The Environment for Growth...

[Toniy]

In another thread I asked about the best way of adopting the SS program into a leaning out phase... and the feedback was essentially 'do the same program, just eat a little less, and cleaner'.

So about 2,500 - 3,000 kcal seem to be a decent daily run with 250g+ of protein.

And a couple of articles on SS also say that if you're a chunkier guy, you'll lean out a little, staying at the same weight but gaining lean mass and losing fat.

One of the points of one of the articles was essentially 'if you're overweight then you already have the environment for growth'.

And it's clarification of 'the environment for growth' that I was looking for...

Now... this may be a hell of a lot simpler than I'm able to comprehend so that's why I'm asking... but here is my conclusion:


In my mind it means that since you have plenty of energy stored already in your love handles and subscapular area (I do at least)... you don't need so much food to eat during the day.

Essentially for a good workout and good recovery, you'll need about 6,000 kcal per day. If you're skinny... then you'll have to eat that 6,000 kcal as you don't have it readily available in the aforementioned back and handles.

If you're fat... then you can eat about half of the daily requirement to get fresh nutrients into the system as needed, but you also have plenty of fat to use while you're away from the gym to keep yourself ticking over.

And as that fat gets used... it gets the hell out of your back / handles. And a skinny guy needs to get a little fat to grow to ensure he always has a readily available energy supply for use whenever.

Essentially the environment for growth is the availability of energy for workouts and receovery.

And obviously if you just relied on getting your 6,000 kcal from you fat... you'd be missing out on all the protein and macro /micronutrients you need for life.


... I think that makes sense... anyone want to kick my ass and call me a fool?

[ZenGeek]

That's how I've always seen it, but there seem to be a lot of people who think you can't put on as much muscle as possible without adding an equivalent amount of fat.

This is my attempt to understand their argument.

There is some justification to the view that muscle:bodyfat ratios are genetic (that you will add bodyfat to match muscle gain, or lose muscle when you lose fat) but I know for a fact that you can lose fat and gain muscle, there may be some upper or lower limit where genetics come into it? I guess it's about the fastest way to add muscle.

Perhaps part of the argument is that if your body knows that you've got an excess (consistently adding to bodyfat) it's happier about allocating it's resources to building more muscle. If you tried to eat just enough, your body might be a bit hesitant about adding more muscle as it will require additional resources that it doesn't think it can afford.

I'm not sure if the same argument holds for allocation of resources under a system of decreasing surplus (fat loss), but it is generally agreed that a steady decrease is better than a fast one, and this would also help the body not panic about losing it's ability to maintain muscle mass. Therefore the loss of fat shouldn't affect the gains, if it's done at a sensible pace.

[Toniy]

That's a really good point, about the reducing surplus. I mean at the moment, my body KNOWS it ain't gonna starve any time soon ;-)

But cutting down to a more reasonable 2,500 per day shouldn't upset things too much either...

[hbriem]

Most of the SHW powerlifters I know cut down 10-20kg (20-40 lbs) periodically. Some even more. I don't really know the details of their diet although I have thought of doing interviews with a couple of them to find out. What I do know is that they continue lifting heavy while they cut and as far as I know, don't change their training much, if at all.