Gaintaining Is Holding Back Your Progress (new study!)
In a Nutshell
Bulking and cutting produces faster long-term muscle growth than gaintaining because muscle gain is inherently slow while fat loss without muscle loss is easy and rapid. A new 10-week study showed that a moderate deficit group lost twice as much fat as the maintenance group while gaining the same 2 lb of muscle. The optimal protocol is slow bulks of ½ lb per week for 12–20 weeks followed by 4–8 week cuts at ~1 lb fat loss per week, repeated for steady pure muscle gain.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Muscle gain is harder than fat loss and takes way longer. You can lose a shitload of fat without losing much muscle, but the same isn't true the other way around. Bulking and cutting have a big theoretical advantage in the long term over gaining. Gaining works, but bulking and cutting works faster.
In the traditional view, you generate a calorie surplus which is a huge weapon for gains. You eat to gain with a calorie surplus and high protein diet. You can't bulk forever because you're always going to add some measure of fat and muscle and eventually you get way too fat. The typical idea is bulking for 16 to 20 weeks nice and slow, then cutting for 6 to 8 weeks, maybe a maintenance phase in there, and repeating the process.
The bulking adds muscle and fat. The cutting reduces away the fat, and pretty much only the fat if you cut moderately. That means you keep all the muscle and then repeat that process and make long-term gains.
Gaintaining is the idea that opposes bulk cutting. You want to be in a body fat that's conducive to not crazy muscle loss when you lose fat and conducive to good muscle gains when you're trying to gain muscle. Something around 12 to 15% body fat or so. Chill at that body weight, train hard, eat enough protein, don't try to push a calorie surplus. Just hit a maintenance on average and you're going to be likely to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.
No one hits true maintenance daily. Every day you're going to be a little bit of a surplus or a little bit of a deficit. So you're doing zigzag mini bulks and cuts anyway. Also, it's super low stress. You don't have to stuff yourself and pre-plan a bunch of stuff. Just shooting for maintenance is awesome and has that built-in pulsatility.
The rule of gaining is just eat enough protein. Watch your body weight to make sure it's not falling or rising too much at any one point.
Gaintaining has a big built-in assumption compared to bulking and cutting. The assumption is that building muscle and losing fat are roughly as easy or difficult as one another. But the reality is different.
Fat loss without muscle loss, especially in 10 to 15% body fat males or 20 to 25% body fat females, is actually really easy. It happens all the time in study after study. You can lose a ton of fat without losing any muscle unless you're getting ultra shredded at the end.
On the other hand, even in that body fat range, muscle gain is hard. Very, very hard. Fat loss can happen in mere weeks. You can lose a pound of actual fat per week. Muscle gain takes much longer.
You can lose a shitload of fat without losing much muscle, but you can't just gain a ton of muscle without gaining a ton of fat. You actually just can't gain a ton of muscle per week no matter what you do with your fat store. Fat loss takes way less time than muscle growth.
If you push your weight gain a bit extra over the long term for extra muscle growth, you get all the extra muscle, but you can just get rid of the fat super easily.
A study was just published by Salvador Vargas Molina and colleagues. They looked into this directly with two groups: one group did a 10% calorie deficit and the other did maintenance. Both trained and ate well for 10 weeks where they trained hard for 10 straight weeks.
The maintenance group gained like 2 lb of muscle and lost about 3 lbs of fat. The deficit group lost 6 lb of fat, double the fat of the maintenance group. The deficit group still gained the same 2 lb of muscle that the maintenance group did.
If you're in the deficit group, you're 3 lb of fat less than the folks that compare to you in the maintenance group, and you have the same amount of muscle. Now you can bulk for like 6 weeks at half a pound per week and gain even more muscle and end up at the same body fat with that much more muscle gain.
We know that you gain a bit more muscle when you're bulking. Not a ton but a bit more. We also know from this study for sure, you lose way more fat while cutting in a reasonable deficit than you do in a maintenance situation. You just don't lose any muscle. In this study, people actually gained it.
The imposition of maintenance, taking away the calorie surplus and the calorie deficit powers, ends up blunting both muscle growth and fat loss. You just get less of everything.
If you do bulking and cutting, you get more bulking and then more cutting, and in the end because the cutting doesn't lose the muscle, you gain more muscle and you lose more fat in the same window of time. With gaintaining, muscle does accrete but not as much of it as you would think, and the fat loss is also not as impressive.
Smooth, slow bulks of half a pound of weight gain per week at a time can make big changes to your musculature. Then you do a low-key cut that lasts maybe for 4 to 8 weeks of fat loss. You lose none of the muscle that you gained. As a matter of fact, you might gain even a little bit more muscle, and then repeat the process over and over again.
Gaintaining still works. Literally in this study people lost fat and gained muscle at the same time. Plenty of people can make very notable changes and recomposition and lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.
If you like to do it or it temporarily fits your lifestyle, like you're on vacation and still going to train hard but can't track calories really, then just yolo and you're probably good to go. Beginners and folks not mentally in a space to be bulking, gaintaining is your best friend. If you're pretty fluffy and want to gain some muscle but don't want to bulk up anymore, gaintaining is unbelievable, especially as a beginner.
The difference between effective versus ineffective versus maximally effective. Just because a Corvette made by Chevrolet is faster than a Chevy Malibu doesn't mean that a Malibu literally can't get you to the store. It just gets you there faster. The Malibu will still get you there. Gaining works, but bulking and cutting works faster.
Bulking and cutting almost certainly works better than gaintaining, but gaining still works. If you want the best results long term, both empirically and theoretically, bulking and cutting still wins. If it's worth it for you to do structured dieting, do it because it's still better.
- Muscle gain is harder than fat loss and takes way longer
- Fat loss without muscle loss is easy unless you are contest lean
- Fat loss can be done rapidly without muscle loss risk
For most of the time, for the most long-term muscle gain, you want to gain about half a pound a week for anywhere between 12 and 20 weeks on average. That adds about 6 to 10 lbs total to your body.
Then you want to maintain for maybe 2 weeks just an active rest or as many as 2 months or even longer to just gain strength and maybe even do a little gaining, rest up a little bit, and then hit somewhere between 4 to 8 weeks and about a pound per week of fat loss.
You're going to lose all of the fat pretty much that you gain during the bulk. You're going to lose probably none of the muscle and you might even gain a little bit. Especially if you monitor your strength using the RP hypertrophy app.
If you look at your RP hypertrophy app and you make sure that you're not losing strength week to week to week, you are almost certainly not losing any muscle. The net result with this protocol is going to be pure muscle gain in the long term. Every six months or whatever when you recycle this plan, you're just up a few pounds of muscle every single time.
There is a lower stress option. You can absolutely maintain when you like and you will still make progress. It's just going to be slower. But with the RP diet coach app and RP hypertrophy app, the progress can be slightly better still.
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