And here are the details of where I’m starting:

• I’m 5’7″ and weigh about 138 pounds and I’ve been steadily losing strength. I’m currently unable to lift as many reps during my daily workouts. Week-by-week I’m able to lift less weight.  My goal is to get my strength back to where it was a few months ago and maybe even get a little stronger than I was before.
• My TDEE is roughly 2,200 calories per day (if you don’t know what TDEE is or how to determine your own TDEE then click here. Don’t worry, it’s quick and easy!)
• I workout every single day. Maybe not crazy insane David Goggins type workouts, but I show up every single day religiously. If you want to see my exact workout routine, click here. If you’re just beginning and you’re looking for the smartest way to start working out, then click here. AGAIN: IF YOU ARE JUST BEGINNING, CLICK HERE! If you start in the wrong spot, you’ll end up in the wrong spot.
• I’m pretty consistent in either eating right at my TDEE or a little under my TDEE. Typically, I’m eating a little under. I do this because I’m so scared of getting fat and chubby all over again. 

Okay…so that’s me—that’s where my muscle building experiment is starting. Now a quick recap of the fundamentals.

After reading the first part of this guide, you’ve already learned the four Weirdo Fundamentals for Building Muscle and Strength: 

• Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #1: You must actually use your muscles if your goal is to maintain or gain new muscle.
• Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #2: To maintain or build muscle, you must eat an equal amount of calories (to maintain muscle) or an excess amount of calories (to build muscle) than your body can burn.
• Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #3: You CANNOT maintain or build muscle unless you provide your body with a sufficient amount of protein.
• Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #4: You must provide your tiny-little-muscle-building-construction-workers with the necessary time to build new muscle and strength.

Based on my above info and my fitness habits, can you pinpoint why I’ve been slowly getting weaker and weaker even though I’m working out every single day?

Let’s run through the four fundamentals to figure it out. 

As for Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #1: Every single day I’m essentially screaming at my body telling it I want and need more muscle. I’m conveying this message by actually using the muscles I want to maintain or make bigger. The only way I could make this message clearer is if I worked out the muscles I want to maintain or make bigger even more often. I could choose to do more reps, or I could work out these muscles at a greater frequency, maybe twice per week instead of only once. 

Anyhow…I’m using my muscles, and my body is hearing me, but then my body just stands around confused and frustrated because it doesn’t have the calories needed to properly maintain my muscles, let alone build more. 

As I stated earlier, I’m typically always eating a little under my TDEE and I do this because I’m so scared of getting fat and pudgy all over again. 

Oddly enough, it’s this fear of eating too much that is causing me to lose strength. I’m asking my body to maintain or build more muscle, but I’m not providing it with the materials it needs to maintain or build more muscle. And you cannot maintain or add more muscle if you don’t add anything to your body. 

Muscle can’t grow from nothing. 

By consistently eating less calories than my body burns, I’m not complying with Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #2. Actually, I’m doing the exact opposite of Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #2. I’m simply not eating enough calories. If I’m gonna gain my muscle back this is something I will have to fix. 

As for Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #3—I eat plenty of protein every day. How much protein is needed varies depending on which study you follow, but a safe, sure-fire, easy to track method is to eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight. I weigh roughly 140 pounds, so I focus on eating a daily minimum of 140 grams of protein. On most days, I greatly exceed this, sometimes eating over 200 grams of protein. This is fine. To maintain or build muscle our bodies need protein. Don’t be afraid to feed the muscle building machine.

Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #4: TIME. 

As long as I’m in compliance with the first three Weirdo Fundamentals, then all I have to do is keep consistent with those first three fundamentals for a long enough time period for them to work. 

Most people (Normies) give up way too soon, and that’s why they never see their desired results. 

But you and I, we’re not Normies. So we’re not gonna make this mistake. 

Speaking of mistakes…

As I mentioned above, mine was in failing to consistently comply with Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #2, which is: To maintain or build muscle, you must eat an equal amount of calories (to maintain muscle) or an excess amount of calories (to build muscle) than your body can burn.

To maintain or build muscle, I am simply not eating a sufficient amount of calories.

Now that I’ve went through the Four Fundamentals of Maintaining or Gaining Muscle and I pinpointed exactly what is causing the degradation of my strength (a lack of calories), now I can begin to remedy the situation (eat more calories). 

Here’s my plan:

Regarding Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #1, which states: You must actually use your muscles if your goal is to maintain or gain new muscle.

I’m already using the muscles I want to maintain or grow so I’m not doing anything different for this fundamental. I’ll keep doing the same workouts I always do. I’m not changing this up one bit. 

However, if you’re not yet working out and haven’t begun a consistent exercise routine where you’re consistently utilizing the muscles you want to either maintain or make stronger, then I suggest you read this quick article on where and how to begin.

If you’re just beginning, then starting in the right place is a crucial piece of the muscle puzzle. Make sure you’re starting at a place that allows you to continue rather than starting like a Normie, where you start but then give up a few short weeks later. Here’s the cheat code to achieving that.   

For Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #2, which states: To maintain or build muscle, you must eat an equal amount of calories (to maintain muscle) or an excess amount of calories (to build muscle) than your body can burn. 

Because I’ve determined this to be the sole reason I’m slowly losing strength, my remedy is to simply eat more calories.

Let’s dive deeper.

First off: If I want to provide my body with enough calories to properly maintain or build muscle how many more calories should I be eating?

As I stated earlier, my current TDEE is roughly 2,200 calories. If I want to gain muscle, I must eat more than 2,200 calories. However, here lies the problem—I do not want to get fat again. I do not want to go back to being the chubby, pudgy, depressed, frustrated version of myself. But if I eat more calories than my body can burn—I WILL begin to accumulate fat. 

This is an absolute fact. It’s biology. It’s how the human body works.

Here is the bad and scary news of the day: We cannot gain more muscle without also gaining more weight. 

The game goes like this: we eat more calories than our bodies can burn and then (if we are using our muscles and eating enough protein) we gain muscle. However, we also gain—to some degree—a bit of fat. Then, once we gain the muscle we want, we work to eliminate the fat while also keeping the new muscle we’ve built. 

This entire game of weight loss and fitness is essentially a seesaw of calorie cutting and calorie addition until you reach a point of acceptance.

It’s a constant process of eating more to gain more muscle (which will cause us to also gain more fat) and then eating in a calorie deficit to lose the fat while keeping our new muscles. And we do this over and over until we reach a point of acceptance with how we look and feel. 

Okay, that was the sad, scary, depressing news. And now here’s the good, comforting, friendly news: You and I—we get to control this lever of how much fat and how much weight we allow back onto our bodies.

If my TDEE is 2,200 calories and I suddenly go hog wild and begin to consistently eat 5,000 calories per day, then, yes, some of those calories will go towards building muscle (as long as I’m using the muscles I want to grow and also eating enough protein) but a good portion of those calories (whatever all those tiny-little-muscle-building-construction-workers in my body decide they don’t need for the day) will be stored away as fat. 

Some people are comfortable eating like an elephant while building muscle and that’s great. Just know that you’ll gain more fat if you grossly eat more calories than your body can burn. 

For me, I’m not going the elephant eating route. 

I can’t.

I just know myself too well.

My fear is that I will build dangerous habits and then have a hard time breaking those dangerous habits. I worry that if I consistently allow myself to eat elephant style, then I will have a very difficult time returning to a healthy, sensible, responsible way of eating.  

Rather than eating like an elephant, my plan is to build muscle while maintaining good habits so I can minimize any fat gain. I’m going to do this by eating a responsible level over my TDEE. 

To do that, since my body currently burns approximately 2,200 calories per day, I’m only going to eat roughly ten percent more than that. 

2,200 x .10 =  220

2,200 + 220 = 2,420

My new goal for building back my lost muscle is to eat approximately 2,420 calories per day while also eating no less than 140 grams of protein per day. 

In theory, by only eating ten percent more calories (and without changing anything else), I should be able to rescue my missing muscles without gaining an excessive amount of fat!

 

Operation Rescue Missing Muscles

Normally, I would just start right now. I would continue with my normal workouts, and I would begin eating more calories (2,420 of them per day!), and I would keep eating roughly the same amount of protein, and I would weigh myself every morning, and I would monitor whether I am getting stronger in the gym or whether I am continuing to lose strength, but because I’m writing this article, I want to go the extra mile so we can be confident in determining whether these Four Weirdo Fundamentals of Muscle actually work. 

With that said, before I begin eating more calories I’m going to have a DEXA Scan conducted. This will provide us with conclusive evidence of whether I’m actually gaining muscle or not. It will also allow us to determine where on my body any muscle is being gained or lost. 

If you are unfamiliar with a DEXA Scan, it’s a body composition scan typically conducted at hospitals. The primary function is to measure bone density and to assess the risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures. However, it is also offered at a few select fitness centers. For fitness, it allows us to measure our body compositions (body fat percentage, total amount of fat on the body, total amount of muscle on the body, etc.)  

To schedule one, I’m simply searching Google for a DEXA Scan facility near me.

BOOM! Found one.

$149 bucks.  

Scheduled for this Friday. Four days away. 

At this point, you may be wondering if you need to get a DEXA Scan as well.

No, you absolutely do not!

In no way, shape, or form do you need to do this to lose weight or gain muscle. I’m just doing it to better show the results for this article. (And because I’m a super nerd!)  

Now we wait until the date.  

Buckle up kiddos because this is starting to look like it’s going to be a really long article. 

Still waiting for my DEXA Scan appointment. 

Another day of waiting.

Lost a little more strength in the gym today, but my DEXA appointment is tomorrow and after that it’s time to add calories and (hopefully) to rescue my kidnapped muscles!

DEXA Scan complete! Today was the day!

Let’s check the results, then let’s start building some muscle!

Here is a comparison of my body composition from my last three scans (todays scan included). 

As of today, my body fat percentage is 6.5 percent, which is actually up from my last scan. Over the last ten months (from 04APR24 – 07FEB25) my total weight decreased by nearly one pound. However, the total amount of fat on my body (in pounds) increased by 2.12 pounds, so I had 6.65 total pounds of fat on my body in April of 2024 and now, today, the 7th of February 2025, I have a total of 8.77 pounds of fat on my body. As I expected, my total lean muscle (in pounds) has decreased. As you can see, I’ve lost 3.05 pounds of muscle over the last ten months, going from 128.49 pounds of muscle to now having 125.44 pounds of muscle, which explains why I can’t lift as many reps during my workouts.

Now that we have this data, let’s start building back some muscle.

As I stated earlier my new goal is to eat 2,420 calories per day, which is ten percent over my current TDEE. Since there’s absolutely no way I’m actually going to consistently eat that exact number of calories, let’s give it a range of 2,400-2,500 calories per day.

My plan is to keep eating in this calorie range for about a month and a half and then I’ll have another DEXA Scan conducted and we’ll see if any muscle growth has occurred. 

Now it’s time to eat!

Let the Feasting Games begin.

Here’s the nitty gritty compressed into weeks: 

Week 00: Friday (07FEB) Weight: 138.6
Week 01: Friday (14FEB) Weight:  139.6
Week 02: Friday (21FEB) Weight:  142.4
Week 03: Friday (28FEB) Weight:  143.0
Week 04: Friday (07MAR) Weight:  142.6
Week 05: Friday (14MAR) Weight:  142.6
Week 06: Friday (21MAR) Weight:  144.6
Week 07: Friday (28MAR) Weight: 144.8

Total Weight Gained: +6.2 Pounds.

Okay…so I meant to end ‘Operation Rescue Missing Muscles’ last week but life got in the way and I couldn’t make my DEXA appointment. 

Anyhow…

Here we are!

We made it!

After seven weeks of eating between 2,400 and 2,500 calories (which was 10% over my TDEE), I have gained 6.2 pounds. 

No other variable has changed. 

I’ve done my exact same workouts, and I’ve kept eating roughly the same amount of protein.

Personally, I don’t notice a big difference in how I look or feel. 

Here’s some before and after photos.