Question of Strength 65

Ask: What percentage of body fat is the most anabolic and where do you feel the best? Is that a good place to start a muscle growth phase?

It is not the same for everyone. Although technically, the thinner you are, the better your insulin sensitivity. This is important because it improves nutrient partitioning, which will help your body preferentially store nutrients in muscle tissue rather than fat.

Also, when you are thinner, your work capacity is higher. You are also likely to recover faster. Your blood pressure will be lower and you will probably be less tired during the day. If you have an extra 20 pounds of fat, it’s like spending all day walking around with a 20-pound backpack.

However, if you become too thin in relation to your fixed pointyou can start to have negative adaptations, like these:

• Sex hormones can decrease, lowering your sex drive or even causing erectile dysfunction.
• Cortisol will increase, making it more difficult to build muscle and recover from training.
• Leptin can decrease while ghrelin increases, giving you cravings and making you lazier.
• Adrenaline can remain elevated, even at night, making it difficult to sleep.

So what is the answer? Be as lean as possible without straying too far from your natural fit point.

What is your natural set point? It is the level of body fat that you stay at naturally. When you lose fat, your body will want to go back to what feels normal, and the further away from what it considers normal, the more bad things happen to force you back up.

Now being 2-5% lower than your set point is easy to maintain. But when you get down to 6-8% below your set point, you will start to have negative changes (like the ones mentioned above). The lower you go, the more of them you will have.

For example, if your natural set point is around 18% body fat, then maintaining 13-16% is pretty easy. But if it goes down to 10% or less, you will start to have problems.

The good news? You can gradually adjust your set point downwards. The bad news? It takes time.

For example, if your set point is 18% and it drops to 13%, but stays there for a long time (if you got there sustainably), then your body will slowly adjust your set point. After quite a long period, your benchmark will now be 13-14% instead of 18%.

This will make it easier to stay slim and will also allow you to lose up to 9-10% and keep it without ill effects. That’s why now I can stay at 9-10% with very little effort and I can get as low as 7-8% and maintain it. But years ago, as an obese Olympic lifter, going down to 13% was uncomfortable.

It takes a long time to adjust the set point. It must be at a certain level for about a YEAR for the body to adjust.

And while having a lower set point makes it less likely you’ll gain a lot of fat, you can still get fat if you eat too much. (When I get above 12-13%, my appetite dies, making “bulking up” virtually impossible.) And if you let your body fat go higher than your set point, it will readjust. Be careful because unfortunately adjusting up is faster than adjusting down.

From what percentage of body fat should you start your muscle gain phase? Well, the thinner the better. First, because of the issue of insulin sensitivity. But also because in a proper phase of muscle gain, you will surely gain some fat. If you start from a very lean state, you have more room to add body fat while still looking good. So it’s perfectly fine to diet a little lower than your “maintainable/comfortable” level and build from there.