Why You're Not Getting Stronger: The Problem With Eating at Maintenance

The fitness industry has a problem with food. Specifically, it has convinced an entire generation that eating less is always better, that maintaining a lean physique year-round is optimal, and that you can build meaningful muscle while consuming at maintenance calories.

This is wrong. Not opinion-wrong. Research-wrong.

If you want to get strong, you have to eat enough to support the process. A moderate caloric surplus builds muscle and supports recovery from the training needed to build it. Maintenance calories produce negligible gains for trained individuals. The science on this is clear, even if the Instagram fitness crowd pretends otherwise.

The Research On Eating To Get Stronger

Let's start with what the science actually says.

Murphy and Koehler published a meta-analysis in 2022 examining how energy availability affects resistance training outcomes [1]. They pooled data from randomised controlled trials lasting three weeks or longer. The findings showed a clear hierarchy: people eating in a surplus built more muscle than those at maintenance, and those at maintenance built more than those in a deficit. Their meta-regression demonstrated a dose-response relationship between energy availability and lean mass gains [1].

The mechanism is straightforward. Building new tissue requires energy and raw materials. Your body cannot create muscle from nothing. When you eat at maintenance, you're giving your body exactly enough to sustain current function. There's nothing left over for construction. When you eat in a surplus, you're providing the building blocks for adaptation.

Slater and colleagues addressed this directly in a 2019 review asking whether an energy surplus is required to maximise hypertrophy [2]. Their conclusion: while the precise surplus needed is unknown, the available evidence suggests that eating at or below maintenance limits muscle growth in most trained individuals. They recommended a conservative surplus of 1,500-2,000 kJ per day (roughly 350-500 calories) to support hypertrophy while minimising fat gain.

The Garthe study illustrates this perfectly [5]. Elite athletes eating a 500 calorie surplus gained 0.5kg of lean mass over 8-12 weeks. Those eating at maintenance gained 0.0kg. Not a small amount. Zero. The surplus group built muscle. The maintenance group span their wheels.

The Maingaining Fantasy

This brings us to maingaining: the idea that you can build muscle while eating at maintenance calories indefinitely. The evidence-based fitness crowd loves this concept. They cite studies showing body recomposition is possible. They're not lying. They're just not telling you the full story.

Yes, recomposition exists. The NSCA's Strength and Conditioning Journal published a review confirming that body recomposition can occur in trained individuals [3]. Certain populations can build muscle without a caloric surplus:

Beginners who've never trained before experience rapid adaptation to novel stimulus.

Their bodies are hypersensitive to training and can partition nutrients toward muscle growth even without excess calories.

Detrained individuals returning after a long layoff retain muscle memory at the cellular level. Satellite cells remain, making regrowth faster than initial growth.

Overweight individuals with significant fat stores have internal energy reserves their body can draw from. They can effectively be in a surplus for muscle tissue while being in a deficit for fat tissue.

People using performance-enhancing drugs operate under different physiological rules. Even then, they still need to optimise training, nutrition, and recovery to build relatively small amounts of muscle. If drugs alone were enough, every user would look like a pro bodybuilder. They don't. The drugs shift the ceiling. They don't remove the need for adequate nutrition.

If you're not in one of those categories, maingaining doesn't stop muscle growth entirely. It just makes it painfully, pointlessly slow. You might gain a kilogram of muscle per year instead of four or five. That's not efficient body recomposition. That's wasting years achieving what proper nutrition accomplishes in months.

Do the maths. At maingaining rates, building 5kg of muscle takes five years of perfect training. With a moderate surplus, you could build the same amount in 12-18 months. The maingaining crowd is trading years of their life for the privilege of staying slightly leaner during the process.

The maingaining advocates know this. They cite the studies showing recomposition is possible without mentioning that the effect sizes are tiny for trained individuals eating at maintenance. They present the research selectively because staying lean is what their audience wants to hear. The Garthe study showed it clearly: maintenance produced zero lean mass gain while a surplus produced meaningful growth [5].

Watch these creators carefully. How strong are they actually? How much do their lifts go up year to year? Most of them look the same now as they did five years ago. They've optimised for staying lean and looking good on camera. They have not optimised for building strength or muscle.

What the Surplus Research Actually Shows

If deficits impair growth, do larger surpluses produce faster gains?

Not necessarily. A 2023 study published in Sports Medicine examined whether larger energy surpluses enhanced resistance training adaptations compared to smaller surpluses or maintenance [4]. The findings were instructive: faster rates of body mass gain primarily increased fat accumulation rather than augmenting strength or muscle thickness. The researchers concluded that conservative surpluses of 5-20% over maintenance, scaled to training experience, were sufficient to support hypertrophy without excessive fat gain.

This matches what Garthe and colleagues found in 2013 [5]. Elite athletes eating a 500 calorie surplus gained more lean mass than those eating at maintenance (0.5kg vs 0.0kg over 8-12 weeks). But they also gained more fat (1.1kg vs 0.2kg). The surplus helped, but the returns diminished quickly.

The practical takeaway: you need to eat above maintenance to build muscle optimally, but you don't need to eat yourself into obesity. A moderate surplus of 300-500 calories supports growth while keeping fat gain manageable. The exact number varies by individual, but the principle is consistent: you cannot build something from nothing.

How Abs Became the Metric

This obsession with staying lean didn't come from nowhere.

Fifty years ago, the markers of physical fitness were functional, what you could do, not what you looked like with your shirt off. The shift happened gradually. Bodybuilding moved from subculture to mainstream in the 1970s and 80s. Fitness magazines needed cover models, and lean physiques photographed better than strong ones. The aerobics boom pushed cardiovascular fitness and calorie restriction. The obesity epidemic created a cultural obsession with thinness rebranded as wellness.

By the time social media arrived, the equation was complete. Visible abs meant discipline. Visible abs meant health. Never mind that the leanest people in your gym are often the weakest. The image won.

The fitness influencer economy cemented this. Instagram rewards what photographs well. A six-pack in good lighting gets engagement. A 200kg deadlift is just a number. So the industry optimised for appearance, and two generations of trainees now believe that abs are the point of training.

They're not. The research on health outcomes tells a completely different story.

Why Strength Actually Predicts Health

The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, published in The Lancet in 2015, followed over 140,000 adults across 17 countries [6]. The researchers measured grip strength and tracked health outcomes over a median of four years.

The findings should have rewritten how we think about fitness. Grip strength was inversely associated with all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, myocardial infarction, and stroke. For every 5kg reduction in grip strength, all-cause mortality risk increased by 16%. Cardiovascular mortality risk increased by 17%.

Here's the finding that should concern anyone obsessed with leanness: grip strength predicted all-cause and cardiovascular mortality more strongly than systolic blood pressure. Blood pressure is a metric doctors have obsessed over for decades. Grip strength beat it.

This wasn't a fluke. Multiple meta-analyses have confirmed the association. Wu and colleagues pooled 40 studies and found a hazard ratio of 1.16 per 5kg reduction in grip strength for all-cause mortality [7]. García-Hermoso and colleagues combined 33 studies and found that higher grip strength reduced mortality risk by 31% compared to lower levels [7]. Bohannon's comprehensive review in Clinical Interventions in Aging identified at least three separate meta-analyses all supporting the link between weak grip strength and all-cause mortality [7].

Grip strength is a proxy for overall muscular strength and function. It reflects how well your entire neuromuscular system is working. Strong people live longer. They recover better from illness. They maintain independence as they age. They have better metabolic health, better bone density, better cognitive function.

None of this has anything to do with visible abs.

The Fear of Getting Fat

When I tell people they need to eat more to get stronger, the response is almost always the same: "But I don't want to get fat."

What exactly do you mean by fat?

Because most people who say this don't mean clinically obese. They don't mean unhealthy. They mean they might not be able to see their abs. They mean their face might look slightly fuller. They mean the number on the scale might increase.

This is not fat. This is having a normal human body that's adequately fuelled.

The definition of "fat" has been warped by fitness culture. People think 15% body fat is letting themselves go. Professional athletes compete at 12-18% body fat. Strongmen and powerlifters who move world-record weights often sit at 20% or higher. These are not fat people. They are strong people who eat enough to be strong.

When someone says "I don't want to get fat," what they usually mean is "I don't want to look different from the fitness influencers." But those influencers are often dehydrated, pumped, photographed in perfect lighting after weeks of extreme dieting and suffer from menstrual cycle dysfunction, body dismrophia and eating disorders. That's not a sustainable standard. That's a snapshot of someone at their most depleted.

Fat gain from eating to support training is not the same as fat gain from eating junk and sitting on the sofa. When you're training hard and eating to fuel that training, your body partitions those calories toward recovery and muscle building. Yes, some fat gain is possible. But you're not going to wake up obese because you ate enough protein and carbohydrates to recover from your squats.

The research from Garthe showed that even in a 500 calorie surplus, elite athletes gained only 1.1kg of fat over 8-12 weeks while gaining meaningful lean mass [5]. That's manageable. That's a worthwhile trade-off. That's the reality of building something.

The Trade-Off Nobody Wants to Accept

Here's the uncomfortable truth the fitness industry won't tell you: you cannot optimise for everything simultaneously.

You cannot be maximally lean and maximally strong at the same time. You cannot build muscle at the fastest rate while staying photoshoot-ready. You have to choose.

The research shows the hierarchy clearly. A moderate surplus builds muscle. Maintenance builds muscle so slowly it barely registers for trained individuals. The Garthe study: 0.5kg lean mass with a surplus versus 0.0kg at maintenance over the same training period [5].

Real progress requires seasons. Periods of eating more and building strength. Periods of eating less and revealing what you've built. Back and forth, over years, accumulating strength and muscle that you couldn't build while trying to stay lean year-round.

The people who accept this trade-off get strong. The people who refuse it stay the same forever, too scared of a temporary increase in body fat to ever eat enough to grow.

Conclusion

The fitness influencer economy has convinced people that the goal of training is to look good in photos. This is one goal, but it's not the only goal, and it's often incompatible with getting genuinely strong.

The research is clear:

A moderate surplus of 300-500 calories builds muscle meaningfully [2, 4, 5].

Eating at maintenance produces negligible muscle gain for trained individuals. The Garthe study showed zero lean mass gain at maintenance versus real progress with a surplus [5].

Maingaining wastes years achieving what proper nutrition accomplishes in months.

Strength, not leanness, predicts health outcomes. Grip strength is a better predictor of mortality than blood pressure [6].

If you want real strength, the kind that changes what your body can actually do, you have to eat enough to build it. Your abs might blur. The scale will go up. You'll look less impressive in certain lighting.

But you'll be able to do things you couldn't do before. You'll be stronger than people who spend their lives chasing leanness. And when you eventually decide to lean out, you'll have something worth revealing.

Stop maingaining. Stop fearing food. Eat to support your training, train to get stronger, and accept that building something worthwhile takes resources.

Ready to Train for Strength?

If you're done spinning your wheels and ready to actually get strong, I can help. I work with adults who want to build real, functional strength without the obsessive leanness culture that holds most people back.

Get in touch to find out how we can work together.

References

[2] Slater GJ, Dieter BP, Marsh DJ, et al. Is an energy surplus required to maximize skeletal muscle hypertrophy associated with resistance training. Frontiers in Nutrition. 2019;6:131. Read the study

This comprehensive review tackled the question every maingainer wants answered: do you actually need a surplus to build muscle?

The authors examined the energy cost of building muscle tissue, the role of different macronutrients, and the existing evidence on energy balance and hypertrophy. Their analysis acknowledged that the precise energy surplus required to maximise muscle growth is unknown, but several key points emerged:

• The energy cost of synthesising new muscle tissue is estimated at 360-480 calories per day during active growth phases

• Additional energy does not appear to further modulate the acute muscle protein synthesis response to protein ingestion at rest or following resistance exercise

• However, numerous textbooks and practical guidelines still recommend creating an energy surplus when attempting to build muscle

Their recommendation: practitioners should take a conservative approach, creating an energy surplus within the range of 1,500-2,000 kJ/day (approximately 350-500 calories) to minimise fat mass gains while supporting hypertrophy. Regular review of body composition and functional capacities should guide individual adjustments.

The authors notably questioned whether a hypercaloric intake is strictly necessary but acknowledged that the limited data on resistance-trained individuals suggests eating at or below maintenance likely impairs optimal muscle growth.

[1] Murphy C, Koehler K. Energy deficiency impairs resistance training gains in lean mass but not strength: A meta-analysis and meta-regression. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. 2022;32(1):125-137. Read the study

This meta-analysis examined how energy availability affects resistance training outcomes. Murphy and Koehler conducted a systematic review identifying randomised controlled trials where participants performed resistance training at different energy intakes for three weeks or longer.

They divided their analysis into two parts. Analysis A compared studies that had both a deficit group and a control group eating at maintenance or above. Analysis B matched deficit studies with separate control studies based on participant characteristics and intervention design.

The key findings establish a clear hierarchy:

• Lean mass gains were significantly greater in groups eating at maintenance or above compared to deficit groups (effect size = -0.57, p = 0.02)

• The meta-regression showed a dose-response relationship: more energy availability produced greater lean mass gains

• Strength gains followed a similar pattern but the effect was not statistically significant (effect size = -0.31, p = 0.28)

The mechanistic explanation: building muscle requires energy and substrates. When energy availability is limited, the body prioritises survival functions over tissue construction. IGF-1 production is impaired, and muscle protein synthesis is suppressed. When energy is abundant, the body has resources available for adaptation.

Practical application: if your goal is building muscle, eating at maintenance is suboptimal. A moderate surplus provides the resources your body needs to actually construct new tissue.

[3] Barakat C, Pearson J, Escalante G, Campbell B, De Souza EO. Body Recomposition: Can Trained Individuals Build Muscle and Lose Fat at the Same Time? Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2020;42(5):7-21. Read the study

[4] Leaf A, Rothschild J, Cronin CJ, et al. Effect of Small and Large Energy Surpluses on Strength, Muscle, and Skinfold Thickness in Resistance-Trained Individuals. Sports Medicine. 2023. Read the study

[5] Garthe I, Raastad T, Refsnes PE, Sundgot-Borgen J. Effect of nutritional intervention on body composition and performance in elite athletes. European Journal of Sport Science. 2013;13(3):295-303. Read the study (cited in this related paper)

[6] Leong DP, Teo KK, Rangarajan S, et al. Prognostic value of grip strength: findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study. The Lancet. 2015;386(9990):266-273. Read the study

[7] Bohannon RW. Grip Strength: An Indispensable Biomarker For Older Adults. Clinical Interventions in Aging. 2019;14:1681-1691. Read the study