Fat loss and Muscle Gain

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alastairmckay86
alastairmckay86 Posts: 2 Member
in Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
Hello,

Have been in the gym to build muscle recently but owing to lifestyle haven't had time to do cardio and am just getting back into doing both now. Mostly circuits and metafit classes combined with heavy weights. Am looking to shed some body fat and have therefore set the calorie monitor on my app to lower then the average. But am worried that I won't continue to grow muscle or recover properly if I don't eat enough. Does anyone have advice on how much to eat if I want to lose fat but still want to gain muscle please.
Thanks
Al

Replies

  • dieselbyte
    dieselbyte Posts: 733 Member
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    Unless you are new to weight lifting, building muscle while losing fat isn't a real possibility (save recomps, but that will be a much slower process). Advice is to pick one goal. If you are more concerned with losing weight, aim for caloric intake that will achieve that goal (.5lbs - 1lbs/week). Lift heavy as safely as possible, and target .8g-1g protein/lb attempting to minimize muscle loss, which will occur.
  • PPumpItUp
    PPumpItUp Posts: 208 Member
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    Recomping is easy and even trained individuals can do it. You can set a pretty heft caloric deficit and as long as you keep your protein high, up to 1.2g/lbs body weight while you resistance train you can loose fat and gain muscle. Just take the macros away from your fat but IMO don't drop the carbs too low or you will loose energy for your training.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,728 Member
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    PPumpItUp wrote: »
    Recomping is easy and even trained individuals can do it. You can set a pretty heft caloric deficit and as long as you keep your protein high, up to 1.2g/lbs body weight while you resistance train you can loose fat and gain muscle. Just take the macros away from your fat but IMO don't drop the carbs too low or you will loose energy for your training.

    IF you're at a deficit, it's not recomp. It's cutting
  • PPumpItUp
    PPumpItUp Posts: 208 Member
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    If you are in a deficit but keep your protein high while resistance training its a recomp as long as you are accurately counting your calories and are in a deficit.
  • PPumpItUp
    PPumpItUp Posts: 208 Member
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    And you have to be in a proper resistance training program, doing it half-hearted will stymie the results.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,728 Member
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    PPumpItUp wrote: »
    If you are in a deficit but keep your protein high while resistance training its a recomp as long as you are accurately counting your calories and are in a deficit.

    NO!! Recomp means you aren't losing weight.
  • PPumpItUp
    PPumpItUp Posts: 208 Member
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    Huh? It means you loose fat and gain muscle. Most people loose more fat than gain muscle so you are loosing weight.
  • pdxhak
    pdxhak Posts: 383 Member
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    You can add muscle while losing weight. Just be consistent with your dist and your workouts.
  • sgt1372
    sgt1372 Posts: 3,979 Member
    edited July 2017
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    stanmann571 wrote: »
    NO!! Recomp means you aren't losing weight.

    Not always because your weight fluctuates and can't always be kept constant, even when you are trying to eat at maintenance because your maintenance level is always changing as your body changes. It's a moving target.

    I have sucessfully recomped - - losing BF and increasing LBM in equal amounts - - w/o losing any weight a couple of times w/in a 3 month period (about 2# each time), but over the last 8 months of my recomp effort, I dropped 4# from 162 to 158 from 16% to just under 9% BF during which time my BF decreased 11.7# but my LBM only increased 7.7# resulting in the net loss of 4# but I still "recomped" 7.7## (about 1# per month) in that time period.

    However, although I tried to remain in maintenance, I had to increade my daily cal intake from 1800 to 2100 during this time period because I was still losing weight even though I kept eating more.

    I have no proof but think that thermogenisis has something to do w/this as does my high protein and high carb but low GI diet. Point is, you can lose (as well as gain) weight while recomping.

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