Second

Thank you for your thorough reply! Very motivational to hear my efforts might not be futile! I don’t want to clutter your thread but soon I’ll open one which you might be interested in. There has been research implying the benefits of CR are mostly based on macronutrient balancing (low protein high carb) instead of CR itself. For now i’ll accept the “necessary evil” but after sufficient growth I hope to return to low maintenance protein intake. Since I turned vegan about 3 years ago (very low protein) I noticed my efforts in the gym didn’t pack me much if any muscle, nor did my strength improve much but that might just have been my “lackluster” protocol. Yet I didn’t lose muscle too! A sidenote is this could change should I have much more muscle to maintain, or when overal calories are restricted further. One clear benefit from my experience, from low protein intake or the vegan diet in itself, which might point to something neat beyond my current comprehension, is that muscle ache was greatly reduced. Anyhow, thank you once again for your insights and advice! I’ll follow your progress and experiments while I set up the stage for my own scheme in the oncoming months.

Hey McCoy, I’m reading this topic with interest, and hopefully you can answer a question or 2. After stumbling upon some interesting research, I am extremely determined to apply CR. However, since I’m build very lean (even if I’d eat a lot and unhealthy the most I could gain would be some belly fat) I’m reluctant to become a walking skeleton of sorts. So before I start CR I’m now deadbound to get myself in shape. I’m already pretty athletic (precisely because I would otherwise close to disappear!) but for the first time I’m pondering bodybuilding and getting “huge” (for now I’ve upped my regular game and now take pea protein since as a vegan you simply fall short) . My guess is, my hope is, although CR wouldn’t allow me to gain additional muscle, it would maintain the muscle I already put on if I continue exercising. I’ve read quite a few NCBI articles about this - though those were mostly directed at the benefits of CR and if exercise provides additional benefits (which doesn’t/hardly seems to be the case) - and it seems muscle can be spared in a state of CR! Since you seem to be well read on the subject, even though you aren’t on a CR diet, I wonder if you have a say about my little scheme: “get ripped, go CR, don’t disappear”. Will it work? I feel this part, upping calories and protein and growing a lot of muscle, will be a lot harder than CR thinking I normally enjoy about 1500-2000 calories a day if I’d just do my unforced vegan routine. So I’d hate to lose my hardgained effort. I’d happily return in 6 to 12 months and pick your brain on muscle sparing CR diet and caloric-sparse muscle maintenance! Thanks in advance!