Stated plainly: three · 1,400 kcal.
I would like to set this up properly once, rather than adjust it repeatedly.
My budget is real but not tight, and my tolerance for uncertainty is low.
What would you do, and what would make you change course?
Three sessions a week against 1,400 kcal a day — 9800 kcal for the week — and at that intake the binding constraint is almost never the session count. Protein at 4 kcal per gram is the reason: 100 g a day is 400 kcal, 29 per cent of 1,400, and 2800 kcal of the 9800 for the week spoken for before anything else is eaten. Two to three hard sessions is enough stimulus to defend lean mass; the literature stops improving much past that even at maintenance intake. Load matters more than frequency here: the stimulus that preserves mass is mechanical tension, so keep the weight and cut the volume rather than the reverse. None of this is medical or dietary advice.
This is one of the tags where the evidence is unusually consistent and the arguments are unusually heated.
Load is the retention signal. Reducing weight and adding repetitions preserves the workout and weakens the stimulus, which is exactly backwards for this objective.
| Body mass | 1.2 g/kg | 1.6 g/kg | 2.0 g/kg | Per meal at 1.6 (÷3) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 62 kg | 74 g | 99 g | 124 g | 33 g |
| 74 kg | 89 g | 118 g | 148 g | 39 g |
| 88 kg | 106 g | 141 g | 176 g | 47 g |
| 103 kg | 124 g | 165 g | 206 g | 55 g |
| 124 kg | 149 g | 198 g | 248 g | 66 g |
At roughly 4 kcal per gram, 141 g of protein is about 564 kcal — a substantial fraction of a 900 kcal budget, which is the real constraint.
Specifically, session performance is the practical readiness signal. Two consecutive sessions where loads drop at matched effort usually means recovery, sleep or intake rather than programming.
Research-use compounds are not approved for human use and are not a substitute for a training stimulus.
Consistency beats optimisation by a margin nobody wants to hear.
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Visit GL BiochemThe short version: two to four sessions weekly, roughly ten sets per muscle group per week, loads maintained, effort close to but short of failure.
Appetite suppression reduces training fuel as well as protein, and low-carbohydrate sessions feel much worse than they perform. Judge by load, not by feel.
Training close to failure — one to three repetitions in reserve — is sufficient. Training to failure adds fatigue disproportionately to stimulus and is a poor trade when recovery is constrained.
The caveat is that programme design is individual, and anyone with joint, cardiac or metabolic constraints needs a professional rather than a forum.
Compound movements first, because recovery is the scarce resource.
Compound movements give the most stimulus per unit of recovery, which matters more when recovery is the limiting resource.
Beginners retain the ability to gain muscle in a moderate deficit for several months; trained individuals should expect maintenance and be satisfied with it.
Around ten hard sets per muscle group per week is the region where most of the retention benefit is realised; more produces diminishing returns and, in a deficit, a recovery cost.
Load-matched comparisons show that maintaining intensity preserves strength and lean mass in a deficit better than reducing load and increasing repetitions.
One to three reps in reserve. Failure costs more than it returns here.
edited 11 Nov 2024 by kirsi_lahtinen — fixed an arithmetic slip in the third paragraph
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