Losing fat is a long journey.
It’s journey where you’re in a calorie deficit and you’re more often than not low in energy. This can cause you to lose concentration at work, feel drowsy and lethargic, attend less social events and prefer staying home, and feel generally more tired than usual throughout the day.
People experience those things to varying degrees.
Some people lose fat slowly in order to counteract feeling low in energy. But it can take them a long time to lose 10 pounds. Some people spend something like 4-5 months in order to get the excess weight off.
Others take the quick route and lose 10 pounds in a month… but that month can feel like hell.
So depending on how fast you want to lose the weight, you will experience different levels of tiredness with the latter making you feel more tired pretty much from the first week.
But this post is not about losing weight. It’s about gaining muscle after losing a lot of fat. And I want to write about gaining muscle in this context because in order to gain muscle you have to be in a calorie excess.
Being in a calorie excess scares people because it means gaining weight and they’re afraid of that after struggling and sometimes suffering to lose the excess fat.
But if you want to gain muscle, there’s really no other way to do so other than being in a calorie excess. That’s just how it works. Muscle fibers are not born out of thin air.
So let’s talk about what is involved in increasing your calories to gain weight and build muscle and how to do it the effective way.
1. Building Muscle
When you’ve finally reached your desired fat loss goals and you’re ready to gain muscle, you must begin by looking at nutrition. And the first thing you must change is the amount of food you eat.
You must eat more.
This includes increasing your protein, carbs and fats in moderate amounts and preferably no more than 250 – 500 calories in excess calories a day. This will ensure that you’re gaining a pound a week of muscle and perhaps a tiny bit of fat. (It’s inevitable. It’s really hard to gain pure muscle and no fat. But don’t worry, the extra bit fat will help with pushing the weights.)
However, as long as it took you to see noticeable differences in your body composition when you were losing fat, it will take you a long time and probably longer to see muscle gains than it was to see the fat loss. But that depends.
The point is it can be a frustrating experience for some people.
People will flex in front of the mirror every day and expect to see bigger arms, chest, or back as fast as they were able to see the weight come off when they were in the fat loss stage. When you’re losing fat, the mirror tells you a lot about how much you’ve lost. But when you’re trying to gain muscle, your mirror won’t show you how much you’ve gained as quickly.
So I urge you to not use the mirror as your judge when you’re trying to gain muscle mass. Let the weights be the judge. Let me explain.
2. Iron Never Lies
A good rule of thumb to go by when you’re trying to gain muscle is: if you’re not getting stronger week by week then you’re probably not gaining muscle.
So aim to get progressively stronger.
However, if you’re going to the gym and you’re not getting stronger, then one of these things or both are off:
- Your nutrition is not right: you’re not eating the right calories in excess.
- You’re not employing progressive resistance training: you’re either going too heavy or too light.
With respect to the first point, there are people that put a lot of work in the gym but don’t eat the right ratio of protein, carbs and fats. The best ratio to gain muscle and maximize muscle growth is 40% protein, 40% carbs and 20% fats. It’s the 40/40/20 ratio.
You can certainly manipulate these numbers, but I don’t think you should. These numbers have been tested again and again and they’re proven to give you results. You should follow them and make sure you’re 2500 – 3500 calories in excess each week.
Now if you’re eating the right calories and you’re 2500 – 3500 calories in excess and you’re still not getting stronger, then, as I mentioned above, you’re either going too heavy or too light.
In order to gain muscle, pick a weight that you can comfortably do for, say, 10 reps with good form. Practice lifting that weight for 10 reps the first week, then either aim to hit 11 or 12 reps next week. That’s progressive resistance.
Or you can increase the total weight of your lifts by 2.5 pounds (or 1 Kg) each week, and do the weight for 10 reps. Again, that’s progressive resistance and it must be slow for you to see the maximum amount of gains every week.
That’s really all you need to know about gaining muscle. Don’t get trapped in the thousands of methods out there that promise quick results. In fact, all the methods that promise you results are based on the progressive resistance training principle, but with some variations in reps, sets and the order of exercises.
Again, don’t get trapped in that world. It’s really not that difficult to gain muscle, but you can make it the most complicated thing in the world if you want to.
For those who love exact numbers with regard to sets and reps, here’s some information for you:
In terms of reps: stay between 6 and 12 reps in order to gain muscle. There’s an ample of studies out there that confirm this. (You have to choose a weight where the last rep is pretty hard to perform).
In terms of sets: pick 3 to 4 exercises and perform 3 sets of each totaling 12 sets. That’s all you need.
Don’t switch exercises. Stay with the same exercises for at least 3 to 6 months and then switch them. Otherwise you won’t know if you’re getting stronger if you keep changing exercises so often.
3. Eating Window
If you’re scared that you will gain excess fat and you have second thoughts every time you sit down to eat more calories that you’re used to, then eat the starchiest and the most calorie dense meal right after your workout.
This is the best time window to ensure that your body will process the nutrients and direct them to your muscles instead of storing them.
Also feel free to eat more of your carbs 1.5 hours or 2 hours before your workout. Your body won’t store them as fat because you’re going to use them in the gym anyway.
So eat the calorie dense food before your workout time and right after your workout. And for the rest of your meals (or for your last meal if you eat 3 meals a day) make sure it has more veggies and less starchy carbs.
Don’t let food scare you. Start lifting and eat a little more and you will be on your way to seeing visible muscles gains in about 3 months….if you’re consistent.