Yes.
Plus another 12% body fat and change. Double plus good.
Just found this article linked on Facebook and funnily enough it describes your situation perfectly
How to Help a Client Who Wants to Gain Weight
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Let’s say the client is a genetically average-looking guy in his 20s or early 30s who, you estimate, has body fat of 15 to 20 percent. Your first question:
“Do you want to gain weight? Or do you want the illusion of looking bigger?”
More often than not, it’s the latter. If you’ve ever helped a client like this through a transformation, you’ve probably seen that even after losing 10 to 20 pounds, he appears bigger and more muscular.
So if that’s his goal, he’s better served by a fat-loss program that includes a calorie deficit.
Now, if the client isn’t sure, or is dead-set on gaining weight, you need to help him understand the basic science of body composition. As Dr. Gilbert Forbes explained in
this study back in 2000, the majority of weight a lean person gains will be muscle, while a person with obesity will add more fat.
In other words, the more fat you start with, the more you’ll gain. (It’s the opposite for weight loss; a lean person will lose a higher percentage of muscle.)
Nobody can predict exactly what will happen for any specific client, but you have to make sure he understands that any weight he gains will include some percentage of fat.
I can usually convince a client like this to eat at maintenance or a slight deficit for the first four to eight weeks of training, with the goal of “priming” his body to gain a higher percentage of lean mass over the next few months.
Here’s how I sell the benefits of a priming phase:
- If the client is a complete beginner, or hasn’t been on a structured plan before, he’ll probably gain some muscle and lose some fat simultaneously.
- Even if he doesn’t gain much muscle, he’s still building a solid base for future gains.
- I can pretty much guarantee he’ll like his leaner appearance, and encourage him to take “before” pictures so he’ll be able to see how much progress he’s made when he takes “after” photos a few weeks later.