Doctor J,
I am having a hard time finding research on this question due to the inability to really formulate a google-able (I’ll say it’s a word if you say it’s a word) question. Essentially, gaining lean body mass tends to require a net surplus in calories in general, and losing weight requires a net deficit. Are there hard boundaries on where this “net” occurs? Here is the thought experiment so you can see my (probably flawed) attempt to understand how this works…
Say a person eats today in a surplus, but tomorrow eats in a deficit. If he does this such that the mean is 0, then generally he neither loses nor gains weight. Now say that person eats a surplus this week and a deficit the next week. Again the mean is 0. So the net of those two weeks is again that he is back at the same weight he started. Now if he eats in a surplus for a year, and then a deficit for a year…blah blah blah… again the mean comes to 0. At what point does the body “sense” that he is in a state of surplus or deficit such that it know to prioritize LBM gain over fat gain? Does the body have some amount of time it is required to assess calorie consumption? In my mechanical-thinking mind, there are an infinite amount of cycles for calories that you could examine. Therefore, the body could prioritize by the day and you could be doing mini bulk/cut cycles everyday and making gains, or your body might require a year of bulk and a year of cut to make gains…
Hopefully that makes sense enough to impart some juicy nuance…