Ok, Im on a cut, and today, I went over in calories to about 3600. My maintainance is right around 3500.

While I know this is bad, I was wondering, would these extra calories go to fat or muscle? I lift 4 days a week, and today was particularly brutal, which means I have alot of recovering to do.

Wouldnt the extra calories (all of them clean by the way, just finals = more studying = needing to eat more often to feel 100% awake) just go to repairing muscle tissue or would my body, in a desperate attempt to remain in a homeostatic condition throw them away to fat cells?

This is just sort of interesting to me. While I am very strict on my diet 99% of the time, and I know doing this very rarely wont kill me or my goals I was just curios if anyone knew the effects of something like this.

Ok, Im on a cut, and today, I went over in calories to about 3600. My maintainance is right around 3500.

While I know this is bad, I was wondering, would these extra calories go to fat or muscle? I lift 4 days a week, and today was particularly brutal, which means I have alot of recovering to do.

Wouldnt the extra calories (all of them clean by the way, just finals = more studying = needing to eat more often to feel 100% awake) just go to repairing muscle tissue or would my body, in a desperate attempt to remain in a homeostatic condition throw them away to fat cells?

This is just sort of interesting to me. While I am very strict on my diet 99% of the time, and I know doing this very rarely wont kill me or my goals I was just curios if anyone knew the effects of something like this.

Effects. What are you talking about? Many people have systematic cheats while cutting. And you are only 100 calories over maintenanc this one day. You are still in a caloric defiict for the week.

Forget it and move on. One day over you caloric budget won't make a difference, just like you won't lose muscle by undereating for one day.

It's successive days that start to affect you negatively.


The difference you are asking about is too small to matter. Nothing is exact about any of these calculations anyways. Just like there is nothing exact about your day to day activities. It's all just generalities.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

Ok, Im on a cut, and today, I went over in calories to about 3600. My maintainance is right around 3500.

While I know this is bad, I was wondering, would these extra calories go to fat or muscle? I lift 4 days a week, and today was particularly brutal, which means I have alot of recovering to do.

Wouldnt the extra calories (all of them clean by the way, just finals = more studying = needing to eat more often to feel 100% awake) just go to repairing muscle tissue or would my body, in a desperate attempt to remain in a homeostatic condition throw them away to fat cells?

This is just sort of interesting to me. While I am very strict on my diet 99% of the time, and I know doing this very rarely wont kill me or my goals I was just curios if anyone knew the effects of something like this.

Wait, you eat 3500 Cals a day during a cut?

no, he just said his maintenance range starts from about 3500.

Ok, Im on a cut, and today, I went over in calories to about 3600. My maintainance is right around 3500.

You will never know. 100 Calories comes to about half an ounce of fat. Can you weigh yourself to the half ounce?

If you are 3 percent more active tomorrow than usual, you will erase the 100 calories. How can you tell if you do that?

You're better off looking at the caloric balance from week to week.

What I mean is, hypothetically, where would these calories be most likely to go? Would my body act like its on a bulk, and send them to muscle tissue, or would it send them to fat? Or is it just different for different people.

Or maybe it doesnt matter and I just asked a relatively dumb question.

Atk, I think the comments above stem from a slightly skewed outlook that many of us have towards thinking of everything in daily terms....but since our bodies don't operate through days as isolated events because time is a continuum, it's probably impossible to tell. I'm not anywhere near experienced enough to make that judgment, but that's how I'd interpret the comments above.

Well if you have a solid lifting routine, which it seems you do...my thoughts would be they would go to muscle tissue. But that's just my theory. :)

It doesn't matter where they go because a deficit is not an arbitrary one day time period. You'll lose weight as long as you don't continually overeat.