This is your default ‘gear’. The gaintain strategy is the only one of the four that can be run indefinitely.
There’s more than one definition of gaintaining, so let’s first define what we mean in this context. At a glance:
- Eating at approximately maintenance calories. This will largely be auto-regulated – if you have more time and are training hard, eat a bit more, if you have less time and are training less, eat a bit less
- Protein around 2g per kilogram of lean body mass, though up to 3g almost certainly has some marginal benefits
- Carbs and fats fall where they may, we typically won’t be counting calories here
- Keep a 85% ratio of minimally processed foods
As you can see, this is our flexible, autoregulated default plan. Your diet should respond to your training. In other words, this is a sustainable and indefinite micro-bulk or micro-cut approach.
On a good month with quality lifting sessions, you might aim for around a 0.5% bodyweight increase or decrease per month. On a less good month where life gets busy, you would simply maintain your weight.
Benefits
- This requires the least intentional effort, can be run indefinitely, and you can still see results in your physique
- If you’re new to intentional eating, you should start here and get comfortable with eating at maintenance for at least 3 (or ideally 6 or 12) months, before trying the other strategies below
- If you’re busy or stressed in life, this is the way to go
- If you’re simply cruising with your lifting, especially if you’re a bit older, this is the way to go
Limitations
- The big downside of course is you will see slower progress than a properly structured bulk and cut cycle. If you’re relatively serious about your lifting and physique goals, this can add up to be a large difference over months and years
- To be more precise, you may increasingly slow progress to potentially no progress at all. The longer you train (and still desire results) the more precise you need to get. The gaintain strategy may work great in your third year of lifting; it might even work fine in your fifth year. But as you approach say 8 years, or a decade, you might be getting no results in physique changes.