AG Coaching

Proud to announce the launch of my corporate health & fitness challenge.

The goal with this is simple..

To help people look, feel and perform their best in every area of life as effortlessly as possible.

Not to mention we’ve got some awesome prizes up for grabs along the way, so it’s all to play for 🎁

Super excited to see everyone start their journey.

Let’s go 🚀

How big should your surplus be?

It's possible to gain muscle while losing weight, especially if you are overweight and untrained.
But it's much less likely in lean people with training experience.

I think it's more effective in the long term to have dedicated phases of bulking up, followed by fat loss phases.

Gaining some body fat is inevitable if you do this, but the good news is that maintaining new muscle is pretty easy, so you can keep the muscle you built and cut down the fat later if you want to.

Since we want to minimise fat gains, Slater et al (2019) suggest an increase of ~360 - 480 kcal per day as a general guideline. But this figure won't be ideal for everyone (that's why I recommend tracking your weight).

This is because when you eat more, you burn more. Especially if you train harder to build new muscle and maintain it.

So eating an extra 360 calories might not end up being a SURPLUS of 360 calories.

Changes in NEAT also have an effect.

The range of NEAT-related changes in calorie expenditure was between -98 kcal to +692 kcal per day!

This means changes in NEAT can reduce your surplus significantly in some people, while others can actually move less.

I've found some of my clients need a really large surplus above their 'maintenance' intake to consistently gain bodyweight. One guy I coached needed about 700 kcal above his original maintenance!

I recommend starting with a conservative surplus and tracking changes in bodyweight. Take your weight regularly and work out the weekly and monthly averages.

On average, you want to gain about 1-3% of your total bodyweight per month. Bear in mind that this might not be a linear increase.