I’m 165 cm (5’5) and currently around 99–101 lbs. My goal is to build muscle while staying lean/maintaining the “toned” look, rather than intentionally gaining a lot of weight.
I lift 5x a week and recently reduced my cardio from 4x a week to around 2–3x a week on the StairMaster with lesser intensity.

I’ve been averaging around 2,000 calories a day for the week, and I’m wondering if that sounds like too much for someone my size/activity level if I’m trying to maintain.

Are there any women here around the same height/weight who maintain on ~2,000 calories? If so, what does your activity level look like and how many calories do you typically eat?

I’d especially love to hear from anyone who is around 5’5 and ~100 lbs and lifts regularly. I’m trying to figure out whether 2,000 is actually reasonable for maintenance or it’s considered a bit of a surplus

btw, i don’t have any activities outside the gym

Hey guys, I'm 5'10, 82kg, have a pretty active job. I currently trying to add mass without gaining too much fat 'lean bulk' you might called it.  I would estimate I am around 12-13% bodyfat.

Currently consuming 2800cals a day, around 170-180g of protein, 350g of carbs and 60g of fat.

Foods are things like, oats, granola, Greek yogurt, chicken breast, whey protein powder, then whatever the wife cooks for dinner.

Its been 4 months since ive started this bulk and I started at 80kg. The scales haven't shifted upwards for 3-4weeks now so I'm considering upping to 3000-3200cals.

Am I doing the right thing as regard nutrition?

Is there anything I could do better?

60M, Lost 50 pounds since December 2025. I lost a decent amount of muscle mass with the rapid weight loss despite strength training. I have been maintaining for 3 months. I have a good workout routine 4x/week and my sets to 1 RIR. I am hitting my macros. My issue is little visible increase in muscle mass. I have seen an increase in definition. I am probably still around 20% BF.
I would rather not eat in a surplus, but would it be better to eat in a surplus and try to gain a few pounds of muscle mass, then cut or stick to my maintenance and hope for recomposition.
… I am just looking to add 10 pounds of muscle mass distributed across my body without upping my BF%

Im doing a lean bulk and last weekend I was at a wedding and had approximately 3k kcal above my maintenance. Today I also was 1k above my maintenance- it’s about a pound of fat and idk what to do.

I know I probably should go back to my plan and don’t compensate but I feel awful knowing I gained unnecessary fat whiteout much muscle - it’s messing with me and I feel lost.

How can I deal with this? I feel awful and don’t even want to train until I compensated for the 4k

Thanks in advance

Hey everyone,

I’m a 29 year old male and started my weight loss journey about 3 1/2 years ago. At my heaviest I was 342 lbs and I’m now around 162-163 lbs.

Obviously I’m really happy with how much weight I’ve lost, but one of the issues I’ve run into along the way is my testosterone being extremely low.

I started seeing a hormone doctor and was put on Enclomiphene because I didn’t want to go the testosterone route and risk my fertility.

I’ve been on it for about 3 months now and just got my labs back. My testosterone went from 118 to 268, so it has gone up quite a bit, but obviously 268 is still pretty low.
My doctor increased my prescription and wants me to make some changes with my diet too. He wants me eating more healthy fats, focusing more on protein, and said I could bring my carbs down to around 100-150g a day.
The biggest problem I have is that I’m VERY focused on calories. I tend to worry more about staying within my calorie limit than actually making sure I’m getting enough of the macros and nutrients my body needs.

My doctor also wants me eating more red meat because I really don’t eat much meat besides chicken. Some of my labs have also been a little low in B12 and iron.
I was around 150 lbs before starting Enclomiphene and honestly had basically no muscle. Since then I’ve been lifting and I’m finally starting to see some muscle. My arms are starting to come in and my legs are definitely getting bigger, which is nice to see after losing so much weight.
I do still struggle with recovery and being sore all the time though, which I’m sure isn’t helped by having low testosterone.

I’m curious what you guys would do diet-wise if you were in my situation. Would you focus more on getting enough fats and protein even if that means eating more calories? How much fat/protein would you personally aim for? When I started the medication, I upped my calories to 1850 and started putting on weight. I can eat around 1650-1700 and have noticed weight loss again. I do work a desk job, but I walk 30 minutes on incline treadmill every day, and go to the gym 3 days per week. I would say my average step count is between 6500-7500 per day, some more, some less.

And for someone who basically lives on chicken, what are some good ways to start incorporating more red meat? 😂
I’m obviously following what my doctor is telling me, so I’m not looking for medical advice. I’d just really like to hear from people who have been through something similar, especially people who have lost a significant amount of weight and then dealt with low testosterone afterward.

I’ve posted here a few times before and honestly hearing from people who have gone through this has helped me a lot.

Thanks in advance!

I’ve noticed that staying lean while building muscle requires a lot of consistency.

The nutrition side gets a lot of attention, but I think the training setup matters too.

A routine that is easy to repeat seems to make a big difference.

I’m curious how people structure their strength training when their goal is gaining or maintaining muscle while keeping body fat under control.

Do you follow a specific program?

Do you focus mostly on compound movements?

And do you train at a gym, at home, or a mix of both?

What has worked best for you long term?

I've been thinking about this problem and I'm curious how people here actually train.
Imagine an app that doesn't just generate a Push/Pull/Legs routine.
You log:
Incline DB Press:
30kg × 10, 10, 9
The app remembers it.
Next week you hit:
30kg × 12, 12, 12
→ It increases your target weight.
But imagine it goes further.
After a few weeks it notices:
Your chest is progressing well

Your side delts have stalled

Hamstrings are getting very little volume

Your recovery is good

Your protein is consistently low on weekends

So it tells you:
"Don't change your entire program. Your shoulders are the bottleneck. I'm increasing side-delt volume and keeping chest volume where it is."
And your daily screen simply says:
TODAY
☐ Workout
☐ 160g protein
☐ 2,400 kcal
☐ 8k steps
☐ 3L water
☐ Sleep/recovery check
Then every Sunday:
"Here's what changed in YOUR body this week, and here's what I'm changing next week."
It could also suggest food when you're short on protein/calories, analyze progress photos over time, detect plateaus, and eventually learn which exercises YOU personally respond best to.
I'm considering building something like this, but before I spend months building it, I want to understand the actual problem.
So I'm genuinely curious:
What's the most annoying part of managing your own training right now?

Do you actually change your program based on your progress, or mostly stick to the same routine?

How do you know when a muscle is lagging?

Do you track sets/reps/RIR, calories and protein?

If an app automatically adjusted your next week's training based on your actual performance and progress, would that genuinely be useful to you—or would you ignore it?

What would make you delete the app after one week?

Bonus: What's one feature you've always wished fitness apps had but none of them get right?
I'm much more interested in hearing what would make this useless than hearing that it sounds cool. 😄

Quick context I went from 199lbs down to 177. Was very on off with my diet and exercise but I’m a stable 178-179ish (had a week of birthdays and hanging out).

I’m walking and would love to go to this small Mexican restaurant and get some yummy food and a bottle of beer.

I know I shouldn’t, but I’ve been craving it for a long time. I eat healthy everyday and exercise (calisthenics), but i know I’ll feel guilty. My discipline has never been better but a nice cold beer and some Mexican food rn sounds awesome.

Why or why shouldn’t I? Gonna keep walking in the meantime

Edit: got the food and that cold bottle of corona :) it tastes AMAZING

Hello everyone,

I’m coming on here to ask for some advice regarding the ideal diet that I should have to maximize gains. For context, I am about 6’1-6’2 and around 186-189 lbs. I have been working out consistently for about 3 months and while I am starting to see some small gains and simultaneously getting stronger, I am not making as much progress as I would like to at this stage and may need a little help.

I think the biggest question that I still have is what I should be doing for my diet. I am not hyper focused on tracking my calories at the moment but I do eat a pretty consistent diet and have estimated that I eat around 2500-2700 calories a day with about 170g of protein. My only issue with this current split is that I am still storing some fat around my hips and on my face and it has definitely been bothering me. I think I am still in the category of what some would call “skinny fat”.

My question is should I drop my calories? Or should I eat more to try and get better gains? At this point I have pretty much nailed down a split (push,pull, legs) that I really enjoy but I do understand that dieting is actually a more important factor in improving overall look. So I really just need some advice on what to do, thanks!

Good evening.

In short: I’m 1.85m tall and weigh 94kg. I’ve already lost a lot of weight (over 20kg), but I’ve hit a plateau. Even though I have a big frame (tall, broad shoulders, etc.), I can’t seem to build much muscle.

My diet is generally good, but I do slip up now and then (a sweet here, a dessert there, sometimes skipping lunch, etc.). I take whey protein, so I always hit my protein goal, but the rest of my nutrition is a bit of a mess, haha.

I work out at the gym at least 5 times a week, following a Push/Pull/Legs + Upper + Lower split. I’m actually managing to increase the weight I lift now.

What could I improve?

\*\*Current Stats:\*\*
\*\*Age / Sex:\*\* 18-year-old Male
\*\*Weight:\*\* 155 lbs (70 kg)
\*\*Height:\*\* 5'8" (173 cm)
\*\*Goal:\*\* Body recomposition (lose fat while building/maintaining lean muscle mass).
\*\*Current Routine:\*\*
\*\*Frequency & Split:\*\* 4-day Upper/Lower split (Upper A, Lower A, Rest, Upper B, Lower B, Repeat).
\*\*Intensity:\*\* High intensity. I train to true muscular failure on every single set.
\*\*The Split Details:\*\*
\*Upper A/B:\* Machine presses, flyes, lat pulldowns, rows, shoulder presses, arms, and farmer's carries.
\*Lower A/B:\* Smith machine squats, leg presses, extensions, leg curls, Smith RDLs, lunges, calves, and abs.

\*\*Nutrition Plan:\*\*
\*\*What i’ve been doing :\*\* I been eating 1,600 calories/day, but I am highly concerned this is too low to properly recover and build muscle f
\*\*Daily Protein Target:\*\* Aiming for \\\~160g daily (approx.–1g per pound
\*\*Questions for the Experts:\*\*
Given that I try to workout daily. with minimal rest days and i usually take every single set to absolute failure or pause sets. is 1,600 calories too aggressive? Will it cause me to lose muscle mass instead of rebuilding?
What would be a safer, optimized calorie target range to allow for true muscular recovery and body recomposition at my current weight?
With a 4-day high-intensity rotation (taking sets to failure), should I adjust my caloric intake on training days vs. rest days, or keep it consistent?

For starters, I’m 20M, 160 lbs, and 5’10”. My goal is to get lean. Im wanting to go to the gym and already have a 5 day split that I plan on doing. The only issue is I’m lost on how much I should be eating. I’ve seen for protein it should be about .8-1 gram per pound, but how many carbs should I eat? how much fat? And overall calories? This is my first time working out and actually trying to get fit so I’m not sure how many calories I eat a day. If I had to guess I’d say it maybe be about 1500 to 2000.
I would really appreciate some help.

question here so I’ve been cutting for 6 months and lost almost 19-20kg (41-45lbs), I took a cheat day on my birthday and ended the cut the next day and went to maintenance, now at maintenance for a week my weight is now stabilising and yes ik I’ll gain weight from water and glycogen but why does my body composition look worse like I look flat and fatter? will I return to how lean I was on the cut in another 2-4 weeks?

I've been thinking about this specifically from a natural bodybuilding perspective, because we're probably one of the groups most obsessed with intentionally controlling relatively small surpluses and deficits.

We're constantly told things like:

Lean bulk at +200 to +300 calories.

Or:

Run a 400 to 500 calorie deficit.

Which makes sense in theory.

But I've started wondering how many of us can actually say with much confidence that we were in a 250 calorie surplus today.

Not on average over the last month.

Today.

If my maintenance is supposedly 2,700, I can eat 2,950 and call that a 250 calorie surplus.

But maybe today I trained legs, walked 16,000 steps and was generally moving all day.

Tomorrow might be a rest day with 4,000 steps.

It seems strange to me that we spend so much effort precisely controlling the intake side while often treating expenditure as one relatively stable number.

So I'm curious whether anyone here actually does something more dynamic.

Does anyone use a model that updates their estimated current TDEE every day and then actually uses that estimate to decide how much to eat that day?

And I know MacroFactor is going to come up, so to be clear, I'm familiar with what it does.

I'm not asking whether anyone uses an adaptive expenditure estimate based on calorie intake and weight trend.

I'm asking about the next step:

Do you actually try to estimate today's expenditure and use today's estimated surplus/deficit to drive today's intake?

For example:

Current estimated expenditure: 2,860
Food so far: 2,500
Target: +200 surplus
Remaining intake: ~560

Then tomorrow the expenditure estimate might be materially different.

Obviously there is uncertainty here. I'm not suggesting anyone can know they burned exactly 2,863 calories.

That's actually part of what I'm interested in discussing.

My assumption for years was basically that daily precision isn't possible, so the weekly average is what matters anyway.

And I'm sure a lot of people here will still argue that's the correct approach.

Maybe it is.

But I'm starting to question whether we've blurred two different statements:

1. You cannot know today's expenditure perfectly.

and

2. Therefore there is no value in continuously improving your estimate of today's expenditure.

Those aren't necessarily the same thing.

For natural bodybuilding in particular, I think this gets interesting during a long lean bulk.

If you're deliberately trying to keep your surplus small enough to limit unnecessary fat gain, a 200-calorie error in assumed maintenance is basically the entire surplus you're trying to create.

The same applies in reverse during a cut.

And expenditure clearly isn't constant. Body mass changes. Training volume changes. Steps change. NEAT changes. Food intake itself changes expenditure. Some weeks you're considerably more active than others.

So how are people here handling that?

A) Fixed calorie target and let the weekly/monthly weight trend sort it out

B) Adaptive TDEE, but still use relatively stable daily calorie targets

C) Adjust intake manually based on training/steps/activity

D) Actually use some sort of daily-updated expenditure model to guide each day's intake

And for anyone doing D:

Has it actually improved your bulk/cut, or did it just introduce more noise and make you overthink things?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who have run both approaches for a decent length of time.

I have recently started my gym journey and I'm really skinny...but can't figure out what the real issue is...Can all the guys who bulked up when they were a beginner help me out. Tell me foods to eat and other stuff. I m already eating 12 eggs a day and a shake with 800 calories around but as the days passing by I m not seeing any progress and it feels like quitting...please guys help me out..

Hey!

So I am wanting a little help since I wanna start a lean bulk, I did get a quick lean bulk schedule from a coach but nothing more than that since I had a lil struggle with money but anyways.

He put me on at 2241 cal approx, 242 carbs, 42 fat, 215 protein. I did that for 6 months and went into a cut but I did that a little to drastic so I did loose a good amount of muscle…
Rn I feel and look skinny fat..

And would want a lil help with how I should go about a mini bulk again and how I should adjust the macros?

I am a female of 22 years old (2003)
\~ 52,2 kg (115,8 lbs)
\~ 163 cm

Thankful for anyone who reaches out and is willing to help me out! And if you know anything more where I can learn strictly about macros and how to adjust and be the best at it to be able to do my own schedule for myself in a bulk/cut/maintaince/body recomp I would be very happy!😁

I’m trying to get back into the gym and wanted to start simple instead of jumping straight into a routine. My plan is to begin with just two dumbbells and do full-body workouts. My current workout is
1. Bent over dumbbell row
2. Dumbbell floor press
3. Dumbbell Shoulder Press
4. Dumbbell bicep curls
5. Diamond push ups
6. Dumbbell Squats
7. 1 min plank

These workouts are doing with just two dumbbells and none other equipment. I am mainly trying to build consistency before I start going to an actual gym. For anyone with more experience, is this a good full-body routine to start with, or are there any exercises you would recommend adding, removing, or changing? Any advice on sets, reps, and how often I should do this workout would also be appreciated.

hey everyone, total beginner here following the standard 16-8 fasting window and running the 3-day RPT setup on a slight deficit. current stats: F / 24 / 5'5 / 135 lbs.

tracking calories at 1600/day on lift days and around 1300 on rest days, hitting roughly 120g protein daily. lifts are pretty light since i just started out: bench 75x6, deadlift 115x5, squat 95x6.

i want to start adding creatine during my eating window to help keep strength up while dropping fat, but i keep seeing conflicting stuff about water retention and bloat on a cut. what’s actually the best creatine to take for this setup that wont wreck digestion or mess with scale progress? just standard unflavored monohydrate, or should i look at something else? thanks for any advice. :)

Hey everyone,

I need some guidance on planning my transition from September until next summer (June/July) to maximize muscle growth while dropping down to 14-15% body fat.

Here is my current situation:

Current Stats: Around 20% body fat (let's assume \~80kg as a baseline).

The last 3 months: I haven't been training or tracking my diet, and I actually lost some weight (mostly muscle and some fat, leaving me in a bit of a detrained/skinny-fat state).

The Advantage: I know I can take advantage of muscle memory as soon as I hit the weights again.

The Goal: Build as much muscle as possible and end up at 14-15% body fat by June/July.

I’m trying to figure out the best timeline. Should I start with a body recomposition (maintenance), a mini-cut, or go straight into a lean bulk?

Could you guys suggest the best month-by-month plan, including:

Which phase to start with (Recom, Mini-cut, or Lean Bulk).

When to transition to a bulk or cut.

Exact calorie adjustments (e.g., how many calories above or below maintenance) for each phase.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Doing yet another body recomp (the first one was just eating in a 700 cal deficit, lifting massive, and 6:18 fasting. I want to recomp for real this time, and adding swim into heavy rotation.

What are some non negotiables during cutting AND bulking? Diet, superstitions, anything at all.

Have been in recovery for about a month and a half now, I have gained 5 pounds because of low impact exercises and no deficit.

I’m trying to become and feel more lean but wanting to maintain my muscle and build muscle through weight lifting and strength training through the gym.

I try to aim for high protein but I am wondering if I should be doing 60% protein and then 20% carbs and %20 fat or should I be doing 60% protein with %30 carbs and 10% fat or should I be doing a higher fat diet with lower carbs more like a 60/10/30

I am pretty active going to the gym 4-5x a week and I stay active with work and on the weekends with walking.

I am a female trying to losing weight while building bigger & rounder glutes.

Is it possible to gain muscle while being in a caloric deficit? What else do I need to do besides lifting weight, eating enough proteins?

Hey peeps, i’m tryna figure out what pre workout to buy, im trying to buy one of each , so if you guys can recommend any that has worked wonders for you ill genuinely appreciate it ! i’ve used Raw essential and didn’t really like it or feel anything, also have had the RYSE loaded pre workout and yet again i felt nothing. I was looking more towards panda supps or bucked up ? but honestly have no clue which ones to try out ! thank you all !

Do you keep it realistic? Aspirational?

I’ve been training at home for a while now, and at this point my goal is less about chasing a crazy calorie number and more about staying consistent with strength and movement every day.

Most days I train in my home gym for around 45–60 minutes. Pull-ups are probably the one thing I do most consistently, along with rows, presses, squats, and whatever accessory work I feel like adding that day. I usually strength train 5–6 days a week and average around 8,000–10,000 steps.

I keep my Move goal at around 450. On a solid training day I’ll usually finish somewhere between 500–650, but on lighter or recovery days I might barely get past 350.

I used to think I should keep raising the goal every time I was consistently closing the ring, but eventually it started feeling like I was just chasing a number instead of actually training better.

Now I’d rather have a goal that pushes me a little without making a recovery day feel like I failed.

Do you guys set yours based on what you normally do, or set it higher so you actually have to work for it?