Lose Fat and Gain Muscle – Simultaneously?

Love to get more details.

Weight training and dieting at the same time, now something does not make sense here. Weight training is ok in any sense, but deiting no matter with what you do so is not right. Dieting is just making your body ready to make more fat out of carbo’s and protiens instead of making it used to burn them and has just a temporary effect.

The routine I follow is no special but I am losing my fats and building strong muscles. Simply by folowing a good diet, taking protien half and hour before excercise and cutting down on exess carbo’s eg: only eating em in breakfast and a very minute amount in lunch helps me to burn my calories faster then ever. I usually perform my excercise during the afternoon since nowadays I hardly have time for it in the morning. I take a small slice of bread and put some salad leaves and ome boiled chiken on it and eat it. 45 minutes later I workout for an hour, doing aerobics, 120pushups , situps , 80pullups fr biceps triceps and tigh muscles. It does not give me a horrible body builder freak look but I discovered a gain in mass, my muscles are tough now.

So healthy diet is just a way to do so.

would you need a high intake of protein to achieve this?
ie, 1.5 – 2.0 g per lbs of body weight?

I always find it difficult to reach these levels.

When I started on my weight loss/muscle building journey about 6 years ago, I hit the gym hard and changed my diet significantly. The result? Major fat loss, significant muscle gain. I had no real knowledge, other than I knew I had to lift weights, change what I ate, get my body chemistry right. I did that, and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in for 30 years.

I’d love to hear about that one :), know a few strategies myself, but its always good to compare it to that of the experts ;)

From what I have read (Vince DelMonte website) it is best to focus on one thing at a time. If you do manage to do both it is a bonus (but rare). It should never be the focus of your program (diet and exercise program).
As losing fat and gaining muscle are on 2 separate ends of the spectrum. i.e. to build muscle you are consuming more calories than your maintenance and with fat loss you are consuming less calories than your maintenance.

That is my 2c worth..

Losing fat and gaining muscle are the coins two sides you choose heads or tails first heads then tails :D

hi Joel, yeah, that has always been a mystery to my, its sometimes hard to track coz, I’d want to lose weight (being excess fat) but at the same time, If I try to go to the gym and work out, I gain weight coz I get so hungry after working out hehe, its like a push pull kinda thing. I would love to hear what you have to say about this.

I would love to hear this one. Never really thought it through before but fat loss requires calorie deficit and muscle gain requires higher calories doesnt it?????

Do tell…

Hi. I have been doing Bootcamp since January, and only managed to PUT on 4 kgs!!!! I have lost centermeters, but no weight…it just keeps climbing! I got the cheat your way thin diet…but even that has not budged my weight!! I am sure more muscle has been addded though!

I thought that by building muscle (great calorie burner) AND cardio (especially HIIT) you can actually achieve both. Of course it comes down to diet also.

I’ve tried exactly what you said would fail: Weight training and fat loss dieting… it just doesn’t go anywhere! PLease give more details!

Very rare that it actually happens, unless you count beginners gains, which i doubt many here would receive. Also given that creatine loading wouldn’t count not something I have considered as being something to try doing.

I tried that actually, although my main focus initially was to lose fat. I was pretty successful actually, not that I’m hulking around or anything but at least I see results in both aspects. Kinda keep that calorie deficit as Vince always says and then at the same time jack up protein intake like crazy. 3:1 protein to carb ratio kinda works. Keep a good diet, stay away from all the fried stuff and all the cliche diet pointers. Should work. At least it does for me =)

When I first started doing weights I was eating a very healthy muscle building diet. The weights helped me put on muscle, but after every weights session I did 20 mins of intervals 90sec sprint, 30sec walk as I had been told that weights will burn up my carbs and the intervals will burn my fat.
To this day I still don’t know if it actually worked but I managed to build quite a bit of muscle whilst improving my abs .. so maybe you can?

I’d love to hear more about this elusive goal.

That it something that lots of us want to do. So I’d love to hear more about it!

@Kevin – I agree with kevin on this, I have tried dozens of diets and exercised at the same time and got knocked out of the ring on 2 counts low carbs and heavy aerobics. It would have been nice to achieve but, I am game to hear you on this….

This is my 2 bits….

I don’t know about doing “at the same time”, but you could certainly have a program that has building phases and cutting phases built in. After a 12 week program you could certainly have appeared to have lost fat and gained muscle.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say Joel.

This is a subject that really interests me. I have tried to do both but have always failed. Are we suppose to eat and eat in order to bulk up and then diet to lose
unnecessary wanted fat? But then in the bulking face one tends to eat more than one should. How do I achieve a 6 pack while not getting overly skinny?

I would definately like to hear more on this, especially on what ratio of Protein vs Carbs one should look at to gain muscle mass?

would love to get more! I do weight training for 45min to 1hr than I do 25min of elliptical machine on interval training so that i can shed away the extra fat. Is that effective enough?

looking forward to hearing this, it has to be a combination of mrt and cutting down on dietary fat intake.

From has worked with me in the past is to up the overall volume/intensity of your workout/week…..so basically, if you’re working out only enough to eat about 2400c/day for maintenance, there’s no way you can gain muscle and lose fat….something happens in the way your body processes food and builds muscle when you up that maintenance level to about 3400c/day…perhaps some hormonal thing? I managed to do that by doing full body training 3 days/week, interval training 1/week, and some sport 3 times/week for an hour or 2.

I am in my fourth week of Cheat Your Way Thin. I injured my shoulder before I started this program, so I have only been doing nominal HIIT (3-4 times a week, ~20 min each) and some abs work. I really haven’t been exercising much. No weight lifting.

Well, my muscle tone has definitely improved, while I am steadily losing weight. But I cannot tell if I am actually gaining muscles, or it’s just that the muscles look more defined because I have lost fat. I could tell you that the diet is much higher in protein than what I used to eat. By the way, incorporating the free veggies concept is genius.

Of course, gaining big muscles is not part of my goal anyway…

Well, I’d love to know how to.
I tend to loose a lot of muscle when getting slimmer
Cheers

I’d have thought trying to build muscle and lose fat at the same time would be quite a hard thing to do since doing it simultaneously would probably not result in a satisfactory gain in muscle mass or fat loss. Having one clear goal at a time would surely result in greater achievement.

I currently train 5 times a week to try and build muscle and its going really well but im not just gaining lean muscle and i would really like to see my six pack so i would really like to find out more (Y)

I generally eat very healthy, no eating out, no processed foods, porridge, boiled eggs, and allot of fruit, cottage cheese. At the moment my workout schedule consists of 3 weight sessions and a 1-2 pilates/yoga classes a week.

Sometimes I try to reduce my calorie intake for a day or two (still eating 4-5 small meals – but making them smaller than normal), which feels great for those days, but by day 3-4 I am hungry. I don’t usually get cravings for bad foods (sugars etc) but I just continually feel hungry and unsatisfied with what I have just finished eating.

Seeing as I was already eating healthy and exercising, I am not sure what the next step for loosing that percentage of body is, other than reducing the volume of what I eat, but I seems to go against me after a few days and would be fairly hard to maintain long term.

Diet wise i think a calroie/carb cycling approach is best. Basically feeding the body what it needs to grow on heavy weightlifting days and going below maintenance on days that you are relatively inactive…. best of both worlds.

High protein is what usually work best for me. Not trying to lose the fat too quickly. Training hard and getting recovery. That’s my formula.

I feel as if I’m confusing myself. When I have in mind that I’m trying to get bigger and smaller at the same time, I wonder if I’m working against my own goals. Philosophically I’m not sure it makes sense, but I would love to achieve it. I guess I’m wondering about the mind-set more than the actual training and nutrition, which might or might not be a good idea. Should I just relax and focus on only one goal at a time? Get bigger, then get smaller? Or is it not actually confusing to the body to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously?

Joel,

I didn’t get the e-mail about the article concerning agave and stevia. Is there anyway to e-mail the link again. I would very much like to read this.

No I have never tried to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.

Diane

I’d love to hear more about this subject. This is probably everyones real goal, as it is mine. so please people more comments!

Definitely keen to read more

@Diane. The comment quota wasn’t reached, so there was no post on agave and stevia.

I have also tried to do this and failed miserably, would be great to hear where I have been going wrong.

Need to loose weight, finding it hard. Do horsebackriding 3-7 days/week and is in the stable minimum 6day/w (have my own horse) so i don’t have time to do training very often. Horses require some mucles so i can’t afford loosing any. A desk-jockey in my profesional life (min 8h/day + 2h travel) so i don’t get any exercise there. So spill the beans on this wonderfulll combo of loosing fat and gaining muscles!

I’ve been trying to shed some pounds for a few months now and it’s just not happening. But I have noticed some muscle gain. Two weeks ago I started eating normally (healthy, but not not with strict nutrition) and I was pleased to see no weight gains, so now I’m focusing on some muscle gaining before try to lose fat again. I figure it’ll be easier.

I’m really interested in this post Joel. Please post further information.

Keep up the good work!

@pia – I have been on the Cheat your way thin program for about 4 weeks now (in to my core phase). In the first week I was on the low carb diet for a week, doing high intensity interval training. The result at the end of the week was 4kg loss of pure muscle mass (according to my Tanita EIS scales). Not good as I wanted to retain my muscle mass. In addition, my fat percentage shot up from average 13% to near 15%. This was due purely to the loss of muscle mass.

I must admit that I did not take any protein supplements during that first week. Taking the protein would have saved my muscles from degradation. i.e. the body tries degrades muscle to help control metabolism (in addition to leveling out hormones).

As a result, I have concluded that calorie restriction and HIT (high intensity interval training) = muscle loss without protein supplements. Therefore the diet and the exercise program must supplement one another.

For those wanting to bulk up, the equation would be to eat more calories and lift heavier weights (plus the protein supplement of course).

IMO, best to get lean, then bulk up (if bulking up is your goal). People that choose the other way look big, but not lean. Looks better the other way. ;)

I want to lose fat but not lean body mass (lbm). I am dieting (eating healthy but keep calories low), doing cardio and weightlifting to lose fat, and hoping that the weightlifting will help me to maintain lbm. So far so good: lost 9 kg fat and 1 kg lbm (in 5 months). Goal: to loose 30 kg, if that works out to be 27 kg fat and 3 kg lbm I will be more than happy.

Bring it on

Hi Joel.
I have always been of the understanding that to lose fat you must be in calorie debt and to gain muscle you must be in calorie surplus. Those put together with training get the loss/gain results you are after. And of course when in debt you need your cheat days to keep the metabolisim going strong.

Hey Joel,
U made me interested. Wanna find out a solution which is about following ur CheatUrWayThin while gaining muscle mass if possible :)

I understand that is important to both feed the body with enough nutrients especially protein to repair the muscles torn in resistance training

Nothing I’ve tried has given me much in the way of EITHER muscle gain or fat loss; however, my hormone levels are all screwed up (estrogen dominance, as shown by saliva tests administered by my nutritionist), and I haven’t gotten any results from Tribulus & DIM so far. I’m guessing that since I can’t gain muscle–and *supposedly* building/working muscle is the best way to burn fat–I won’t be able to burn fat either. ? Who knows?

I think Torbjorn akerfeldt had the right idea about this years ago, unfortunately his ideas fell out of favour and got assigned to the bin for most people. I imagine that Joel knows a lot about this “old” stuff and would like to hear more about his current views on it.

waiting to hear how.
i am vegetarian.
i am also continuously disappointed wt results.
so tell.

For the first time in my life I am overweight, 7kg,after quitting smoking, and I have no clue how to shed the fat. Am training and keeping a good diet but see nothing happening. I sure want to know how this is done!