5 Reasons You Still Don’t Look Like You Lift (Part 2)

November 24, 2021

Training, Build Muscle

Not Eating Enough

If you’re not eating enough, you’re going to have a difficult time building muscle. Protein, carbs, and fats are the raw materials that make up calories. You need to have enough of these raw materials to build with. If you show up to a construction site to build infrastructure, and you don’t have enough raw materials, the infrastructure can’t be built. Same goes for building muscle. If you don’t have enough raw materials to build with—protein, carbs, and fats—muscle won’t be built, for the most part. You can build muscle and lose fat at the same time, but it’s a much slower process that becomes more challenging the more advanced you are and the leaner you are. You can build muscle and lose fat at the same time up to a certain point, but eventually you are going to need to go into a surplus in order to progress and continue to build muscle.

People often don’t consume enough calories for a few reasons:

They struggle to get enough food in. They have a high metabolism, and don’t have the appetite to match.

They aren’t weighing or tracking their calorie intake, but claim they’re eating 4,000 + calories. I come across this a lot, and once they do actually weigh and track their food, they find they’re eating a lot less than they thought.

And probably the most common reason, they’re constantly dieting and focused on fat loss. They spend far more time dieting, but usually inconsistently and not with the best approach. Despite little to no progress, they keep trying and looking for quick fixes or place the blame elsewhere instead of taking personal responsibility for their lack of results. They spend far less time in a surplus to build muscle, and building muscle takes time. So the more time spent in a deficit trying to lose fat, the less time spent in a surplus building muscle.

If you don’t have the appetite to get enough calories in, there are ways to make consuming more calories less challenging. If you have a hard time putting on weight and you’re not tracking your calories, I’d suggest tracking them for a week to see how many calories you eat per day, and what your weekly average is. You might be eating a lot less than you think. If you’re constantly trying to diet to lose fat, but not getting anywhere, something needs to change so you can start seeing better fat loss results, get lean, and switch to a surplus or at least maintenance sooner and get away from the constant dieting.

Your Diet Sucks

Food quality matters, and it’s important to get a variety of nutrient-dense foods that allow you to hit your macronutrient goals while also providing enough fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

Some foods result in overall better health, make you feel better, and allow you to perform better in the gym. If you’re healthier, feeling better and have more energy, and have better pumps and endurance in the gym, you’ll most likely build more muscle. Better training sessions often translates to better results from those sessions.

A 3,000-calorie diet from wild-caught salmon, grass-fed beef, chicken breast, eggs, oats, potatoes, brown rice, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds will likely produce a different result both physiologically and physically, than a 3,000-calorie diet from fast food, processed foods, alcohol and other low-quality foods that lack protein, nutrients, and fiber.

Neglecting Recovery

Training is the stimulus for muscle growth, but training alone does not guarantee any muscle growth will actually occur. You then need to recover from your training and allow the adaptations to take place. If you’re undereating, eating poorly, in a constant state of stress, and not sleeping well, your recovery will be far from ideal. If you’re not recovering well, you’ll probably still build muscle, but definitely not as much as you could be from all the hard work you’re putting in.

It’s common for recovery to be overlooked and forgotten. People want complex supplements, or secrets and hacks to accelerate their progress, instead of mastering the basics. They don’t want to be told they should sleep a bit more and sleep better. Or, to take a deload week more frequently, program their training smarter and better, attempt to manage stress in a more productive and healthy way, or eat better.

Look for ways to improve stress and manage fatigue better. If you can recover better, you’ll feel better, be able to train better, and your results from the work you’re putting in will be better.

You’re Not Consistent

Nothing works well if it’s not done consistently. Eating well and sticking with your diet 4-5 days out of the week usually isn’t enough, even if it’s ‘the best’ diet. Making it to the gym only when you feel like it probably won’t get you very far, even if it’s a great training program.

You need to develop habits, routines, make lifestyle changes, and develop self-discipline. These changes make it easier to do what needs to be done on a consistent basis, regardless of how you feel or how motivated you are.

Consistency is key and without it, any goal will seem out of reach. Start being consistent with the basics, and watch your results improve.

Read: “Why Being Inconsistent Is Harder Than Being Consistent”

Taking “Bulking” Too Far

We talked about not eating enough, and that you need to eat enough to build a noticeable amount of muscle. That doesn’t mean you need to be in a calorie surplus of several hundred calories or more and pack on an unnecessary amount of body fat.

Just like you can increase your training volume and see better results, you get to a certain threshold of training volume where you start accumulating more fatigue, but with no additional benefit, no additional muscle growth. Similarly, you can increase your caloric surplus up to a certain point, but increase your surplus by too much and there is no additional benefit, no additional muscle growth, just more body fat accumulating.

If you gain too much weight on your bulk to the point you’ve completely lost all muscle definition, including your abs, you’ll have a lot of work to do to get lean again. Your cutting phase in a calorie deficit will be longer, and the risk of losing muscle mass as you diet down will be greater due to the longer dieting phase. Plus, if you have a lot of fat to lose, you’ll probably be impatient like most people are, and want to lose the fat as fast as possible. Faster weight loss beyond the recommended 0.5-1% drop in body weight per week also increases the risk of muscle loss. If you keep the bulk more controlled with less fat gain, you can gain just about the same amount of muscle, but with a lot less fat. Then when it comes time to diet down and get lean, you probably won’t have to cut as long or as aggressively. And as I’ve mentioned previously, if your cut isn’t too long, you can increase calories back to maintenance or a surplus sooner.

Eat in a calorie surplus, but keep it to 10% to no more than 20% over maintenance calories. I prefer to be cautious and start on the lower end at a 10% surplus, and adjust as needed.

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