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Originally Posted by
Gary Gibson
A very important point and in line with what we've all discussed before: you add more fat per pound of muscle as you progress. Initially--depending on your genetics--you may add just a pound of fat for every 3-5 lbs of muscle. Eventually, you'll be adding a pound of fat for every 1-3 lbs of muscle, then it will be pound for pound and eventually you'll add MORE fat per unit of muscle. At some point down the road, you'll have to accept a pound of fat for an ounce of muscle gain. There's really no way around this. You can strip some of the fat as you go, but you'll just lose some muscle too. How much fat you'll carry with a given amount of muscle really is genetically set and there's just not much you can do about it. (I mean a minimum amount of fat per muscle; You can of course carry more fat per muscle by eating and not training.)
I guess we're lucky insofar as we both appear to be able to carry quite a bit of lean mass and our initial fat-to-muscle gain ratio was probably better than the average person's starting point. By the time either of us get to 200 lbs, however, our ratio would probably have done its natural diminution toward inversion and perhaps even flipped. There's a very good calculator on the weightrainer (I'm sure you already know of it) that takes wrist measurements and height into account and gives some idea of how much fat one would be carrying. It's based on measurements from (dozens? hundreds?) of muscle-building athletes over many decades.
Edit: This is what I meant by accepting a certain look to be as strong as possible, btw. One guy will only add 10 lbs of fat with his 30 lbs of muscles gained; another will add 25 lbs of fat with the same gain in lean tissue. This is genetically-determined (though one can improve the ratio with extrasomatic chemistry). Some of us will have to accept not being fitness models when we double our strength. We skinny bastards may not gain muscle easily, but when we do, it will be with less fat and we'll probably have some pretty good relative strength even if we aren't absolutely as strong as the big/muscular/fat men of the world.