Maintaining Weight but Losing Fat and Gaining Muscle
krknobbe10
Posts: 110 Member
Just curious to hear people's thoughts about gaining muscle for a leaner figure while losing fat to maintain a certain weight or close to it. Is there a certain number of calories? Should you be eating more/less than the calories recommended? Should you be eating a mostly protein and watching your carbs and calories? Eating healthy food and watching the processed stuff? How many heavy lifting days should you have and for how long? How much cardio should you be doing and how often? Just curious to hear if anyone has tried this and had success or anything!
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Replies
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What you are wanting to do is called a body recomp. This is generally considered a highly inefficient method to lose fat and gain muscle. Most recommend bulk cycles followed by cutting cycles.
Basically during a recomp you are using inaccuracies to sometimes gain a minuscule amount of muscle and to sometimes lose a minuscule amount of fat.
The general guideline is to eat at maintenance and follow a heavy lifting program, while avoiding any form of intense cardio. There are many available, with different pros and cons to each. From the raw mass of something like Wendler 5-3-1 or Madcow to any number of split routines allowing you to lift 6 days a week.
And yes, hitting your macros with as healthy and lean foods as possible will certainly help.0 -
You can do it as long as you have a high body fat percentage. Once you get down under 20 percent, it becomes a lot harder to maintain. At that point if you going to add any amount of serious muscle you are going to need to eat in a surplus and fat will come with it.
3 lifting days, 3 cardio days. That is my current split. I am at 24ish bf right now, so this split works for me as my goal is to get to a lower body fat, around 15 to 18 percent and then bulk back up to 18 to 20 percent, and then cut again.
Macros I try to get at minimum 1 gram of protein per lbm. Get some good fats and fill the rest with carbs.
Right now for me it is all theory though, as I still have about a 6 months to possibly even a year before I try my first true bulk cycle.0 -
Gaining muscle while losing fat is the holy grail. It can be done, but not everybody has the genetics to pull it off. Most humans have to pick one at a time. Muscle is built through resistance training and excess calories. When it's time to burn off the fat, eating a high protein diet helps to preserve muscle when your calories are below maintenance level.0
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Interesting article on bulking and cutting with several additional links:
http://www.t-nation.com/training/truth-about-bulking
A few key points:
Banish the Bulk
Here's why:
1. Most train to look good, not get on stage. Is looking good a couple months a year what you're really after? Of course not. Why not look good all year long?
Attain a body fat percentage where you look lean and muscular. A male who's training for aesthetic purposes should never go above 10% body fat, which is not that lean. But it's a point where muscle definition and muscularity are sufficient to make you look very good.
That leaves you within four weeks or so of being in superb, super-lean condition.
Related: Targeted Fat Mobilization
So what if you're at 13% body fat and don't have that much muscle? Should you bulk up? No! Cut down to 10% then gradually increase your nutrition until you reach a point where you're gaining 1.5 to 2 pounds per month. You'd gain muscle at an optimal rate while staying at 10%.
2. The leaner you are, the better your body becomes at nutrient partitioning. Lean individuals are more effective at storing nutrition in their muscle (as muscle tissue or glycogen) or in the liver (glycogen), and less effective at storing it as body fat. Leaner people can eat more without gaining fat.
3. The fatter you let yourself get, the more fat cells you produce. This makes it easier to gain fat and harder to lose it in the future, and the fatter you are, the less insulin sensitive you become.
4. Building a good looking body isn't something that happens overnight, and it's a 24-hour a day job.
It isn't limited to the hour you spend at the gym; it's a lifestyle. By eating well all year, you aren't using an extreme approach but rather changing your habits. It's much easier to lose fat when you're already used to eating well most of the time.0 -
Very informative. Thank you0
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To maintain fitness everyone must do YOGA. It has many benefits. I do it myself and its really very good for weight loss and mental strength.0
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Thank you. As of now i am heavy lifting with a trainer. Still doing cardio 6 times a week. It might be time to cut down on cardio. Trying to increase my calorie intake daily to eat back most of my calories burned. Something I will be playing around with until I find a happy medium0
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Too bad it's written by someone who juices and is into broscience. 1.5 to 2lbs of muscle a month? That'd be up to 24lbs of lean muscle a year. Even pro bodybuilders (who's life it is to just put on muscle) can't do that WITH being on gear.Packerjohn wrote: »Interesting article on bulking and cutting with several additional links:
http://www.t-nation.com/training/truth-about-bulking
A few key points:
Banish the Bulk
Here's why:
1. Most train to look good, not get on stage. Is looking good a couple months a year what you're really after? Of course not. Why not look good all year long?
Attain a body fat percentage where you look lean and muscular. A male who's training for aesthetic purposes should never go above 10% body fat, which is not that lean. But it's a point where muscle definition and muscularity are sufficient to make you look very good.
That leaves you within four weeks or so of being in superb, super-lean condition.
Related: Targeted Fat Mobilization
So what if you're at 13% body fat and don't have that much muscle? Should you bulk up? No! Cut down to 10% then gradually increase your nutrition until you reach a point where you're gaining 1.5 to 2 pounds per month. You'd gain muscle at an optimal rate while staying at 10%.
2. The leaner you are, the better your body becomes at nutrient partitioning. Lean individuals are more effective at storing nutrition in their muscle (as muscle tissue or glycogen) or in the liver (glycogen), and less effective at storing it as body fat. Leaner people can eat more without gaining fat.
3. The fatter you let yourself get, the more fat cells you produce. This makes it easier to gain fat and harder to lose it in the future, and the fatter you are, the less insulin sensitive you become.
4. Building a good looking body isn't something that happens overnight, and it's a 24-hour a day job.
It isn't limited to the hour you spend at the gym; it's a lifestyle. By eating well all year, you aren't using an extreme approach but rather changing your habits. It's much easier to lose fat when you're already used to eating well most of the time.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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There are lots of people who don't do yoga and maintain great fitness. It's a good addition if one likes to do it, but it's not NECESSARY.To maintain fitness everyone must do YOGA. It has many benefits. I do it myself and its really very good for weight loss and mental strength.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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OP, I'm pretty sure I've written this to you before, but it's virtually impossible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. The two exceptions are obese individuals and individuals that have never done a workout before.
Either eat and train to bulk, or eat and train to lose fat. That is the most efficient way to get that svelte figure you are after.0 -
But by gaining muscle won't that in turn burn fat, since muscle burns fat? I'm at my goal weight but I want a more athletic build... I eat 115g of protein a day (I'm 115 lbs) and began lifting 3x a week with one cardio day... I'm still slightly under or at my food goals a day.... I haven't gained weight but my goal is to lower the slight body fat I have and gain muscle. If muscle burns fat, I would assume the more muscle you have, you'll also burn more fat. These answers confuse me a bit...0
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But by gaining muscle won't that in turn burn fat, since muscle burns fat? I'm at my goal weight but I want a more athletic build... I eat 115g of protein a day (I'm 115 lbs) and began lifting 3x a week with one cardio day... I'm still slightly under or at my food goals a day.... I haven't gained weight but my goal is to lower the slight body fat I have and gain muscle. If muscle burns fat, I would assume the more muscle you have, you'll also burn more fat. These answers confuse me a bit...
Your entire body--lean mass AND fat--uses energy (burn calories) all day every day to keep you alive. Muscle has the ability to use slightly more energy per pound than fat does, but honestly, it doesn't make a huge difference per day.
"Burning fat" in the weight loss sense that you're using it occurs when your overall calorie intake is lower than what you're burning, so your body starts to deplete its fat stores. The problem is, you can't say, "Body, deplete ONLY fat stores"; it will leech from lean mass (muscle) as well if you are eating at a calorie deficit. That's why it's so hard/basically impossible to *build* more muscle while eating below maintenance. The best you can do is eat a bunch of protein (1g per pound of lean mass, not total weight) and pick a calorie target *just* below maintenance, hoping you will catabolize as little muscle and as much fat as possible. The faster the rate of weight loss, the more of it is likely coming from muscle loss.0 -
cheshirecatastrophe wrote: »But by gaining muscle won't that in turn burn fat, since muscle burns fat? I'm at my goal weight but I want a more athletic build... I eat 115g of protein a day (I'm 115 lbs) and began lifting 3x a week with one cardio day... I'm still slightly under or at my food goals a day.... I haven't gained weight but my goal is to lower the slight body fat I have and gain muscle. If muscle burns fat, I would assume the more muscle you have, you'll also burn more fat. These answers confuse me a bit...
Your entire body--lean mass AND fat--uses energy (burn calories) all day every day to keep you alive. Muscle has the ability to use slightly more energy per pound than fat does, but honestly, it doesn't make a huge difference per day.
"Burning fat" in the weight loss sense that you're using it occurs when your overall calorie intake is lower than what you're burning, so your body starts to deplete its fat stores. The problem is, you can't say, "Body, deplete ONLY fat stores"; it will leech from lean mass (muscle) as well if you are eating at a calorie deficit. That's why it's so hard/basically impossible to *build* more muscle while eating below maintenance. The best you can do is eat a bunch of protein (1g per pound of lean mass, not total weight) and pick a calorie target *just* below maintenance, hoping you will catabolize as little muscle and as much fat as possible. The faster the rate of weight loss, the more of it is likely coming from muscle loss.
This is the best answer, OP.0 -
[\quote]Your entire body--lean mass AND fat--uses energy (burn calories) all day every day to keep you alive. Muscle has the ability to use slightly more energy per pound than fat does, but honestly, it doesn't make a huge difference per day.
"Burning fat" in the weight loss sense that you're using it occurs when your overall calorie intake is lower than what you're burning, so your body starts to deplete its fat stores. The problem is, you can't say, "Body, deplete ONLY fat stores"; it will leech from lean mass (muscle) as well if you are eating at a calorie deficit. That's why it's so hard/basically impossible to *build* more muscle while eating below maintenance. The best you can do is eat a bunch of protein (1g per pound of lean mass, not total weight) and pick a calorie target *just* below maintenance, hoping you will catabolize as little muscle and as much fat as possible. The faster the rate of weight loss, the more of it is likely coming from muscle loss.[/quote]
I don't know my body fat percentage but it's pretty low.... I changed my food goals from "loss" to "maintain" and it added 510 calories to my daily calorie goal. Like I said I'm usually at the goal give or take 100 calories. I think eating 1710 calories as opposed to 1200 that I had been eating should help. I wouldn't want to eat more than that at this early point. I know that if you're at a deficit your body will use whatever it can for energy, which probably means the muscle you DO have. That's why I'm focusing on whole foods, no sugar or white starches and eating a lot of protein.
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Yes ma'am it is beneficial in SO many ways!!!
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Yeah it is not easy to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, you have to alternate and focus on one at the time.0
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