Losing Weight but Gaining Muscle – My Journey So Far

1191sawk

I know this section is usually for those looking to gain weight, but I wanted to share my experience of building muscle while dropping body fat—because it is possible, even in a calorie deficit. Over the last 8 months, I’ve gone from 25 stone (159 kg) to 98 kg, but what’s even more interesting is that my muscle mass has increased from 60% to 72.5% during that time.

How I’ve Built Muscle While Losing Fat

Since October last year, I started lifting weights with a focus on intensity over volume. I took inspiration from Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty principles—essentially prioritizing progressive overload, lower volume, and absolute failure on sets instead of endless reps and junk volume.

Here’s what that looked like for me:

• Low frequency, high intensity – I train 3x per week, but each session is all-out.
• Progressive overload – If I can do more than 6–8 reps, I increase the weight.
• Rest & recovery – More isn’t always better; giving my body time to recover has been just as important as the workouts themselves.
• Protein-focused diet – While following keto, I’ve prioritized protein to support muscle retention and growth.

The Results

• Dropped over 8 stone (50+ kg) while still increasing muscle mass
• Muscle percentage increased from 60% to 72.5%
• Stronger, leaner, and healthier than ever

I know the idea of gaining muscle in a deficit gets a lot of debate, but I’ve seen it first-hand. If you focus on progressive overload, recovery, and proper nutrition, it can be done. If anyone else has experience with this or is looking to do the same, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Let’s keep pushing forward. 💪🔥

Retroguy2000

Congrats! Great results.

Yeah it's totally possible to gain muscle in a deficit. Assuming good training and nutrition, a few factors help more with that: being a new lifter, having a lot of body fat (fuel), light deficit. Even if you weren't gaining muscle, you should still lift regularly and get high protein to help ensure as much as possible of the weight loss is from fat.

I'd maybe nitpick the Mentzer style and 6 reps stuff a little. Dr. Mike at RP talks about going higher reps more volume for hypertrophy and because it's safer while in a large deficit than lower reps higher weight. But that's minor, you're broadly doing the right things and getting great results, and it's obviously working for you. Congrats.