Hi everyone,
Keen to add some muscle mass to my frame, but i’ve been an intermittent faster now for 2 years! Is it possible? How would I fit in enough calories to gain muscle, but not gain fat.
Short answer yes. Get in enough protein while working out properly and you’ll gain muscle.
Long answer. Certainly adding muscle tissue is more efficient in a surplus, granted it doesn’t have to be that much. You can slowly add 100 calories a day over a couple weeks to dial in building mostly muscle with minimal fat. Then you just deficit the fat back off while trying to retain most of the muscle, this is basically how bodybuilders bulk and cut.
Hell, you can even put on some muscle in a deficit provided you’re still getting enough protein and the deficit isn’t too large. Granted it will be much slower. There’s also sort of a beginner stage where your body will basically put on some muscle tissue almost regardless of circumstances.
My advice, get out there start seeing what works for you. Good luck on getting stronger!
After two years of IF your body has probably adjusted it’s caloric baseline to your deficit. I would highly recommend putting a focus on carb intake. Insulin is one of the most anabolic (growth) hormones we have in our body. With two years of IF you’ve now taught your body how to manipulate your insulin metabolically which is great.. Now use that power! On your 2 heaviest lifting days, break your fast in a 60-90 min window with more (not an entire pizza!) carbs than you normally do. For example if your normal fast breaking meal is 20-30 grams, maybe push 50-75g. I call this a “controlled spike”, you’re intentionally spiking your insulin to push that additional glucose into your muscles at the most opportune time during the breakdown and rebuilding process. There’s a ton of research around carb cycling you can look up that backs this up. Of course, you need to hit your daily protein requirement to have the building blocks there, but the carb absorption surrounding your workout will have a huge impact for you.