Reader Question: Hunger When Trying To Build Muscle?

Most people realize that hunger is a natural part of a fat loss diet, but what about when you’re trying to build muscle? It would seem that since you are taking in more calories than you need, hunger should be a non-issue.

Today I received a question on this topic, so let’s take a closer look.

Question:

I’ve been following the principles outlined in your article on Bulking While Preventing Fat Gain and am really liking it but have one question – is it normal to feel hungry on the non-lifting days when I eat 100 calories or so below maintenance? Is this just a signal my body is burning fat? Is it possible that I’m also building muscle on days (and nights) that I lift and eat about 800 calories above maintenance? Is it even possible to do both?

I would simply increase the calories on my non-workout days until I’m no longer hungry but am worried about this defeating the purpose.

Answer:

This is a great question and for anyone who is not familiar with the set-up itself (and I’d recommend you read the article at the link above), it’s basically one where you overconsume by a higher amount on workout days and underconsume slightly on days you don’t workout, which encourages less fat gains while you’re working towards building muscle.

Now, onto your question.

Due to the nature of the set-up, yes, this would definitely be understandable. What’s going on here is on days you work out, you’re really overfeeding the body and likely eating quite a high carbohydrate intake. This really sets the metabolic rate on fire in a sense just because it’s speeding up to try and keep up to the calorie intake, and a high carb intake by nature does tend to make one feel quite hungry.

Then, on your off day you move to an intake at or slightly below maintenance and your metabolism feels it – it’s used to more food so it’s causing hunger in the body.

Now, basically there are a few things you can do here.

1. Deal with it. If it’s minor hunger, this shouldn’t be a problem; if you’re completely ravenous, then likely it’s not something you want to deal with on a day to day basis.

2. Eat more. Now, you mentioned just eating a bit more so your body wasn’t so hungry. This is definitely an option, but do keep in mind that when you start getting weekly calorie surpluses that are a little too high, more body fat will be gained. So, if you’re really overeating on workout days and then you’re eating above maintenance (although less above) on non-workout days, there will be a higher chance for body fat gain.

So, you could then choose to reduce your calorie intake slightly on workout days, but then you’re pretty much using a standard bulking approach – and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, it’s just not quite in alignment with the principles of the program outlined above.

3. Go Low Carb. Finally, your third option is to change the consistency of the meals on your days off. If you’re eating a fairly mixed diet on your days off (30% protein, 20-30% fat, and the rest carbs for example), you may want to move this over to a higher protein, higher fat, but low carb approach. This should help kill hunger better, allowing you to stick with the lower calorie intake.

So to summarize your answer here, yes, I do think it’s normal to experience some hunger on this type of set-up. You will still be building muscle to a degree on the days off, this is true. As to whether you lose fat, if you’re intake is quite low, you could, but chances are it’s more that you’ll maintain on off days, but your nutrient partitioning (body’s ability to direct the excess calorie intake on workout days towards the muscles) will go up, thus reducing the fat that’s gained during the bulk.

If you really wanted to try and build muscle and lose fat at the same time (which is very, very hard), you’d have to do something more drastic like 800 above maintenance on workout days and 500 below maintenance on non. With something like that, gains would be incredibly slow, but they would be very lean.

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