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Comment by FartyMcFarter | Hacker News Reader

Sounds about right. Regarding point 3, 1500 kcal per day leaves more than enough budget to have some fats and carbs - 150g of protein is only 600 kcal.

> high fat percentage lowers the testosterone levels, which is not great for gaining muscle.

Anecdotally speaking, I was able to gain muscle / increase strength just fine when I started dieting, and I was definitely above 30% fat. Even if this isn't the case, the fat should melt away quickly on a good diet, so it probably isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

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For what it's worth, are you sure you were gaining muscle and not just gaining strength? There are many possible strength-gaining adaptations that can happen in an individual who is gaining no muscle. Actually gaining lean body mass while losing weight is very unlikely. It requires a very untrained, overweight individual with a relatively modest caloric deficit.

I can't prove that I was gaining muscle, but it sure looked like I was. It's not particularly rare either, there are many sources out there debunking the idea that gaining muscle requires gaining weight. This video cites some:

https://youtu.be/wkBtHOBmpb0

Even if I had only been gaining strength, that's still a good thing. So in practice this doesn't change the fact that it's a good idea to train while dieting.

Muscle gaining requires quite a bit of protein. It is not very difficult to constantly get enough protein in a non-vegan diet while consuming only 1500 calories even on OMAD. It is far more difficult to accomplish with a vegan diet on OMAD or IF cycle while only consuming 1500 calories.

It’s not so hard with protein powder. My powder would give me 100g protein in 440 calories.

That leaves just over 1000 calories to eat nutrient dense foods like broccoli and foods that bring even more protein.

(Just for fun, 1000cal of kale/broccoli aka 3kg fills all nutrient bars in cronometer except b12 and d3 and it has 70-90g protein)

Though i’m also not very convinced that we need nearly as much protein as broscientists think. If you aren’t jacked and you can’t grow on 100g protein per day at 200lbs, you aren’t covering enough of your max effort at the gym. Most people make that mistake and do grow no matter how much protein their ingest.

People with low muscle mass definitely don't need 440 calories of protein shake a day to gain muscle.

I was getting great results with about 110 calories worth 30 minutes after exercising (25-30g? "1 scoop" at any rate) plus creatine. I simultaneously lost a lot of fat according to the fat percentage scale at the supplement store.

> It requires a very untrained, overweight individual with a relatively modest caloric deficit.

It's hard to say because many overweight people already have a significant muscle mass, just those muscles are underused and hidden under the fat. When one starts to exercise and looses some weight their muscles' volume will increase with a better blood flow, and will get the proper shape and also become more prominent with less fat over them, but they'll probably not actually increase the muscle mass itself - it's just that we're now able to see them better.

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