My basic question is am I going to be able to build my arm muscles with my current routine. I’m in no way a weight lifter, I just enjoy the feeling of getting stronger. And intermittent fasting works for me right now too.
I don’t want to be in a calorie surplus so I am wondering if building muscle will still happen with my current routine.
I’m female, 159cm, current weight is 64 to 65kg
I’m pretty active. My work day consists of being on my feet/walking round. I average 15,000 to 22,000 steps a day because of this. On weekends I’ll do a 10km walk one of the days but mainly relax.
I do push-ups and simple dumbbell exercises on like 3 mornings a week to try build up my shoulder/back and arm muscles.
My calories range from 1,300 to 1,600. Usually on the lower end cause I want to be in a deficit. I eat high protein meals, snack on fruits and my eating window is 10am to 6pm.
I just want to know is this a good routine? And is building muscle possible with it even if I’m in a deficit?
>And is building muscle possible with it even if I’m in a deficit?
To some extent yes. It’s kind of like riding a bike uphill, you can make some progress but it’s slow and inefficient.
If someone goes into strength training with little to no muscle mass, there’s some muscle the body is willing to put on almost regardless of circumstances, but eventually you hit a point where it’s functionally zero at all but the tiniest deficit or need to send better signals with a surplus, even a small one.
Note that doing all this is still important for muscle sparing and maintaining what we do have already. Which will functionally still increase strength as we lose weight, hold on to metabolically active muscle, lose more body fat percentage - not just weight, and such. Not losing muscle is just as good as gaining, when it comes to weight loss.
>I just want to know is this a good routine?
Obviously different body types and such, but it worked really well for me. I kept my rate of loss around 1% bodyweight a week, kept protein between .7-1g per pound, and I started with a simple bodyweight routine every other day that eventually became a full dumbbell PPL.
Best of luck getting leaner and stronger! 💪