How To Get Out Of A Calorie Deficit Without Gaining Weight
Alright, you’re here because you want to know how to get out of a calorie deficit without gaining weight.
So you’ve been following all of my advice on how to lose weight sustainably and intelligent and lo and behold…
You’ve finally done it! Congrats!
After countless weeks and months of nailing your nutrition, getting yourself to the gym and getting strong AF, and being relentlessly consistent with your fitness no matter what the voices in your head told you…
…you were finally able to lose the fat and achieve the goal weight, look, or health standard to set out to achieve.
Now you’re probably wondering…
“So what’s next?”
“How do I maintain these results I’ve worked so hard to achieve?” or…
“How do I transition to building more muscle so that I can get lean, muscular, and strong?”
Well, don’t worry because all this (and more!) will be covered in this article.
Specifically, you can expect to read about:
- How much should you be eating?
- What should you be eating?
- What should your training should look like?
- How fast should you be gaining weight?
- Should you continue doing cardio?
Also, as a side note, I’m going to group together a maintenance and building phase together in this article because:
- You can build muscle both at maintenance and a surplus, it’s just that the surplus will be optimal and allow you to gain at a bit of a faster rate.
- Most people say they “just want to maintain”, but once they realize how much better they’ll feel and look with more muscle, they’ll quickly to chase that carrot, so I’ve already got you covered 😉
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
How To Get Out Of A Calorie Deficit Without Gaining Weight
How Much Should You Be Eating To Get Out Of A Calorie Deficit Without Gaining Weight?
So, here’s a disclaimer to start because I can’t really tell you exactly how much eat.
I don’t know how your exact metabolism works, how many calories you’ve been eating in your deficit, or what your lifestyle is like.
But what I can tell you as a general rule of thumb is to slowly add calories to your current deficit intake.
The main reason for this is because you’ve likely lost a significant amount of weight and your NEAT has (probably) gone down so your energy expenditure is likely much lower than what it was before you lost the weight.
The idea behind this is that a smaller body burns fewer calories (just like how a smaller car gets better gas mileage because it uses less fuel when it’s running).
So if this happens to be your first rodeo with fat loss and you don’t quite know where your maintenance calories are at, then:
- Slowly increase your calories by 10% of your current intake at a time
- Stay with calories for about 3-4 weeks
- Observe how your body responds
- Adjust calories as needed (it may take a few increases and decreases to find your true “set point”)
- If focusing on building, then increase calories until you get desired rate of weight gain
However, if you do know what your maintenance calories are, then just simply go straight to those calories, no need to slowly increase or reverse diet.
What Should You Be Eating To Get Out Of A Calorie Deficit Without Gaining Weight?
Most people who are in the quick-fix mindset think that there’s some special diet or food selection they need to follow temporarily to lose weight, and once they lose the weight, they can go right back to their old lifestyle and maintain their results.
When in reality, this is not how it works at all.
If your old habits and food choices caused you to gain weight, then it’s going to be the same habits that will cause you to regain the weight despite losing it.
If you want to lose weight and keep it off, then you need to develop new habits to replace the old ones.
While there aren’t any special “fat-burning” foods like many weight loss gurus like to mislead you into believing…
…there are foods that can help you indirectly lose weight because they help you better adhere to a calorie deficit.
If you want to read more on this, I have an entire article written about these foods here.
The bottom line for food choices is that if you have been truly following a sustainable diet for weight loss, then the truth is your food choices shouldn’t really change all that much when you want to maintain weight loss.
You would simply eat the same foods you’ve been eating in a calorie deficit, except you’re eating those foods in greater quantities to increase your calorie intake.
This all goes back to the concept of a sustainable plan = sustainable results.
And to end on this note, I can’t tell you exactly what to eat because…
I don’t know what foods work best for your lifestyle and what foods you like to eat.
This is why I don’t recommend meal plans.
While they provide a set structure on exactly what to eat and when to eat, they don’t teach you how to make informed food decisions for when you decide to stop using the meal plan.
Instead, what I do in my online coaching program is prescribe calorie and protein targets (check out this other article here if you want to know why your carbs + fats ratios don’t matter as much as you think it does).
This way, it forces you to figure out how you should best budget your calories.
Although it might seem like the tougher route, it teaches how often you should eat, how much you should eat at each meal, and what foods work best for you in maintaining a well-balanced, nutritious, and calorie-controlled diet.
So skip the meal plans, do the tough shit, and learn what foods fit into your diet best.
What Should Your Training Look Like?
A common question I get regarding this topic is, “how should my training change when I’m trying to lose fat versus when I’m trying to bulk up and gain muscle?”
The answer?
It shouldn’t. Don’t change a damn thing.
Your training shouldn’t change because…
The same routine that helped you build muscle will also help you maintain that muscle.
So whether you’re trying to go from fat loss to maintenance/building or vice versa, your training routine shouldn’t change all that much.
This is because when we take a look at what the purpose of training is for it’s basically just providing a stimulus for our muscles to go, “oh that was tough, so we need to remodel and get stronger/bigger for next time around.”
That was progressive overload explained as simply as possible.
And even if your goal is just to simply maintain muscle while being in a deficit, you should still train hard and lift heavy because you want to signal to your body, “let’s keep this muscle, it’s useful and we need it, see how hard I’m training?”
So when you switch up your routines to fit a commonly spread myth of “High reps and light weights to tone and lose fat and low reps and heavyweights to get big and bulk up” you’re basically taking away the stimulus for your body to retain the muscle.
And when this happens, you’re going to lose precious muscle with that fat and end up looking “skinny fat”.
Anyone who tells you that you should follow a “fat loss routine” or “muscle building routine” probably just wants to sell you an extra program to make more money.
Otherwise, if you want me to tell you exactly how to build your own strength training routine, then check out my other article here.
How Fast Should You Be Gaining Weight?
First off, let’s address maintaining weight because there’s a lot of misconceptions around scale weight and being at “maintenance.”
Before we get into the specifics, I want to make this abundantly clear:
Stop expecting to stay at an exact weight when you’re at maintenance.
Just like how the scale weight fluctuates for a variety of reasons even though you’re being in a consistent deficit, the scale weight still fluctuates even when you’re at maintenance.
The reason I say this is because so many people expect to stay at an exact number at maintenance that the moment they see their weight spike up, they’re afraid to eat more calories and go right back into a deficit.
When in reality, if they just waited, they’ll realize that weight fluctuations under all circumstances are completely normal.
Also, when you go from a deficit to maintenance, the increase in calories will cause you to store more muscle glycogen, a form of carbs stored in your muscle for quick energy (also carbs storage usually means water storage as well), which will cause more weight gain.
But keep in mind that weight gain doesn’t necessarily mean fat gain.
So rather than expecting yourself to maintain a stagnant weight on the scale, give yourself a weight range of +/- 10 lbs.
So for example, if your “goal maintenance weight” is about 150 lbs, expect your weight to fall anywhere between 140 to 160 lbs on a daily basis.
Lastly, if you’re trying to eat at maintenance but you’re constantly trying to push the envelope during your training, then congrats, you’re building solid muscle with little to no fat gain. So celebrate instead of punching yourself in the dick. 😉
Now, to address a gaining phase. How fast should you really be gaining?
I don’t want to turn this into a full-on bulking guide because I’ve already talked about this topic in this video.
To be completely honest with you, you shouldn’t be gaining weight as quickly as you probably might think.
Just as weight loss, weight gain should be done with the same intent, slow and steady.
Because the truth about muscle building is that muscle can only be built so fast.
This means that your body will only need so many calories to build muscle.
And once those requirements are met, any extra calories you eat will simply need to be used for other activities or be stored as fat.
So when you go on a “dirty bulk” and eat hundreds and thousands of calories over your maintenance thinking you’re “building extra muscle” you’re actually just putting on a bunch of fat.
Sure, the scale weight might go up extremely quickly, but in the same parallel as people who are in a deficit associating weight loss is come purely from fat, the people who are in a surplus associate weight gain is pure muscle, which is untrue.
And when you do this, all you end up doing to putting on a bunch of extra body fat that absolutely crushes how you feel about your self-image and gives you a lot more extra work since you’ll probably end up dieting again because you don’t like the way you look.
So rather than having to put yourself through this dilemma, take it slow and steady and stop focusing so much on the weight gain.
Rather, focus on your gym performance.
Are you tracking your workouts? If so, are you keeping yourself accountable by pushing yourself to beat your previous session’s numbers?
As long as you’re seeing progress on this end, there’s no need to be obsessing over the number on the scale because chances are that whether you’re 130 lbs or 150 lbs, you probably won’t care.
What will matter to you significantly more is how you feel about yourself internally and externally regardless of the weight.
With that being said, people still want the numbers, so here ya go.
This was taken from Alan Aragon‘s model of the rate you should be gaining depending on your training experience.
This was taken from Eric Helm‘s model of the rate you should be gaining depending on your training experience.
As you can see, this isn’t a high rate of weight gain at all.
Even beginners, who are able to make the quickest amount of gains can only gain 1 to 1.5% of their bodyweight per month.
This means that for someone who weighs 150 lbs who just started lifting in the gym following a proper program should expect to gain 1.5 to 2.25 lbs a month – which breaks down to 0.375 to 0.5625 lbs a week (about 1/3 to 1/2 lb a week).
So again, like with anything else in life, slow and steady wins the race.
And as far as tracking your progress goes, just like with fat loss, with muscle gain, it also helps to use alternative measures rather than just the scale weight.
Take progress pictures and measurements to track where you’re getting bigger.
As a general rule, waist measurements are going to be the biggest indicator of muscle versus fat gain.
I recommend taking measurements of areas like your chest/lats, biceps/arms, stomach, hips, thighs, and calves every two weeks to track your growth and progress.
Should You Continue Doing Cardio?
I won’t go into this in too much detail because I already have an entire article that already answers everything you need to know about cardio (which can be found here).
But basically, as far as a weight maintenance or building phase is concerned, you should continue doing cardio.
To name a few benefits, improved cardiovascular endurance can actually increase your capacity to recover between sets and lift heavier, allows you to efficiently burn calories and utilize energy, and trains the most important muscle in the body: the heart.
So, yes, continue doing cardio.
And keep in mind that cardio doesn’t have to be anything crazy.
What I personally do and program for a lot of my clients is just simply keeping track of a daily step count.
Sure, it doesn’t sound like anything crazy, but getting adequate steps has been consistently shown in the literature to help with weight maintenance and reduce all-cause mortality.
So stop listening to the bros who tell you “cardio is going to kill your gainz” and get do yo m’fing cardio.
Final Thoughts On How To Get Out Of A Calorie Deficit Without Gaining Weight
Alright, and to end on this note, congrats again!
Losing weight is definitely no easy feat.
However, when we take a look at maintaining that weight loss, it presents itself as a whole another challenge that is about 1000x harder.
But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It just means that it’s going to take a bit more work to accomplish.
And if you already took the slow and sustainable approach to losing weight, then you’re already got most of the work done because maintaining is just about applying that same approach and increasing calories slightly.
Also, realize that no matter if it’s weight loss, weight maintenance, or weight gain, always keep the same mindset of slow and steady.
Regardless of what the scale says on the daily, remember that progress in either direction takes time.
Take it slow and remember to look at your journey on the bigger scale. You got this.
Until next time,
-Aus
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