I have always wondered this. Could you optimize your eating period to give your body excess calories during times of muscle regeneration and neglect food during the remaining periods? Leading to a strong calorie deficit but still partitioning significant calories to muscle growth? Do muscles simply take too long to heal? Also, what is the ideal time to fill up on food and protein supplements after a workout?
I’m assuming this isn’t a valid strategy because it’s not widespread, but why not?
No.
The anabolic window so to speak is hours long.
There are many people who do OMAD and successfully gain significant mass.
Building muscle mass in a caloric deficit is called body recomp and that only happens under specific conditions, regardless of fasting or not. If your caloric deficit is significant then that likely means it’s too significant too allow for building muscle mass. Typically recomp is going to happen within 200-300 calories above or below maintenance. There are exceptions to this when someone is detrained, a newbie to the gym, or significantly over fat (high body fat percentage).
What you are asking is not a simple answer. It’s a very complex answer that’s likely pages long , links a lot of research, and carries significant caveats.
To put it simply as possible. It does not matter when you eat in a 24 hour period. Assuming you are running an adequate hypertrophy program with sufficient progressive overload, you need X amount of carbs, fats, and protein and over all calories to build mass. If those requirements are not met you will not build mass. If those requirements are met, you will build mass.
For most people exactly when you time that food will have minimal impact on physique or results. Most people meaning people who lift for enjoyment and simple weight maintenance, not people looking to maximize performance.
Meal timing can impact performance in the gym, if your feeding routine is such that you are not performing well at your workouts, then your progress can suffer.
Ideal situations to gain muscle mass are to be fed 1-2 hours prior to training and eat sometime after. So it’s most ideal for your weight training to be smack dab in the middle of your feeding period.
This does not mean that people cannot build mass doing OMAD or training while fasted. It simply means it’s not ideal.
It also is probably still likely to build muscle mass routinely fasting over 24 hours however if that is done more than once a week and outside of a recovery day it’s far more likely that at the very least this fasting is going to impact performance and thus impact results as a result.
Yes it is more optimal to space your protein out and consume at most 40g per meal. You can absorb a huge amount of protein but the real question is how much do you need to stimulate muscle protein synthesis which is around 40g. If you don’t space it out You’ll still build muscle but it won’t be as optimal if you were to space it out.
It’s also more optimal to eat carbs prior to the workout for fuel. Most people will tell you that the anabolic window doesn’t exist but it does. It’s been exaggerated to be very low but now we know the window is around 5 hours. Again you don’t have to worry about this but if you’re advanced and want to maximize muscle growth then you could take it into account.
>Does it matter what time you eat in regard to muscle-building exercise?
If you’re being super technical, maybe.
For the average person who’s intention is to be healthy and strong. It really doesn’t matter. Just eat healthy and exercise well and you’ll progress just fine.