Should you lose weight before building muscle??

You should begin strength training when you begin weight loss. It will help you fat Instead of muscle, will help you look better when you get to goal, and will improve your overall health & fitness. Adding muscle mass comes later, as said above.

size102b wrote: »

Talk to a trainer in a gym
Personally I think it depends on how much weight you have to lose
I've 40lbs so I will lose 30 first then start weights as I know scale weight bothers me it shouldn't but I know it does and once you start on weights losses don't show up so much on scales

You might have an initial and temporary water weight gain when you start lifting weights, but we women would have to work extraordinary hard to build enough muscle to mask fat loss on the scale. And even if that happened, we'd not care because of what we saw in the mirror.

Note she's 18 pounds heavier in the picture on the right compared to the one in the middle.

nessdeal7 wrote: »

I've read conflicting information and just wanted some insight.

It depends on your goals and preferences. There are substantial benefits to resistance training while you lose weight and so regardless of whether this results in an increase in muscle mass or the maintenance of muscle as you diet, you should probably do this.

No. Waiting means you will go through a needless phase of being skinny-fat. I lost 60 pounds without any exercise and I wish I had started lifting a lot earlier because in 2 months I had more actual changes to my body shape than in a year of losing before it. Without exercise I got smaller, but my body fat percentage remained about the same because I lost muscle along with fat. If you weight train you will lose less muscle but still burn fat. That means you will reach your goals sooner.

Take a look at the success stories section of the forums. The most impressive body transformations involve weight training while losing weight. This is not a coincidence.

I lost 30 lbs before I started lifting. I lost another 30 after that. I lifted while on a deficit of about 500 calories/day, and loved the results. I look much better now at 117 than I did without lifting at 117. I'd recommend doing both lifting and eating at a deficit to help minimize your muscle loss.

malibu927 wrote: »

It's not just should, it's almost impossible to gain muscle as you lose weight. That isn't saying you shouldn't be doing something to retain the muscles you already have. Lifting is important even now.

Not true. More difficult to gain muscle at a deficit, but only impossible at a major deficit.

Here's a great article about gaining muscle while losing weight (primarily for relatively newbies to weightlifting). It explains the science behind building muscles and why calorie deficits make muscle building more difficult. The trick to the process is eating a high protein diet, limit your calorie deficit to no more then 700cals a day (for me, it worked best at 500 cals a day deficit as well) and lift heavy at least 3x per week. Of course, you'll also need a heavy dose of patience, as results take longer to notice. The last time I implored this method, I didn't see any weightloss on the scale for about a month, though I lost a whole pant size in that time.

https://www.muscleforlife.com/build-muscle-lose-fat/

I started lifting weights because I want to have nice abs and triceps to show off once the fat comes off, lol. I don't like "the underarm jiggle" that I, like a lot of ladies, have.

So far I've been losing weight faster than before I started lifting. Of course part of that is probably that I do cardio at the gym too. But in any case, lifting weights has not caused me to be unable to lose. And I am definitely building muscle--I am beginning to feel / see it in the areas that have the least fat padding.