Gain muscle/lose fat = calorie deficit?

mmakerjg

Hi everyone, 28yo male, been lifting a few years on and off. Started at about 125-130lb, now I way 160lb. I want to thin out my face and stomach but build lean muscle. My question is if I should be in a calorie deficit to lose weight or a caloric surplus to add muscle.

estherdragonbat

You can do resistance training now, to strengthen and preserve the muscle you have. If you're looking to lose weight, you may build a small amount of muscle at the beginning, but in general you burn fat in a deficit and build muscle in a surplus.

ent3rsandman

You're in the limbo we like to call "skinnyfat". You have a few options available to you. You can:

• Lean bulk - If you're getting kinda chunky but don't have anything to cut down to in the way of muscle, this may be your best option. You'll get chunkier, but as long as you're following a REAL strength progression program and not just messing around in the gym, you'll put on mostly muscle with minimal fat. This is going to require you to eat at about a 250-300 calorie surplus. You can start cutting once you hate how you look in the mirror, but have something to cut down to.
• Cut - This is the best option if you're just completely screwed. If your torso looks like an upside down rotisserie chicken, this is for you. If you're not already on a program, get on one and make it a part of your weekly routine while sticking to a 500 calorie deficit.
• Recomp - If you have no interest in looking like Dom Mazzetti anytime soon, you can just eat at maintenance and follow a program as though you were bulking. The result will be arguably the same should you choose recomping over doing a cut & bulk cycle, only it will take 3x longer to get there with the benefit of not having to lose your sanity and energy cutting.

Overall, the most important thing is to get on a program and stick with it until you plateau, even if your goal is just to have a decent frame. I recommend ICF 5x5 if you've never followed a program before. If you've already been doing one and have plateau'd in terms of strength, then I recommend metallicadpa's PPLPPL (mostly aimed at hypertrophy) or Nsun's/Wendler's 5/3/1 (mostly aimed at strength progression).

GerlaineGerry

If you want to build muscle do not reduce your calorie intake. Eat 6 meals a day. Lots of protein, carbs. Do heavy weights and include cardio 3x per week. Once you bulked up you can reduce your carb intake and reduce weights and higher reps for weightlifting and up your cardio

mmakerjg

For the first week I stuck to 2kcal/day while doing cardio and lifting heavy and I did notice being a bit more lean. Had some all you can eat places and traveling for work kinda threw me off this last week.

mmapags

gportman08 wrote: »

If you want to build muscle do not reduce your calorie intake. Eat 6 meals a day. Lots of protein, carbs. Do heavy weights and include cardio 3x per week. Once you bulked up you can reduce your carb intake and reduce weights and higher reps for weightlifting and up your cardio

There is pretty much nothing here that makes any sense.

OP, other than newbie gains or returner gains, losing fat takes a deficit and gaining muscle requires a calorie surplus. You have to decide what is most important to you first. Gaining muscle or getting leaner and thinner looking. We can't decide that for you. What is your body fat %? If you don't know, post some pics and people will help give you a sense of direction.

psuLemon

mmakerjg wrote: »

Hi everyone, 28yo male, been lifting a few years on and off. Started at about 125-130lb, now I way 160lb. I want to thin out my face and stomach but build lean muscle. My question is if I should be in a calorie deficit to lose weight or a caloric surplus to add muscle.

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If you want to do both, you'd have to est at maintenance and be willing to give it a lot of time. Otherwise chose one or the other. But if you are overfat, then cutting is ideal. Muscle gains favor the lean.

psuLemon

gportman08 wrote: »

If you want to build muscle do not reduce your calorie intake. Eat 6 meals a day. Lots of protein, carbs. Do heavy weights and include cardio 3x per week. Once you bulked up you can reduce your carb intake and reduce weights and higher reps for weightlifting and up your cardio

There is no reason, outside of personal preference, to eat 6 meals a day. And going low weight high rep is the worst thing to do while cutting. Not only will you be adding a ton of volume, which makes it harder to recover in a deficit, you will also kill strength gains that happened while bulking. If anything is keep weight high while cutting or at least do undulating periodization, where you mix reps/weight schema.