Fat loss requires eating fewer calories than you spend each day. On the other hand, to gain muscle mass you need to consume more calories than you use. These additional calories help regrow damaged muscle tissue after a tough workout session.
So, about 2-4 months. Remember, if you gain weight at a rate greater than two pounds per week, you risk acquiring a greater percentage of body fat than lean muscle.
To safely and effectively gain muscle, you need to increase your total calorie needs by at least 3500 calories per week, or about 500 extra calories per day, depending on your activity level.
Your muscles first burn through stored glycogen for energy. “After about 30 to 60 minutes of aerobic exercise, your body starts burning mainly fat,” says Dr. Burguera.
It takes more energy to store calories in the body when weight is being gained. So even though one pound of muscle may only contain about 700 calories, it may take 2000 or more calories to build that muscle in the first place.
It takes a deficit of 3,800 calories to lose a pound of fat and a surplus of around 1,600 calories to build a pound of muscle.
You'll need about 3,200 calories to maintain your current weight. That means that, during a lean bulk, you should be eating around 3,500 calories per day – 300 above “maintenance”. In addition, you will need to consume 175 grams of protein per day.
An estimated 2,500 to 2,800 excess calories are needed to gain one pound of lean mass. Of course, this number is highly dependent on individual factors like level of training, starting body composition, genetics, and overall diet.
It can be useful to remember that, just as one day of dieting will not cause a person to lose weight, a day of binge eating will not cause weight gain. Although an episode of overeating can happen to anyone occasionally, some people have a binge eating disorder, which usually requires professional attention.
It comes down to hormones and genetics. Chances are, you've probably heard before that every body is different, and on a physiological level, that's really true. For example, some bodies are primed to put on muscle more easily than others.
To increase muscle mass, you must “eat more calories than needed to maintain your body weight”, says personal trainer Scott Laidler. "A high proportion of your extra calories should come from foods containing protein, which will give you the necessary amino acids to build muscle mass.
While both adequate protein and calories are vital in order to maximize muscle hypertrophy, it may still be possible to build muscle with adequate calories and somewhat lower protein intake than recommended compared to meal plans favoring higher protein consumption but fewer calories.
Studies have shown that participants can gain muscle, even while in a caloric deficit, as long as they eat enough protein. It's important enough that I'll say it again: If you don't want your body cannibalizing its muscles while you are in a caloric deficit, you need to eat plenty of protein.
“The novice lifter is generally able to gain between 1 and 4lbs of muscle in a month,” says celebrity PT Scott Laidler. This equates to a maximum of just over 1.8kg of muscle – enough for skinny men to start seeing serious definition.
All of these recommendations fall within the range suggested by the American College of Sports Medicine that suggests 1.2 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight (0.54 to 0.9 grams/pound), which would translate to 81 to 136 grams for a 150-pound adult for preserving and building muscle.
Bulking Calories Formula
Remembering that it takes between 2,000 and 2,500 extra calories to gain 1 pound of lean muscle each week, he'll want to consume between 2,373 and 2,444 calories per day to bulk out without gaining any extra fat.
Current research indicates that three primary mechanisms are involved in exercise-related muscle growth: muscle tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress (Schoenfeld 2010). Muscle tension. Tension exerted on muscles during resistance exercise is generally considered the most important factor in muscle development.
You Don't Have Enough Training Volume
Hypertrophy adaptations (I.E. building muscle) are ruled by the principle of volume. The more volume in your training (more sets and reps) the greater the hypertrophy response you will get (up to a point of course).
In general, weightlifting for 30 minutes can burn between 90 and 126 calories, depending on a person's body weight. Vigorous weight lifting for 30 minutes may burn between 180 to 252 calories, depending on a person's body weight.
For most people, it's not safe to burn 1,000 calories per day through exercise. Depending on what kind of activity you do, you need to work out for over an hour to burn that many calories, and it takes a long time to build up to that level of endurance.
To lose weight, you have to maintain a calorie deficit, meaning that you use more calories than you consume each day. However, cutting your calories too drastically can lead to muscle loss, Juster says. If you're counting calories, aim to cut no more than 500 per day.