Thread: Putting on muscle while losing weight / fat.

If some one who is quite over weight wanted to lose fat but build muscle at the same time, is this possible?
Does it make sense to sit on a maintenance level of calories to achieve this?
Surely sitting at maintanence level and pushing weights would alter ones body composition for the better?

Or is it best to train in calorie deficit first with the goal of removing fat.. Im talking some one who has body fat at aprox 35%

And at what fat % would you change the routine to bulking / calories?

Personally I would do a workout towards burning fat ....diet geared to losing weight ....more cardio ......and if you wanna do alittle lifting at the gym thats fine ......but I would drop the bf% first before trying to build muscle ......

whats your stats height and weight, also age if you dont mind ...

when your talking someone at 35% bf, yes it is possible. but, you need to gear everything towards fat loss. if someone is "obese" or that far gone, if you lift weights while on a calorie defecit you will certainly get stronger and leaner. gear everything on fat loss, while lifting weights, and your body will do the rest. if your goals are high, dont bulk until about 10-12% bf. you dont need a 10k cal diet to bulk either. try adding about 200 calories to your defecit at first and go from there.

Having been almost 55 pounds overweight at 5'3", I lost it by gearing my diet toward calorie deficit and hiit cardio first thing each morning. I only did it 20 minutes a day so you don't need to kill yourself to lose it. As long as I was consistently losing 1-2 lb's each week I kept my calories where they were and would only retool them lower (200 at a time) once I stopped going down on the scale. I also did light weight training, but my main focus while losing was cardio. It took time and patience, but in the last 12 years I haven't put it back on- fat wise.

Originally Posted by twisted

Personally I would do a workout towards burning fat ....diet geared to losing weight ....more cardio ......and if you wanna do alittle lifting at the gym thats fine ......but I would drop the bf% first before trying to build muscle ......

whats your stats height and weight, also age if you dont mind ...

We so think alike!

Lose the fat/weight first and then focus on building that muscle. I've been there done that twice now. You want so bad to build muscle and get big but at the same time you are overweight and have fat covering all that muscle you are trying to build. If you build muscle and the try to lose that much body fat - you'll end up burning off a lot of that hard earned muscle in the process (I know firsthand). As much as it sucks to have to wait to focus on the muscle-building aspect of your body - you need to lose the body fat FIRST and then you will be ready to get jacked.

I would use MyFitnessPal to track calories.

Do cardio at least 5 days per week for at least 20-30 minutes each day.

Cut out all/as much sugar as possible from your diet.

Watch your carb intake - keep it on the lower side of things and focus on eating healthy fats and protein.

Eat 200-300 calories every 3 hours. Don't sit down and have 2-3 large meals...

Do "full body" weight training 2-3 times per week and super-set exercises to help get heart-rate higher and burn more calories off. Also, drop sets will help get that heart rate up as well if done properly.

If you plateau, drop your calories down 200-300 per day for a few weeks and see how that helps.

If you plateau again, do it again.

You may also (eventually) want to try using some Clen or T3/T4. But I would try to lose as much fat as possible "naturally" with diet and exercise first before pulling those tricks out of the bag.

Good luck!

I lost almost 80lbs by keeping my cals around 1800-1900 a day, 20mins cardio every day and an hour of lifting daily.

Like john mentioned, I do a lot of supersets, dropsets, triple dropsets. I also drink only coffee and water, I have no prob drinking 1-2 gallons a day of water, always have.

I think the combo of all this helped tighten my skin as I lost the weight lucky. And as I get skinnier I look much bigger muscular wise

Here's a before and after pic. 18months of work-at this point I am very sick of cutting lol. I am planning my first cycle next month to try to get rock hard and shredded as possible.

Slow and steady brotha. If you need any advice feel free to hit me up.

I've lost 45lbs since March. I lift heavy and fast 6 days a week, and do no cardio. When my fat loss plateaus, I will incorporate cardio. The strength gains are hard to come by on a caloric deficit, but I have built some muscle. I seem to be changing my body comp pretty well and will continue this process until I'm down to 250! Then I will get strong and jacked

Thanks for all the advice guys and sorry about teh slow reply.. Got hit with a bad cold and been laying low.. thanks again.. appreciate the advice..