Help with answering a friends question

[Linzie1303]

Hey all. I have a friend I'm somewhat of a mentor too. She watched me lose alot of weight in the beginning and now is watching prepare for my first show. She has since decided to get off her lazy duff and join in and try to slim down. She is more interested in the science behind all this crazy stuff and is amazed to learn that eating 5-7 meals a day can and will help you LOSE weight along with eating FAT*gasp*.(efa's)

Anyways, I was trying to explain how bodybuilders go through bulking and cutting cycles and how all the math works out as you need to create a defecit in calories to lose and eat above your maintenence to gain muscle. Well...then she asked "so how can I, who is eating below my maintence calories every day by 500, move up in weights if it's not possible to gain LBM on a defecit?" Now damnit i know the answer to this... i just wasn't able to make it come out of my mouth!!!

Anyone with a simple answer??? *like there are simple answers to this stuff*

 

[pintoca]

Good question. I don't know the answer. I know it happens though:

6 months ago I was about 70kgs of LBM
Now I am about the same 70kgs of LBM (a little less than that).

my strenght, however, has increased significantly... I know that part of it is me being much lighter as a whole (carrying less baggage so to say). I also know part of it is the conditioning of progressively increasing weight: Your body getting used to the challenge you present.

I remember reading your body needs to learn how to manage the weight you ask it to bear. It does this by recruiting muscle fibers as you increase your weights little by little, but it depends on how you train: for this reason there are different exercises for strenght, hypertrophy, etc, spefically designed to target slow or fast twitching muscle fibers... Then again, I am lost into the exact HOW this happens... I just now I can do more now than before with the same LBM.

Google Muscle Fibers - An In Depth Analysis