Losing fat / gaining muscle

[cosmia]

So I'm a bit confused. I keep seeing people saying over and over that you can't lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. So if you want to eventually accomplish both... I guess my question is, which do you focus on first? Or if that's not the right way to think about it, what is the right way to think about it?

[Sloth the Enduring]

Conventional wisdom is to bulk up first and cut down after. However, I think that if you consume enough protein, get enough sleep, and keep the weight loss below a pound a week that you can do both at once, albeit at a slower rate of muscle growth.

[chammy]

I think it could just be a misread, personally. A lot of terrible ads say you can "turn fat into muscle" which is totally wrong.

You can gain muscle.

You can lose fat.

It is -hard- to do both at the same time, but it is possible. I'm working on doing it right now.

[Atalan]

I'm much more focused on losing fat than gaining muscle at the moment. Frankly, it's unhealthy for me to wait on the fat loss. So, I'm dropping fat, working to maintain muscle as much as possible, and will look to add muscle after I cut enough fat.

[Cookie]

That ^ is me too. I don't plan on losing enough weight to look great before I concentrate on gaining muscle, but I do plan on losing enough to be a healthy weight first.

[Loren Wade]

I think the problem is that you can't gain muscle mass and lose fat.

You can definitely gain strength, which is building muscle, and lose fat at the same time. I'm doing it now. I've done it for 6 months. It works.

[babycakes1970]

I'm much more focused on losing fat than gaining muscle at the moment. Frankly, it's unhealthy for me to wait on the fat loss. So, I'm dropping fat, working to maintain muscle as much as possible, and will look to add muscle after I cut enough fat.

Me too, although I would love to get stronger and am doing bodyweight exercises at home. I am 41 and have been working on my weight loss for a year and a half. Even though I am down about 46-47 pounds I still need to lose at least 50 more pounds of fat. So I am focusing on cleaning up my diet and maintaining muscle mass.

[wildross]

I've wondered about this as well. If you watch The Biggest Loser, you can see that they definitely lose fat and gain strength/muscle. Granted, they are in a very supervised environment. In the first or second season we were in a group that was doing an at home challenge and one of our friends (couple) won it. They got a trip to the finale and a chance to talk to the contestants, which was eye opening. It is really pretty simple. Take obese people. Put them on a healthy diet (12-1500 cal for women, 18-2500 for men) and force them to do exercise 4-6 hours a day. voila!! Massive weight loss. Remembering Steve's comment "you can't outrun your fork", there have been a number of times when a contestant who was injured and unable to do the exercise lost the most weight for the week. Course watching someone eat right is not nearly as entertaining as watching a trainer yell at someone.

I know the show is a bit cliche, but it helped kickstart me back into the gym and still gives me inspiration to push myself harder.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

I think the problem is that you can't gain muscle mass and lose fat.

You can definitely gain strength, which is building muscle, and lose fat at the same time. I'm doing it now. I've done it for 6 months. It works.

It's this. The reason being to increase muscle mass you need excess calories while burning fat requires a calorie deficit. You can't do both at the same time. I have a theory though that if you eat at a surplus for the 24-36 hours after lifting and at a deficit the rest of the time, you could do it, but tracking that much would be a pain in the butt.

As per your question of which to do first, I imagine a lot of people like to bulk first then lose the fat because having that extra muscle on you from putting it on there first will help you lose the fat quicker. Losing fat first then bulking would be harder because you lose some of that initial muscle mass while losing fat, then the first stages of bulking would then be putting that muscle back on, and you have less muscle to initially build on so the initial gains would be slower.

I've wondered about this as well. If you watch The Biggest Loser, you can see that they definitely lose fat and gain strength/muscle.

They only look like they gain muscle because they burn away the fat on top of the muscle they already had. The muscle was there, it just couldn't be seen before. They definitely gain strength though, which happens by the muscle that is fatty and not used to working out burning the fat in it, becoming denser, and more efficient by realigning the muscle fibers as it heals. This is the same reason there is such a steep strength gain curve in beginning lifters even though they aren't packing on tons of new muscle mass.

[m00se]

I have a theory though that if you eat at a surplus for the 24-36 hours after lifting and at a deficit the rest of the time, you could do it, but tracking that much would be a pain in the butt.

This does seem to work, for me at least. I've not been doing it that closely, though. I just eat a big surplus from 12 hours pre and 12 hours post lifting heavy, then run at a slight deficit and very carb-restricted the rest of the time combined with HIIT on non-lifting days. I have gone from 220lb and somewhere north of 25% body fat to 200lb and about 11-12% body fat with no distinct cycles of bulking and cutting, just doing the above. In the last 6 months. The maths alone say I must have gained muscle and lost fat over the same time period for it to add up.

Granted, you can't do both literally simultaneously, but taken as an average over a period of a few days - yes, you can.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

This does seem to work, for me at least. I've not been doing it that closely, though. I just eat a big surplus from 12 hours pre and 12 hours post lifting heavy, then run at a slight deficit and very carb-restricted the rest of the time combined with HIIT on non-lifting days. I have gone from 220lb and somewhere north of 25% body fat to 200lb and about 11-12% body fat with no distinct cycles of bulking and cutting, just doing the above. In the last 6 months. The maths alone say I must have gained muscle and lost fat over the same time period for it to add up.

Granted, you can't do both literally simultaneously, but taken as an average over a period of a few days - yes, you can.

In that case you went from 55 lb of body fat to 24 lb of body fat, which means you lost 31lbs of fat and gained 11 lb of muscle, nice work! Once I lose more of the fat on me, get down to 230-235ish, I am planning on doing this. I'm glad to see it has worked for someone.

[m00se]

Thanks. Its been a good experience so far I was planning on posting before/after photos in the Christmas thread but I might do it in this one now it's been mentioned.

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[Waldo]

It's this. The reason being to increase muscle mass you need excess calories while burning fat requires a calorie deficit. You can't do both at the same time. I have a theory though that if you eat at a surplus for the 24-36 hours after lifting and at a deficit the rest of the time, you could do it, but tracking that much would be a pain in the butt.

That exact thing was mentioned on bodybuilding.com

It depends on where you are though. If you are a total beginner in the weight room and have a decent hormone supply (thus have a lot of rapid growth capacity), and are very overweight/obese (thus have a lot of rapid loss capacity) you can do both simulataneously without too much difficulty.

The body does waiver between anabolic (gaining weight) and catabolic (losing weight) states throughout the day depending on the energy supply, it isn't a long term constant thing, over a longer term whether you are gaining or losing is merely an average of the two.

I think the trick is to build muscle during anabolic times and lose fat during catabolic times. The question is how. The article I was reading actually pulled the time scale back to daily, and it fits in with some of the IF concepts out there. I think that I personally just kinda stumbled into it somewhat with my schedule, and if BF% calculations (2 different formulas) are correct, I am gaining lean body mass (about 4 lbs in the last 2 months), something that the eyeball test confirms, concurrent with shedding a good bit of weight. And I'm sure it isn't just exposing muscles already there, my weight is all in the midsection, I've had pretty good muscle definition above my upper abs (which are visible) and below my waist, and it has been this way since very early in the weight loss process, I just don't gain fat anywhere else.

When is muscle built? While sleeping. Especially the first couple hours of sleep. This is when you want to be in an anaboloc state and have the hormones right for mucle building. How? Lift and eat a large proportion of your daily calories relatively close to this time. I did not purposely do this, but I lift approx 3-4 hours before bed, and consume 2/3 of my daily calories/protein about 2 hours before bed. Obviously you don't want to eat too close to bed time. If also helps that I full body lift, which maximizes growth hormone production vs. split lifting that targets various body parts. The rest of the day outside of that window, 18-20 hours, the body should be mostly or fully in an catabolic state hopefully losing mostly fat. I'm not sure what the mechanism is to do that, though it likely has to do with growth hormones. If you've got the hormones fowing in your blood telling your muscles to grow, your body isn't going to eat them IMHO.

LIS though, I didn't plan it this way, it just so happens we eat a late dinner, I work out late then make dinner afterwards, and I get the bulk of my calories from dinner (I portion control the rest of my meals, not dinner). I don't know how long this will continue to work, after all I am very much a strength training beginner and still have a good bit of fat to lose, but it is definitely working, some of my muscles are getting noticably bigger.

The fact that fat burning is a round the clock thing and muscle building is a while sleeping thing (especially the early part of sleep) is what makes it work.

[aj_rock]

Waldo, you had the right idea with the anabolic vs catabolic thing. Your body is either putting calories into storage, or taking them out.

The real question here is: how to take calories OUT of fat, and IN muscle? There are only a few situations that allow this:

- extremely overweight people, when training, tend to have a ridiculous supply of free fatty acids in the bloodstream, so even when attempting to lose fat, the body is still in a net anabolic state because there's just so much excess energy swimming around

- prolonged anabolic periods and prolonged catabolic periods, aka bulking and cutting. It's never gonna be perfect, because gaining energy means calories into fat and muscle, and losing takes out of both as well. By training properly and eating correctly, you can alter the fat gain to muscle gain ratio, as well as the fat loss to muscle loss ratio.

- acute anabolic and catabolic periods, aka IF or any other methodology that promotes caloric intake based on time of day of day of week. Really, all these do is shorten up the cycle of bulking and cutting to achieve a little bit of progress in both direction NEAR simultaneously. Never at any given point will you lose fat while gaining muscle. For example you spend half a day fasting, thats catabolic, you lose say 1/3 lb of fat, 1/15th lb of muscle. Then you train and eat, going anabolic, and gain 1/6 lb muscle, 1/4 lb fat. You net a gain of about 1/10 lb muscle, loss of 1/10 fat. It's small, I know, but the upside is that you can maintain a period of training/eating like this for a much longer time period than you could ever bulk or cut for. Some IF'ers have been doing it for years.

- supplementation of questionable drugs. Everyone on NF hates you forever.

that's really what your options come down to. Neglecting anabolism or catabolism gets you extreme results geared towards certain sports, catabolic for endurance races and marathons, anabolic for power/olympic lifting.

['Roos]

During my first challenge I managed to lose 5 lbs total, 'gain' 5 lbs of muscle (went from LBM of around 135 to 140, according to tape measurements)... So I lost around 10 lbs of fat total... I don't think it's impossible, it just can't be your first goal. You can focus on gaining muscle or focus on losing fat, but you're probably not going to be able to focus on both at the same time.

[SuperVitali]

It's this. The reason being to increase muscle mass you need excess calories while burning fat requires a calorie deficit. You can't do both at the same time. I have a theory though that if you eat at a surplus for the 24-36 hours after lifting and at a deficit the rest of the time, you could do it, but tracking that much would be a pain in the butt.

I went back and did some research after our last discussion, because I hate the idea of being misinformed and quoting off false info.

There's a program/website that I follow that has the same methodology as your thought here. www.leangains.com follows the basic methodology of intermitent fasting + eating a surplus on lifting days and eating at a deficit on rest days. Many people seem to have great success with it. A good deal of info here, and most of the time he's good about linking scientific studies to what he claims.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

I went back and did some research after our last discussion, because I hate the idea of being misinformed and quoting off false info.

There's a program/website that I follow that has the same methodology as your thought here. www.leangains.com follows the basic methodology of intermitent fasting + eating a surplus on lifting days and eating at a deficit on rest days. Many people seem to have great success with it. A good deal of info here, and most of the time he's good about linking scientific studies to what he claims.

Yeah, after the last one I had meant to ask you if it was possible you did this. It's the only thing I've thought of that would result in a gain of muscle while eating at an overall deficit during a given time frame.

[21katykat01]

I think the problem is that you can't gain muscle mass and lose fat.

You can definitely gain strength, which is building muscle, and lose fat at the same time. I'm doing it now. I've done it for 6 months. It works.

This!

I lowered my weight quite considerably (but still with some work to do) and am now focusing on getting stronger. My weight hasn't changed, but I have dropped a considerable amount of inches, and a huuuge amount of body fat, so I have clearly lost fat and built up some muscle. Not lots (my body fat is just into the average range, but better than the 39.4% it was before).

So I guess I haven't actually lost weight if you look at the scale, but every single week I'm getting people telling me I look like I've lost loads and even I'm seeing the changes. That's a much bigger WIN. Plus, the muscle will burn more calories at resting rate too, so the fat (and possibly the weight too) will come off.

[Loren Wade]

Yep. I agree with all you guys. You CAN gain lean mass while losing weight by following a strict protocol like Lean Gains. I've been following it this whole challenge.

That said, I meant conventional wisdom says you can't gain mass and lose fat. It's possible but not easy.

Gaining strength and losing fat? Well, of course you can.

[Pat G]

Summarising the above answers: YES

[Ryan Sannar]

Cool. Wonder what GOMAD would do with LeanGains.

[bprime]

Cool. Wonder what GOMAD would do with LeanGains.

From just the sound of the program, they're conflicting ideologies. GOMAD isn't trying to put on fat per say, but if you put on some fat along with muscle, then so be it. LeanGains sounds like it wants nothing to do with fat.

[Ryan Sannar]

I just wonder if you drank your GOMAD during your feeding period that it would allow you to do both....? I'll give it a try later.

[bprime]

Feeding period? What the hell? This sounds like some kind of cult

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Feeding period? What the hell? This sounds like some kind of cult

That's what I thought when I heard it the first time, though the intermittent fasting does sound like it may help this work and multiple people on these forums have seen results, I'm thinking of trying it once I lose more fat and want to get some muscle mass gains again.

Ryan, as for the GOMAD, this was sort of what I was planning once trying it. I was going to eat at a 500 caloric deficit most days, then just add 2 glass of milk and 2 scoops of whey, and a lb of chicken on the surplus lifting days to get to the surplus. Otherwise I would eat the same.