If someone starts lifting heavy, hits hypertrophy, but does not consume enough protein (not enough to stimulate muscle growth). Weights keep increasing, he keeps getting stronger, but his muscles grow very little, not much as they would have if protein consumption was enough.
So, if he now wants to increase his muscle mass and starts consuming optimal protein, would he get as big as he would have, if he did this from the start?
If his muscles have grown stronger but not bigger, has he lost that much amount of muscle mass? And is there any way he could gain that mass?
Edit :- Thanks for replying but I don’t think most understood my question. My question was this :-
let’s take one person, in two different timelines, A and B.
The person mentioned above is in timeline A, does not consume enough protein, just lifts heavier for a period of 1 year. After 1 year, he starts lifting heavier and starts consuming much more protein, enough to reach daily goals.
In timeline B, on the other hand, he has been consuming enough protein from day 1 and has been lifting heavier.
At the end of 2 years, would the size of A be as much as B given the fact that they both could lift almost same weights and have same genetics (they both are in diff. timelines)?
If, A is smaller, has he lost the muscle mass he would have gained previously during the first year’s time?
Remember that strength is, literally, a skill. Hypertrophy is simply a physiological response to stimulus. Strength is a function of how many motor units among the muscle fibers your brain is able to recruit to complete a given movement; think of it like adding people to one end of a a tug-of-war.
So if you’re training appropriately for hypertrophy, you’ll get stronger, but without the building blocks, you won’t build anything. Your body will stagnate. It’s like adding workers to a construction site (lifting volume), paying them well (adequate calories), but not giving them any wood or bricks (protein). They’ll work really hard… to get stuff organized and ready to complete this building, just as soon as you give us SOME BLOODY LUMBER, BOSS!
So if everything except protein is on point, no, you will not grow. You can’t synthesize those essential amino acids from other sources.
>A ton of factors influence strength beyond muscle size and skill with the movements used to test strength. The strength of individual muscle fibers, normalized muscle force, muscle moment arms, and body proportions can all have significant, independent effects on strength.
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>Just as there’s massive variability in muscle growth – some people gaining a ton of muscle in response to training, and other people gaining very little – there’s massive variability in strength gains as well. Normalized muscle force (how strong a muscle is relative to how large it is) can increase up to 39% for some people and decrease by as much as 5% for others, in response to the exact same training program.
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>Early on in training, there’s a very weak relationship between gains in muscle and gains in strength. Gains in muscle mass may explain as little as 2% of the variation in strength gains for new lifters.
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>For more experienced lifters, gains in muscle mass may explain up to 65%+ of the variability in strength gains, highlighting hypertrophy as a key factor for strength gains in trained lifters.
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>Training style has a big impact on the ratio of strength you gain relative to size, with heavier training generally producing larger gains in strength.
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>https://www.strongerbyscience.com/size-vs-strength/#:\~:text=Larger%20muscle%20fibers%20generally%20produce,relative%20strength%20tends%20to%20decrease.
Atrophy.
Muscle breakdown (which is an constant ongoing process) would outweigh muscle protein synthesis which would cause, well, more muscle breakdown than muscle building, causing atrophy. This also means that strength would not be able to be maintained
I don’t think there would be any permanent loss of potential muscle mass (if I am understanding your question correctly). That person could still gain just as much size. Overall it would just take longer than if they were eating optimal protein from the start. I don’t think the previous training would be completely wasted because the ability to lift heavier weights will increase the rate at which you gain size.
Probably muscle waste build up, some catabolism, you’d potentially get weaker, not recover properly, risk muscle tears from a lack of recovery, assuming he has cut animal nutrients to drop protein the vitamins and minerals dominant in that area would drop too so that could effect sleep or recovery.
It’s a vague question so depending on how low this person does, some or all could happen. Potentially none of it, if it was just a short term thing.
You will reach a point where you platoue and cannot further increase the weight you lift or the size of your muscles
Protein is a building block for muscles so not getting enough puts your muscles in a constant state of stress (if you are lifting) but never giving it what it needs to recover and grow
>If his muscles have grown stronger but not bigger, has he lost that much amount of muscle mass?
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To answer this question directly, no. As /u/Moose92411 correctly pointed out, strength is a function of recruitment of fibers, not the number of fibers. To answer your question, though, the answer is not they have necessarily lost muscle mass, it’s more likely that they simply haven’t gained any. In other words, you can increase strength independently of changing the size of the muscles. The neurological (nervous system, not musculoskeletal system) changes are responsible for changes in strength.
If an individual is not gaining muscle mass then past initial newbie strength gains that individual wouldn’t be gaining mass and wouldn’t gain much strength.
No eating more protein later on does not mean you will magically get retroactive gains. That previous training time was wasted.
As a person who did this…
You get very tired. Run down. Food is not satisfying. Can’t figure out why everything sucks.
It’s because you need more protein.
Source; I finally started eating 120+g a week again, after having done the emotional work to not overeating, and now I’m intuitive eating, loosing weight and gaining muscle.
Protein is king.
edit: here’s an article about cutting and muscle growth; they provide lots of back links. https://mennohenselmans.com/energy-deficiency-impairs-gains-lean-mass-strength-meta-analysis/
i dont know about the nutrition side of things, that is very complicated. but i do know there was a study done on chimps or monkeys where they increased their strength overtime and they stayed the same weight muscle size and everything
Size = (time)*(daily net calories).
Obviously you want that size to be muscle so it needs to come from protein and he obviously needs to lift to stimulate the proper absorption of protein into muscle.
Answer: He lost on the time but once he’s optimized he will start that process again. “No effort is wasted.” Definitely smarter to optimize but it wasn’t wasted for him to lift unoptimized it will be that much stronger foundation to build on.
On paper they would catabolize themselves and incur muscle atrophy, I guess. But unless you’re eating nothing but lettuce and white rice, protein is a non-issue as long as you’re getting enough calories in. If you’re in a deep deficit, then you might need to plan your diet a bit more
been there, accidentally done that, you feel rested at the start of every session but you very quickly stagnate and even start feeling weaker the longer you keep going, and of course I stopped seeing results.
as soon as I saw a professional and got a proper nutrition plan, I went back to improving, pretty much over night. it felt like if I had hit pause for the few weeks I wasn’t eating properly, and I was resuming from where I left off.
This is more about recovery timeline than protein intake.
If one lifter didn’t consume enough protein he (or she) would eventually stop being able to increase the weights he’s able to lift.
Finished. Done. Over.
If we’re talking volume then eventually the lifter eating too little protein would stop gaining size and have heightened injury risk.
Finished. Done. Over.
You can answer your own riddle from here but basically nutrition, sleep, and training interval are all essential parts of growth. Leaving one out simply diminishes progress and extends the recovery time line. Failing to accommodate recovery rate results in lower total progress over time.