Theoretically speaking, what would happen if...

havalinaaa

...someone who still had around 10 pounds of fat to lose started eating 100 above/below maintenance and lifting heavy? Would it be possible to slowly burn fat and even more slowly build muscle this way? Or is it really best to focus on one and then the other?

AmyG1982

Muscle burns more calories so building muscle will ultimately help you lose that extra few pounds

tofindmyselfprettyagain

You would gain weight as a whole first, because you would build muscle faster than burning fat that way, but eventually you'll hit the peak and start losing the fat. I think with that little fat to lose, and wanting to replace the fat with muscle, that's the way you should be doing it. Not cutting calories and trying to build muscle. Make sure to eat your protein though.

jhardenbergh

it's definately possible to do, I am in the process of doing it right now, I can't tell you how, I just put my body in the hands of my personal trainer, he tells me I'd be fine if I am netting at least 500 to 1000 calories a day, I usually burn anywhere from 800 to 1400 calories during my workouts so I eat anywhere from 1300 to 2400 cals a day. He designs the workouts. Some are light cardio heavy weights. Some are heavy cardio/some weights/core. Some are heavy core and weights. He changes it up quite a bit, this saturday we start boxing I am excited.

fvincentelli

I am not a doctor but... I believe that weight loss is about arithmetic. How many calories you eat - how many calories you burn. If that number is positive, you gain weight, if negative you lose. The kind of exercise you do is less important than the net caloric balance for each day.

Weights, or any other form of resistance training, will help you build lean muscle mass, which consumes more calories per pound than fat; this means that your base metabolism will rise, making it even easier for you to lose weight or, if you are already at your target weight, maintain it in spite of the occasional feast.

Just keep in mind that cardio exercises tend to move more muscles, longer, than strength training, so the calorie burn per hour tends to be higher. If you add weights to your regular cardio routine you should be just fine.

LeBlackstone

a lot of the approaches advocated for ‘gaining muscle while losing fat’ aren’t very effective. In fact, I’d tend to argue that most people’s attempts to achieve the above results in them simply spinning their wheels, making no progress towards either goal. Because invariably they set up a situation where neither training nor diet is optimized for either fat loss or muscle gain. Calories are too high for fat loss and too low to support muscle gains and outside of that one overfat beginner situation, the physiology simply isn’t going to readily allow what they want to happen to happen.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/adding-muscle-while-losing-fat-qa.html

The simple physiological fact is that, to gain muscle, you have to provide not only the proper training stimulus, but also the building blocks for the new tissue. This means not only sufficient protein (see below) but also sufficient calories and energy. While it’s wonderful to hope that the energy to build new muscle will be pulled out of fat cells, the reality is that this rarely happens (there are some odd exceptions such as folks beginning a program, and those returning from a layoff).

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/muscle-gain-mistakes.html

havalinaaa

That's part of my thinking there.. the rest is that I would be happier - and better able to meet my macro goals, especially protein - if I have more calories to eat in a day. At the very least I'm thinking I'll change my deficit from it's current 500 to 250.

Sidesteal

That's part of my thinking there.. the rest is that I would be happier - and better able to meet my macro goals, especially protein - if I have more calories to eat in a day. At the very least I'm thinking I'll change my deficit from it's current 500 to 250.

EDIT: Throwing this in here just to clarify: Technically you're not talking about eating at maintenance but I believe the below reply still has application here since you're referring to a very, very small surplus or deficit.

Hiya!

You're essentially (for the most part) referring to recomping. Recomping is eating at maintenance or averaging at maintenance over time (some people recomp by steadily eating maintenance cals, some people cycle higher on lift days and lower on rest to zero out at maintenance).

My opinion is that recomping works, but what I've read and what I currently believe, is that recomping is generally an overall slower process than cutting or bulking. Cutting/bulking will also have other advantages (the scale moves to indicate/reinforce progress and allow you to make decisions based on it, and I believe it's easy to "miss your target" when trying to eat at maintenance).

I do think recomps can work well for skinny-fatters that are just starting to lift.

All anecdote/opinion on the above, so take it for what it's worth.