So my friend has a job where he moves furniture. He’s lost a ton of weight because of it, but I swear that he’s also become much stronger. He told me there was no way because he has been in a caloric deficit, which would explain the weight loss, but I feel like he was never capable of lifting as much as he does everyday before he got this job.
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When given a completely new thing to do your body will adapt. It’s entirely possible to gain muscle in a deficit, just harder.
That said, there are loads of ways to get stronger, only one of them in building muscle
Fat is energy storage. Just because you are eating at a calorie deficit does not mean you are incapable of having or building muscle. It just makes it harder, and potentially dangerous to build them.
When you lose weight, you aren’t “losing it”. You are just burning the energy stores that your body has to do the things it would do naturally with a bigger supply of food.
Yes you can absolutely gain muscle in a caloric deficit. It’s just harder.
You still have fat cells storing energy in your body.
If your muscles are under great stress, your body can use this stored energy to build more muscles (given you eat enough protein).
Harder to do than on a caloric surplus, but the energy is there.
Eating a high protein diet while on a calorie deficit with working out is how you gain muscle while losing fat.
Newbie gains.
There are only certain times you can gain muscle while in a caloric deficit, the number one is newbie gains.
The stored fat is being burned to make up for the deficit. If he didnt have fat on him he would pretty much wither away slowly
Out of shape and untrained people gain muscle very easily, even when in caloric maintenance or slight deficit. That’s called “body recomposition”.
Another factor that people usually forget. Usually when you start training, your neurons adapt as well, giving you the ability to recruit more muscle fibers. I bet this is also the case with your friend.
It’s called body recomposition. It’s easier for beginners since they usually have more to lose/gain then people. It’s important to make sure to eat enough protein while in the defici to limit muscle loss. if there’s not enough in the diet the body will start breaking down muscle.
It absolutely is possible. The key is the correct balance of macros, particularly protein.
Suppose there is a diet where he is not in a calorie deficit where he gets enough protein to gain muscle.
Now, from that diet, reduce the amount of calories without reducing the amount of protein.
He’s definitely lost weight because moving furniture is a lot of work. You burn a lot of calories, so this makes sense.
In terms of strength gains, he’s likely gained significant strength in a few main muscles, which he now uses on a daily basis.
The key thing to understand here is that these ‘significant gains in strength’ are compared to his strength BEFORE he started moving furniture. Meaning he likely had zero (or very minimal) strength in some of these key areas. Just like most people.
So yes, he’s made significant strength gains in key areas due to his new job, but you shouldn’t interpret that as meaning that he’s now capable of pushing seasoned bodybuilder levels of weight.
This is also called ‘newbie gains’, because it’s very easy to go from 0 to 4 (on a 10 point scale), but it’s much more difficult to go from a 4 to 8 (or an 8 to 10). 0 to 4 usually happens when someone first starts to go to the gym.
Weight cycling is an optimization for gym bros and bodybuilders.
Anyone who is overweight and sedentary will easily and quickly lose weight and gain muscle at the same time when starting a reduced calorie diet and starting exercise.
Muscle gain with a calorie deficit will slow to close to zero as they approach a healthy weight while sustaining that level of activity.