How to Build Muscle Without Gaining Fat by Maingaining

Say goodbye to the traditional bulk and cut phases with body Recomposition. Build muscle and stay lean year-round.

Traditionally, to maximise a person’s muscle growth, they would go through a “bulk” phase. This meant, they put on fat, which they then had to lose through a “cut” phase.

This is often a yearly cycle, which means you look at your best for maybe a month or two over the whole year.

Wouldn’t it be great to always look at your best? Lean with abs — but you’re still building muscle?

It would be the holy grail…

And you can! It’s called “maingaining” and yes, it’s not a real word.

What is Maingaining?

Maingaining is minimising or eliminating fat gain while still gaining muscle by consistently eating at or near your maintenance calories.

“Maingaining is a type of body recomposition where your goal is to roughly maintain your body weight, whilst gaining strength in the gym and ideally gaining a little muscle mass aswell.” — Jeff Nippard

Maintenance calories are the number of calories (energy) required to sustain your current body weight.

A big proponent of the technique is YouTuber and ex-bodybuilder Greg Doucette, who believes the yoyo dieting of switching between a large calorie surplus and a large calorie deficit is unhealthy.

During a cutting phase, people can get to very low body fat levels that are unhealthy. The cutting phase means severely decreasing calories to lose fat, often sacrificing proper nutrition.

Plus, he believes most people will yield similar results in terms of overall muscle gain over time, whilst staying lean.

How Maingaining works

Our bodies store calories as fat for later use as energy. Maingaining encourages the body to use some of the fat as energy to build muscle.

Instead of the usual bulk on 500+ calories over maintenance to purposefully gain fat and maximise muscle growth, maingaining requires eating at maintenance or a very small energy surplus of 100 or 200 calories.

Because we’re not adding all this extra body fat, our body fat percentage should be stable.

This makes maingaining slightly different from a lean bulk, which still requires cutting phases. You can theoretically maingain forever.

Research from Garthe et al. (2013) called the “Effect of nutritional intervention on body composition and performance in elite athletes”, found that people in a 600-calorie surplus didn’t gain much extra muscle, but did gain significantly more fat (BW: Bodyweight, LBM: Lean body mass, FM: Fat mass).

Body Recomposition

Maingaining is a variation of the more widely known concept of body recomposition.

Body recomposition losing fat and building muscle simultaneously. It can be defined as the “simultaneous loss of fat mass and the accumulation of fat-free mass (muscle), over a time period. Typically the observed period is anywhere from several weeks to several months.”

The above definition was taken from this video from Omar Isuf, which explains the findings of this study. The study reviewed the existing literature to find plenty of evidence for body recomposition in different scenarios.

Despite the common belief that building muscle and losing fat at the same time is only plausible in novice/obese individuals, the literature provided supports that trained individuals can also experience body recomposition. — Barakat, 2020

How body recomposition occurs

Body recomposition can be used slightly below maintenance level, at maintenance, or with a slight caloric surplus.

As long as you’re near maintenance, there is no “switch” that tells your body you are now in maintenance. There will be little difference between a slight caloric surplus or deficit from maintenance.

The laws of thermodynamics apply, which govern energy transfer. Energy can’t disappear, but instead, transforms from one form into another. Food adds energy to our bodies.

We have an ‘energy budget’ governed by our calorie intake and activity level. This energy budget is our maintenance calories.

Stored body fat is used the same way as food consumption, as net energy. Our body will be mobilising a little bit of fat at the same time as synthesising new muscle (which requires energy).

Muscle growth cannot be achieved in a substantial caloric deficit.

As long as you have a minimum threshold of calories, you can synthesize new muscle at the same time as

Why maingain?

Want to build muscle but stay lean?

That’s why you should maingain.

You wouldn’t have to cut if you didn’t bulk in the first place! And it is possible to gain muscle without having to bulk!

Bulking and cutting is essentially yoyo dieting, which isn’t healthy. It can wreak havoc on a person’s insulin response among other things.

Moreover, maingaining can have the added benefit of saving you a little bit of money at the grocery store. A bulk means you require more food and a cut phase often means only eating very specific foods — in both cases, it will be more expensive than eating the same amount of food consistently.

When to Maingain

There are a couple of approaches to maingaining that you can use.

Natural bodybuilder and popular YouTuber Jeff Nippard is famous for his science-based approach to training and nutrition. Jeff likes to “maingain” at the end of a bulk phase, before he cuts. He has several videos about body recomposition and maingaining on his YouTube channel.

I often use maingaining at the end of a cut phase until I want to bulk again. I’ve used this approach several years over the years before I knew what a body recomposition was.

But there’s no reason why maingaining can’t last an indefinite amount of time — if you’re happy with the results.

There are several reasons a person might maingain. Some of those are:

• Wanting to maintain regular eating patterns and diet
• Don’t want to have to bulk and cut cycles
• Happy with their overall physique but want to add some muscle and/or strength
• Maintain their body fat level but gain some muscle
• Standardise training
• Athletes who need to stay relatively at the same weight so their ability to perform optimally or stay in the same weight class isn’t inhibited. And they can also experience improvements in body recomposition and strength/performance.

Who should not maingain?

Are some criticisms that it’s not beneficial for everybody to maingain. The following groups of people should try and eat in a moderate caloric surplus of around 250–500 calories to maximise their potential for muscle growth.

• Hard-gainers
• Very lean people (low body fat)
• Very overweight people
• New to intermediate lifters with poor or average genetics

How to Maingain

In essence, maingaining is simple. Consume the same amount of calories every day and follow an exercise program aiming to become stronger.

However, progress from maingaining is harder to measure than a bulk or cut cycle because you don’t see tangible results in a matter of weeks. It requires patience, discipline and smart programming.

The scale should change very slowly, so we need to analyse body composition via methods such as using body fat callipers, measurements of areas that build muscle and taking progress pictures) to track our progress.

Body fat might margainally increase during the process, but as we gain muscle simultaneously, our body fat percentage should stay similar.

The optimum level of body fat for maingaining

Having a very low amount of body fat isn’t ideal for maingaining.

Maingaining will work a lot better at a moderate to high body fat level of 12–20% for men, and 18–26% for women.

A higher body fat percentage means more stored energy. We need to fuel workouts efficiently. Moreover, at low body fat levels (under 10% for men and 15% for women), our body becomes less willing to break down stored fat and use it for muscle growth. Our body realises it only has a finite amount of fat left which it prioritises for living/survival.

Furthermore, we need an optimum hormonal profile to build muscle and when we’re very lean, our testosterone levels drop.

“I would say when maingaining does not work for people it’s ONLY because they are trying to maingain at TOO LOW A BODY FAT %. I think if people just got to a weight that’s healthy for them then maingaining would result in the same long term muscle gain as bulking and cutting.” — Greg Doucette

The rest of this section will be split into two sections — Diet and Exercise.

Diet

The first thing to consider when it comes to building muscle and fat loss is our diet. Maingaining has two fundamental dietary variables — Total Calories and protein intake.

Total Calories — to maingain, a person should moderate their eating to be at or around maintenance calories.

I’m currently around 84 kg or 185 pounds. This happens to be the same weight as Jeff Nippard currently who is going into a maingaining phase. I don’t count my calories, but Jeff will maingain at around 3000 calories a day — 200g Protein, 90g Fat, and 350g of Carbs. This ratio is 26% protein, 27% fat, 45% carbs.

We all differ based on our activity level, body composition and metabolism, so maintenance calories be the same for two people, regardless of whether we’re the same weight.

The most precise method to do this is by counting calories/macronutrients, but many of us don’t want to count calories, so you can regularly weigh yourself to find your baseline and make incremental changes to how much you eat.

Standardising eating habits will make it easier to eat at maintenance or around it. However, it can also become boring. Educate yourself about food so you can easily choose alternative food options with a similar number of calories.

Once you gain muscle, your maintenance calories will slightly increase to cater for this.

Protein — you must consume an adequate amount of protein to maximise your ability to build muscle.

You don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night for a shake or have it first thing when you awaken. The amount you consume is more important than at what time.

The most beneficial time to consume protein is around your workout — so either with the pre or post-workout meal (or both). Having it immediately after the workout isn’t necessary if it was consumed before your workout, as it will still be digesting and utilised by your body. Aim for 20–50 grams around your workout.

Over the day, 1.5 grams per 1 kg (roughly 0.8 grams per pound of body weight) is enough. Jeff Nippard has around 1.1 g per pound/2.5 g per kg which is on the higher side.

Read the article below for advice more about protein.

Exercise

The second part of the equation for building muscle is exercise. It’s not so important in terms of fat — our diet is a major control there.

However, 1–2 hours a week of cardio is recommended for a healthy heart.

Muscle is obviously built in the gym. Therefore, we should resistance train regularly — 4 to 6 times a week.

Building muscle takes more than just turning up to the gym.

First, building muscle requires maximum effort in the gym consistently. Train at a high intensity near failure. Don’t go to the gym to spend most of your time talking to your mates.

Second, building muscle requires hypertrophy. Hypertrophy is the increase and growth of muscle cells through exercise. A certain level of volume is required, research indicates that 10–20 total sets per body part a week is optimal. Volume can be simplified as “exercises x sets x reps”. Repetitions should mostly be in the range of 8–15.

Third, building muscle requires progressive overload.

Progressive overload is increasing the amount we can lift over an extended period, to stress and damage our muscle fibres. Our muscles adapt and grow back bigger and stronger. We might aim to lift slightly more each week or month, or, we might aim to increase how many reps we can do at a given weight.

The video below is an excellent guide to a training routine to increase strength and build muscle.

Other variables we can control to maximise our ability to build muscle by getting enough sleep and minimising stress. This will help us to maintain optimal hormonal levels.

For more information on how to optimise your workout to get the best results, check out the article below.

Final Thoughts

This article has explored how maingaining allows us to build muscle whilst keeping our body fat at a consistent level.

To absolutely maximise muscle growth, you need a large caloric surplus. But most of us don’t want the added fat that comes with bulking. So, if you don't want to sacrifice a flat stomach, maingaining allows you to still build muscle.

Plus, there is an argument that by the time a person cuts the extra fat they gained during bulking, they will sacrifice some muscle mass anyway. Thus, the differences in muscle gain between the traditional cut and bulk and maingaining are negligible.

The article gives strategies to help you manage your diet and training to maingain effectively.

Thank you for reading.

If you enjoyed the content, you might be interested in this article on the best isolation exercises to train each muscle group and build muscle.

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