Energy deficit, muscle growth question??.....

I'm not even sure how to phrase this question for sure. It stems from the much asked how to gain muscle but not fat dilemma. I just wondered if someone could explain what process the body undergoes on a workout day if you have a negative caloric intake but still have a high amount of protein in your diet. Is your body still losing muscle? If so, why? Secondly, as muscles get larger, is the body actually forming new muscle tissue or do we pretty much have a genetically pre-determined amount that just gets larger in size? Thanks all.

Assuming you do not use steroids. In order to gain weight you have to eat more energy than you burn off. If you eat high protein but your metabolism needs more calories to do other things than heal muscle then your protein is not going towards muscle growth it might be going towards making very inefficient energy.

Your energy requirements must be met before you can gain weight. In order to be anabolic, in order to synthesize new tissue you have to take in more calories than you burn off, which is to say you need to be anabolic(tissue building).

Their is a fine line you can walk if you take drugs where the food can be lower and you can drop fat while still building muscle because the steroid would cause the anabolic activity necessary to grow, and your diet, although you still need to eat the protein, can be more geared towards dropping fat rather than adding weight.

I mean in short when you work out your tearing muscle fibers and depleting muscle glycogen. First you need to restore muscle glycogen which is a process that peaks after 3 days, but initially you need carbohydrates/glucose because your body uses them/it to generate ATP(your body's fuel). If you do not eat enough carbohydrates to satisfy your body's need then the protein that you eat will be used to make not repair muscle. If you don't eat enough protein to repair muscle tissue the your body will hydrolyze(break down) your tissues to get the amino acids it needs to make the proteins to heal your damages muscle tissues. That is what happens when you do not eat enough food to repair. This process makes larger molecules in your body smaller, it hydrolyzes them for energy and nutrition because it needs the energy and nutrition and you did not eat it.

God Bless
Ben

^^ You can be in an energy deficit yet also have positive nitrogen balance around workout times.

Although I agree without a larger anabolic stimulus it is harder to foster lean gains while losing fat.

I agree with what ben said. I have seen people lose fat and gain muscle at the same time naturally but this is only when coming from the detrained state. For the most part you must pic one or the other.

As far as your question in regards to muscle tissue, humans typically dont experience as much hyperplasia (increase in number of muscle fibers) as they do hypertrophy (increase in size of muscle fibers). There is still research to be done in the area but the way I understand it is that, for the most part, we are more likely to have a size gain due to hypertrophy and not hyperplasia.

Thanks guys, I gotta say being able to pose questions to experienced people with the knowledge is really pretty cool. I've never done the forum thing before, thanks for the clarification.