This is really interesting. The idea of intentionally putting on weight terrifies me because I worked so hard in college to lose weight.
What does your plan look like long-term? Are you just going to keep gaining muscle and working out for the rest of your life, or do you plan to stop?
Obviously your TDEE is going to go up with more muscle. I wonder if there's a stable point where you can eat a 'normal' (read: not protein heavy) diet while working out, so that muscle is only maintained.
For the first 6 months I basically didn't worry too much about diet, except getting more protein and working extremely hard on my two workouts (which has since expanded to 3 workouts a week).
What happened was I put on a ton of muscle, and actually lost some weight... in the end I was 12lbs lighter, which doesn't seem like a lot but with the amount of muscle is EXTREMELY noticeable.
For me, seeing my body get more stronger and more muscular was a revelation, it's really fun to see the growth in those areas, much more than suffering to get "skinny fat". So now I'm actually working 4-6 week stints of weight loss into my program where I target 2lbs of fat loss week, while keeping the training intensity high (with lower volume to combat fatigue) to maintain the muscle I have built. I'll follow that with 2-3 months of maybe a slight surplus in calories to build (which comes with some fat gain). A few cycles of that and I'll be golden :)
From a health span and longevity standpoint, having lean body muscle is absolutely crucial for aging, and it's something I plan to not stop doing, even if I fall off the nutrition wagon completely, I'll at least be increasing my bone density and muscle mass which will counteract a lot of whatever bad food habits I'm doing at the time.
The cool thing about muscle vs just pure weight loss, is that muscle isn't super hard to maintain once you have it. The amount of stimulus you need to keep the muscle, especially in an energy balance or surplus environment is surprisingly small it turns out. So to me it's much more rewarding than a crash diet that can be completely erased and then-some in a matter of months.
I wish I had this frame of mind a long time ago, it has personally helped me tremendously.
What does your plan look like long-term? Are you just going to keep gaining muscle and working out for the rest of your life, or do you plan to stop?
Obviously your TDEE is going to go up with more muscle. I wonder if there's a stable point where you can eat a 'normal' (read: not protein heavy) diet while working out, so that muscle is only maintained.