simultaneously. Without particular hormone levels (puberty, gear), your body won't burn fat as an energy source when it is satisfying the energy requirements to build muscle.

Having trained in v.similar circumstances to what you're describing, my answer would be that your macro partitioning has become more efficient. You are storing glucose (as glycogen) with greater efficiency, and greater effectiveness - better at doing it, and doing it on a greater scale. This is perhaps the most pronounced side-effect of training full-body at a rate 5+ times per week (in my experience, at least).

I'm going to say that you're in deficit; probably due to combo of insufficient intake and exertion of exercise regime, that you're burning fat, but storing glycogen better. Your vascularisation will also be better, as will general circulation. These things all matter.

The possible alternative is that you're gaining muscle at a v.slow rate (minimal surplus once living+exertion is matched up against intake). In this alternative, you're gaining v.slow amounts of muscle, maybe you even have a beneficial p-ratio (though this alternative isn't dependent on that) and the impact, visually, is akin to blowing up a balloon; same or not significantly increased amount of fat is covering more muscle, ere go you appear bigger.


Too late for before&after measurements to support either alternative.

 

[dax07]

Thanks for the replies. I am not positive about what is happening yet though. I have been lifting for years and I have been doing HST for over a year now with fantastic results and I am getting near my genetic ceiling I believe and I am only 21 years old. I probably can only add another 10 or 15 pounds of muscle. But my meal timing is what makes things special. According to leangains it is possible to "build muscle, and lose fat" at the same time. Now it is not at the same exact moment because the body can only be storing energy or using energy, not both at once. But this mechanism can work to our advantage if certain things are done. I try to get in all my calories within an 8 hour window. Then I fast for about 16 hours, then I lift fasted. I know I must be burning fat at this point, if my body has been without food for 16 hours, then I lift for 45 minutes. Soon as I am done lifting I eat a huge meal almost until I puke. My body is extremely insulin sensitive because of 2 factors: The nature of resistance training itself, and fasting. Fasting increasing insulin sensitivity. I do take advantage of "anabolic window" that supposedly exists, so I believe that my body is recomping very slowly. I do believe that I am getting much better at storing glycogen which was a very good point I missed. When my glycogen is low (right after my workout it is at its lowest) I then spike the hell out of my insulin and eat tons of protein and carbs. I believe that when I do this that I can take advantage of building muscle slightly (not nearly as much as normal bulking) and when I am fasted and working out fasted I rely on more body fat which translates into a recomp. I won't know for sure until I check my body fat percentage and weight, then look at it again in a month or two and compare. Because if weight stays the same, strength goes up and bf% goes down I believe I must be recomping.

 

[Old and Grey]

Nice BP numbers for 190 pounds dax! You may be one of the rare few natural BBers that hits 2X body weight for 1 RM BP.

 

[dax07]

Thanks a lot I work really hard on it. I actually bench more than I squat which is no good haha. I switched to Olympic squats so I had to drop the weight because my quads weren't strong enough. But I am getting nice growth in that department as well. I really need to find a new job so I can afford some food!

 

[Sci]

Recomping is definitely doable the way you describe. It's basically super short periods of cutting followed by super short periods of bulking. It's very tricky, requires very good partitioning ratio genetics and a controlled fitness and diet schedule.
It sounds like you are in that category, enjoy it! At 35 years old and a stressful lifestyle, it's very difficult for me, so I go with traditional long bulks and long cuts.

 

[Jester]

Building muscle takes longer than the window you have before you're hypothetically burning fat again. Hell, digestion takes you hours.

I'm open to the argument that IF protocols might be the ideal way to bulk/LBM gain, in terms of minimising fat gains. But you aren't building muscle and burning fat during the same day, in terms of net gains and losses.

 

[HST_Rihad]

There's no reason why recomp (simultaneous muscle growth and fat loss) wouldn't be possible. In fact, it's quite normal for both to fluctuate independently. What most people mistake for muscle growth is really just rapid body weight growth from the extra food they eat, which inevitably gets stored as fat and water+glycogen in the muscles (determined by individual p-ratio). But true muscle tissue/nuclei growth can still happen slowly from the food we eat. I've simply realized that we're covering our energetic needs regardless of whether we're on a caloric deficit or not, mostly from the food we eat, and minimally from our stored fat (when on a deficit). The less body fat remains, the more of our daily calories need to come from food, because it gets harder and harder to mobilize the little fat left. And saying that specific hormone concentrations forbid us to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time is ridiculous in light of how quick burning some of the fat off can be with just 24 hours of fasting. It is true that these two processes of fat loss (catabolic) and muscle growth (anabolic) run optimally when in isolation, because they are governed by mutually exclusive hormones (insulin/glucagon+GH, meaning when blood concentrations of insulin increases after food intake, glucagon+GH decrease, and vice versa), we don't need a week or a year to switch between them, this is what night from day change is for, or more specifically, periods of being fed, and periods of being fasted. Like 15/9 for most people, or 8/16 for LeanGains IF setup, etc.