Are you over 15%bf and still bulking?

I read this somewhere, any thoughts on this?
I would believe it to be true.
Kind of the reason I'm doing my 1st ever cut, to hopefully get those newbie stlye gains cranking again to slingshot past my previous best.


Lyle McDonald explains it quite well on his website and in his books.

Once you reach about 15% bf you body starts to partition calories more toward fat storage as oppossed to muscle repair. Simply put it becomes harder to put on muscle once you go over 15%bf. This is why doing a hard bulk, or long bulk will not give optimum results.

The most amount of weight you should gain is about 1lb a week, and between 50-80% of this gain will be muscle depending on your training program and how well your body naturally partitions the calories(your genetics). Roughly 500-600 cals over maint. each day should acheive this. Any more cals than this and you will gain too much fat.

This is a little confusing. Is he saying that you can't gain muscle as fast after you reach a certain percentage body fat, or that you shouldn't gain more than one pound per week (suggesting that if you do gain more than one pound per week the rest of the gain will be fat)?

If it is the former, evidence would seem to disagree. Think about the power weightlifters and strongmen, how many of those are cut? If he means the latter, I think you may have a point as you can only gain so much muscle per week.

I think he's saying both.

Regarding the former though, yes, powerlifters are big and do gain muscle, but they are generally fat too.
So what he is saying is that once over 15%bf, with any further muscle gains, expect more fat gains too.

But if you are lean, you can gain good muscle without adding much fat.