@flamingoandsparrow I'm not certified either but I would definitely say 500 calories is too much. Unfortunately as women we can only gain about 1lbs of muscle PER MONTH. That comes out to a very small surplus per day (about 100 calories).
From what I remember the rule of thumb is 2500 calories per pound of MUSCLE gain. Over 30 days that's about 80 calories per day.
@jaleena Yeah, and since fuel partitioning on a bulk is never 100% towards muscle (more like 50/50 of muscle/fat for optimal muscle gains) you'd also gain one pound of fat (3500kcal) per month. That's an additional ~120 calories per day. Unless you're a high NEAT responder (burning lots more energy by subconsciously moving much more throughout the day when eating above maintenance) a 200 calory plus should be all you need as a woman. Of course if you increase NEAT much (typical "hard gainer") then you'd have to eat more.
Tldr; Starting with a recomp, monitoring your results, slowly increasing intake week by week in case you stall or want quicker gains, would be a good plan.
@flamingoandsparrow General advice is to reverse diet - basically eat at 100 calories over your TDEE for a while and see how your body changes, and over time you can add another 100 calories until you reach your muscle goals or you start gaining more fat than you would like, and then reevaluate from there. Hitting your protein goal will be the most important for maximising muscle gain.
@flamingoandsparrow I’m not certified to answer that specifically, maybe someone else on here can, or see a master personal trainer, but it’s my understanding that you need the extra calories to build the muscles. Ive hear it’s really hard to build a pound of muscle a month.
