I have heard it all and tried most of it. cut calories, cut carbs out, carb cycle, just count calories, etc. If your goal is to get bigger while leaning out couldn’t you in theory just eat about maintenance? eating clean high protein every few hours. If lifting hard heavy and every day on a body part split in addition to fasted cardio in the morning then that should work right? the food you eat is is used to repair and build muscle tissue and the cardio plus other energy expenditure comes some from body fat. some help me! instead of the traditional cut and bulk cycle would this work?
In some instances this works. In others, a plateau of muscle gain is reached while still under what later proves within reach for the same person on a different plan.
It tends to be better for a beginner than someone who’s already made substantial muscle progress.
An instance where it can work for a more advanced lifter is in short periods of time when there’s a stimulus or change of some sort that’s really making a difference. Sometimes a major change in training or nutrition can result in some combined muscle gain and fat loss in the same time frame of a few weeks or a couple of months, without making any effort to change calories. But it’s more a happy outcome than usually the best way to plan for either fat loss or muscle gain.