Guys with big arms. How?

[Jester]

Which is essentially eating at maintenance, no matter how it may be defined? Wow. Remember when you saw Brad Pilon write essentially the same thing - eating sensibly at maintenance and fasting once a week to keep fat growth in check - you then said it's impossible to grow muscle without eating in surplus.

No, he didn't.

Now, isn't THIS a stupid assertion? If you're working out and your weight doesn't change from week to week beyond +/- 2-3 lbs fluctuations, you ARE pretty much at maintenance, period. Muscle slowly grows AT maintenance (consisting of adequate protein), fat grows at a surplus.


Indeed, I became fat because I overate on purpose some time in the past. It takes a person to overeat by a mere 500 kcals once or twice a week while eating roughly at maintenance the other days, to eventually build up fat. I probably ate even more than that, more often.

Don't be moronic. If you are working out and your weight doesn't change then you didn't gain. Get over this myth of fat-less muscle gain.

2-3lbs a day to account for occasional binges, you don't have to let life pass by while you're leaning out You see, what charts or calculators tell us about our caloric needs are only approximations, nothing more. Eventually what matters is the amount of food that doesn't cause you to gain weight (and, more importantly, waist circumference). A calculator can't know your activity levels, even if it has ways to enter each activity level & timing, it may overestimate your needs. YOU can't know how much you spend for sure. Every day is different. If all you're looking for is a ballpark figure from which you can start tweaking intake up or down, your normal daily food is as good as any. To cut the long story short, this whole idea of meticulous calorie tracking while steering clear of certain foods is overhyped.


Yup, and that is called eating at maintenance. Any food you eat over that will get you fat and make you compensate on another day by eating a bit less.

Measure mass increases on your arms, chest, shoulders, thighs, etc. Measure fat increases on your waist.


Why do that if you can thwart fat gains altogether? Why spend more money on more food to make you fatter, with the idea to throw the fat away later?

You still can't gain muscle without fat. Take steroids if this is what you desire.

Totentanz, how many calories are required to make your muscles grow once you're past growing-up age? Did you ever think of how many calories you ate when your body, including bones, organs, muscles, skin was still growing? Despite everything, we grew. Why do you now think that it would take any measurable daily amount of extra calories to make your muscles grow in response to training? You're right, I prefer to think of a neutral fat balance as "maintenance" - same amount stored and burnt over short term. Whatever your muscle volume is any given day you're eating enough to maintain it, since you know that anything extra is going to get deposited in your fat stores. Muscles becoming bigger to accommodate for bigger loads is simply the "new" you. Of course your maintenance grows as your muscles grow bigger, but I don't think we should overfeed our bodies in advance, expecting to help them get bigger. All the extra food.. you guessed it, is probably stored as fat. You can't eat extra and expect muscles to deposit extra protein in them. They are not a storage unit, as opposed to our fat stores.

p.s.: needless to say, this all relates to folks training naturally.

1. People who under-eat whilst 'growing up' have low bone density, don't achieve their genetically predicted height (based on parents and height when born (essentially), generally have low body weight. This is all basically proving the maxim that under-eating = under-weight. Ere go, you've disproved absolutely nothing.

2. Maintenance, as a term, is already clearly defined. It means eating the amount of calories that means you don't gain or lose ANY weight over an extended/net period of time. Stop trying to alter definitions to support your contentions. Inadvertent or intentional, it's a rather condescending approach to debate.

They keep growing slowly yet consistently, they're just not big Maybe I just got too ahead of myself.


I'm on my way




It may be that I refer to as "maintenance" to what you call "bulking". How do you define maintenance then (assuming ongoing training)? Ah, let me guess: in your speak, "maintenance" is whatever you eat while on SD (no training) to keep the weight stable, while "bulking" is what you eat while working out? Well, big surprise: they are BOTH maintenance - in the latter you eat something extra to cover exercise energy needs. You don't eat OVER that in any case. Simple definition: maintenance is as much food as possible that doesn't cause you to gain or lose fat. End of story.

Maintenance whilst be different when chronically exercising compared to not. That's irrelevant. If you're exercising and not gaining or losing, it's maintenance. If you get bigger over 6months (muscle, fat, either/both) then you weren't at maintenance. End of discussion.




What's probably most upsetting here is you photos and strength stats indicate you have a lot of potential, at least in my eyes, but you seem too timid to follow what 'is' and are trying to cut a path that is absolutely contradictory to the science.

 

[HST_Rihad]

How can your body become bigger without additional matter and energy to create that additional matter and energy from?

Once again, as most children grow without overeating and becoming fat, you seem to be splitting hairs. How can you be so sure that a person doesn't get the energy from the food he eats at maintenance for building muscle? Oh, you said earlier you were adding up fat pretty slowly while bulking, it takes many months to get fat, how's that for quasi-maintenance mode?

Sumo wrestlers aside (their muscles do experience stress), I'm not sure overweight folks have more muscle than normal weight. I was almost 20 lbs heavier a couple of month ago, my bicep was indeed 3/4th of an inch bigger. Is that how you measure? That's fat+water+glycogen that went away due to deficit. Muscle doesn't go anywhere while you're working out, which is the whole idea of training. My strength didn't drop for biceps curls, it even went up a tiny bit (half a rep).

No, he didn't.
People who under-eat whilst 'growing up' have low bone density, don't achieve their genetically predicted height (based on parents and height when born (essentially), generally have low body weight.

I have another story of two brothers who lived in our hood, they lost their parents at an age of 8 and 11 respectively, and had to live and eat pretty much on their own. I don't know what they ate, how they ate, but years passed by, now they are about 31 and 34 years old and 6'3"-6'5" tall after their father, one of them is a former footballer (soccer), the younger is a boxer. So it's genetics more than food or anything else.

 

[AderynGlas]

What's probably most upsetting here is you photos and strength stats indicate you have a lot of potential, at least in my eyes, but you seem too timid to follow what 'is' and are trying to cut a path that is absolutely contradictory to the science.

I was thinking something similar earlier on, I'd love to see Rhaid after 12 months following a program set out on/by Tot/everyone else involving 9 months or so of bulking (and to be clear I mean eating over your required caloric requirements to gain 1lb/week of body weight [not specially fat or muscle, but both]) and then 3 months of a cut.

Would be interesting to see if he'd believe you all then.

Either way, it ain't going to happen...

 

[Desp]

Once again, as most children grow without overeating and becoming fat, you seem to be splitting hairs. How can you be so sure that a person doesn't get the energy from the food he eats at maintenance for building muscle? Oh, you said earlier you were adding up fat pretty slowly while bulking, it takes many months to get fat, how's that for quasi-maintenance mode?

Uhhh.... What on earth are you talking about?

This conversation is so backwards that I don't even know where to start. Are you saying a 6 year old eats the same amount of food as a 12 year old? Are you saying an adult needs the same amount of calories as a child? Furthermore, are you saying at 178lbs, you will need the same amount of calories you consume now, to get to 188?

A long long time ago I used to think like you, and how I believe Brad Pilon thinks, that if you work out and give your body enough protein, it'll synthesize that protein into muscle and get bigger... I can tell you it doesn't work like that though.

 

[HST_Rihad]

An excellent blog post by Brad Pilon involving some math, on exactly this issue of losing muscle in biceps while dieting.
http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/how-to-keep-arm-size-while-dieting/

p.s.: no, I didn't ask him that, the post is dated February 20, 2008.

 

[Desp]

An excellent blog post by Brad Pilon involving some math, on exactly this issue of losing muscle in biceps while dieting.
http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/how-to-keep-arm-size-while-dieting/

p.s.: no, I didn't ask him that, the post is dated February 20, 2008.

Brad is cool and all, but he has the body of a runway model and isn't all that strong.. So if you want to weigh 180 at ~6' tall and never lift heavy ****, keep listening to him. I've bought his books and I read all his stuff, that doesn't mean I agree with all (or even most) of it. Take out the information you can use and throw the rest away.

 

[HST_Rihad]

mrgoodbar0, I don't know how strong Brad is (assuming for a second insane strength being important for insane hypertrophy), but for the year 2009 he set a goal for himself to achieve a standing shoulder press of 225 lbs. Don't know if he got there or not, but quoting Martin Berkhan, it was an ambitious goal, similar to 340-350 lbs flat bench. He also writes in reply to Martin that he used to bench 350 – 365 in his twenties, which is very impressive for a natural.
http://bradpilon.com/muscle-building/weight-training/shoulder-pressing-225-pounds/

 

[Desp]

mrgoodbar0, I don't know how strong Brad is (assuming for a second insane strength being important for insane hypertrophy), but for the year 2009 he set a goal for himself to achieve a standing shoulder press of 225 lbs. Don't know if he got there or not, but quoting Martin Berkhan, it was an ambitious goal, similar to 340-350 lbs flat bench. He also writes in reply to Martin that he used to bench 350 – 365 in his twenties, which is very impressive for a natural.
http://bradpilon.com/muscle-building/weight-training/shoulder-pressing-225-pounds/

I'd have to read his book again, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't natural when he was younger. I bought the whole book package a while back and read them all, I know he used to work in the supplement industry and for some reason I thought he talked about weighing 200+ being ripped and assisted by drugs.

Regardless, a video is worth 1000 words, and I could "say" anything, that doesn't make it true. You wouldn't believe how many people I've talked to that "used to bench 400"... Yeah right. Not saying it's a lie... it's just not fact until proven.

Plus he has chicken legs.

 

[HST_Rihad]

I'd have to read his book again, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't natural when he was younger. I bought the whole book package a while back and read them all, I know he used to work in the supplement industry and for some reason I thought he talked about weighing 200+ being ripped and assisted by drugs.

Look no further, here is his post with before/after pics:
http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/fasting-for-weight-loss/will-you-lose-muscle-with-fasting/
His contest weight was 170 lbs in 2006.

He did once mention bulking above 200 lbs (pre- Eat Stop Eat), but he wasn't ripped at all then.

 

[HST_Rihad]

Any weight you gain, no matter what, will always consist of some degree of both fat and muscle. Always. Even if you weren't lifting weight, you would never gain pure fat.

Muscle will be gained alongside fat, sure thing. Say a person new to lifting and weighing 160 lbs at 15% bf (=24 lbs bf) bulks to 180 lbs staying at 15% (=27 lbs bf). So he did add 3 pounds of fat although his % didn't change. Normally though, if he were still eating to cover his needs and not more, his bf amount would have stayed the same (=neutral balance) and thus dropped to ~13% bw. Please think about it for a second.

 

[Jester]

Once again, as most children grow without overeating and becoming fat, you seem to be splitting hairs. How can you be so sure that a person doesn't get the energy from the food he eats at maintenance for building muscle? Oh, you said earlier you were adding up fat pretty slowly while bulking, it takes many months to get fat, how's that for quasi-maintenance mode?

Sumo wrestlers aside (their muscles do experience stress), I'm not sure overweight folks have more muscle than normal weight. I was almost 20 lbs heavier a couple of month ago, my bicep was indeed 3/4th of an inch bigger. Is that how you measure? That's fat+water+glycogen that went away due to deficit. Muscle doesn't go anywhere while you're working out, which is the whole idea of training. My strength didn't drop for biceps curls, it even went up a tiny bit (half a rep).

Please, please, PLEASE employ some form of continuation and fluidity in your paragraphs and responses. This post, whilst decipherable, is borderline incomprehensible. Addressing it is just not something I'm interested in doing because of the necessary dissection.

I have another story of two brothers who lived in our hood, they lost their parents at an age of 8 and 11 respectively, and had to live and eat pretty much on their own. I don't know what they ate, how they ate, but years passed by, now they are about 31 and 34 years old and 6'3"-6'5" tall after their father, one of them is a former footballer (soccer), the younger is a boxer. So it's genetics more than food or anything else.

I'm sure they managed to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics. They only define the known universe.

But let's assume they didn't, and rephrase the fundamentals to this;

"What came out, must have gone in."

You can't 'grow' without sufficient energy. We get our chemical energy from food. Without surplus food (energy) you can't grow. Their energy came from two sources; body fat, and food. How did they grow whilst not gaining fat? They cheated and were on drugs. The name of this drug is 'puberty'. Again, take some steroids and get the results you are seeking.

Stunted growth due to malnutrition is a thoroughly documented experience in the human condition. You can also refer to the inverse, and view the increase in height average (mean and median) over the last 40k years (yay for fossils) during which nutrition (quality and quantity) has been the only variable in the 'growth' equation. This is also despite the negative impact of modern medicine on the growth cycle of humans (yes, medicines interfere with growth more than they assist, but they keep us alive so it's a pretty awesome trade off; not relevant in the discussion any further).

Those kids consumed enough food to grow. Physics says they did.

Physics trumps people like Brad Pillon who have been repeatedly proven to be incorrect in their wishful assertions.