Gaining muscle and cutting fat?

[kingkid]

Ok I have two months to gain some muscle just a bit also want to lose a lot of body fat I am in great shape I'm 150 pounds even also?

Updates

+1 y

Gaining muscle and probably just body weight

Updates

+1 y

Ok any tip on gaining lean muscle or workout routine

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

Eat to maintain weight and your body will pull from fat stores for energy, while also building upon muscle.

Don't listen to these knuckleheads telling you to choose either burning fat or gaining muscle. That's stupid.

They're separate functions of the body and you do not need to choose to do one or the other. You can do both. DO NOT dirty bulk. There is no proof that dirty bulking is more beneficial than a lean bulk. And most evidence supports the idea that your body can't make use of anything beyond a 500 calorie surplus a day.

The only reason to ever dirty bulk, is if you're a professional athlete during an off-season looking to reduce the likeliness of injury. But as a non-professional trying to be more fit, it is entirely useless.

With that said, you'll want to eat anywhere between 0 to 500 more calories than maintenance a day.. depending if you want your emphasis to be on body fat % reduction at your current weight (maintenance calories + daily training) or maintaining body fat % while gaining muscle (500 calories above maintenance + daily training).

In terms of the workout, I believe it's safe to say, working out for a minimum of an hour every day is going to help you get to your goals regardless of what exercises you choose to do. However, to maximize gains in a short time period, I would do cardio 30 minutes a day, and rotate push pull and leg muscles for lifts. With one day of rest

E. g.
Mon-Sat I'd run for 30 minutes
Mon- Push exercises: Chest, tricep, shoulder exercises
Tue- Pull exercises: Lats, biceps, shrugs
Wed-- Legs: quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves
Thu- Push
Fri- Pull
Sat- Legs
Sun- REST

You can do isolated movements or compounds. Weighted or self weighted. It's really a matter of preference. All will get you the results if you do them with equal effort.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

Quick tips:
Drink plenty of water, consistent hydration can reduce daily catabolism of muscle
Take creatine supplements
Take at least 30% of your calories from protein
The more you train, the more results you get
Stick to a routine
Consistency yields results, while inconsistency destroys ambition so don't skip workouts or frequently change your routine

Do the work, get the results. Nutrition, exercise, rest, and active recovery (e. g. foam rolling, hiking, kayaking) are the 4 key tools to utilize in fitness gains.

Good luck.

[Kythe]

@NotJustAnotherGuy - No one suggested "dirty bulking"--I think we agree that it's not a good choice.

However, metabolic pathways generally don't support "transforming fat into muscle" with any efficiency, as you propose here, for the average person who is not significantly overweight to begin with, or returning to a previous level of fitness. What you're proposing is a slow bulk that will, instead, most likely result in the slow gain of a little muscle and a little body fat. In two months, he'd see basically no change whatsoever.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

I'm not certain you know what a dirty bulk is, since you say you're not suggesting a dirty bulk, but say 0-500 calories above maintenance is not nearly enough for significant muscle gains.

You can't transform fat into muscle. They're separate processes. This, I already stated in my above post. Your body converts fat when glycogen levels in the bloodstream are too low-- it's called homeostasis-- the body attempts to keep regular internal conditions despite differentiating external conditions. If your body is doing this, it has little factor on your muscle gains apart from if you're protein deprived (which any lifter shouldn't be) because your muscles take glycogen and protein from the bloodstream, they don't compete for it as it comes down your digestive track, so if it has needs the body will convert fat (a completely separate process) to restore glycogen in the bloodstream and keep your muscles fed, regardless of if you're eating 200 calories over maintenance or 1000

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

or if you're eating 2 meals a day or 6.

What I'm suggesting is muscle gain without unnecessary fat gains. Tell me this, is it ridiculous to gain 1lb of muscle a week? 52lbs of muscle in a year? That's a bit extreme is it not? That's 500 calories surplus a day (1lb a week). Why would he eat more than that? 500 calories is already fairly excessive. Eating more will not contribute to more muscle gains.

Your body can recompose at one weight, just as easily as it can if he gets fat then shrinks down again. The difference is, he doesn't spend 5 months looking like a fatty before cutting

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

@kythe Suggesting more calories than the maximum 500 that I have suggested would only contribute to more fat gains, and have no impact on muscle gains. In two months he'd just be fat. He'd have the same muscle gains as my method, but a ridiculous amount of fat covering it. If 500 calories is like no change whatsoever, you must be suggesting at least a thousand.. that's him gaining 16lbs of fat/muscle in 2 months not to mention the extra water weight he's gonna get from being so much bigger.. So this guy is gonna be easily 20lbs bigger in 2 months.. And at best 4lbs of it will be muscle because 2lbs of muscle a month is really good gains. But hey, at least the change will be noticeable! Through my method he could lose 4lbs of fat and gain 4lbs of muscle in 2 months.. the difference that makes on a 150lb person can be 10% bodyfat to 7% bodyfat.. which is a huge aesthetic difference.

[Kythe]

Sigh - we've been over this before. A dirty bulk is generally the "GFH" approach, and usually involves eating enough to gain more than 1 lb/week. I do not promote that. I've never promoted that.

And yes, if you look to gain 1 lb/week, you'll pretty much maximize your muscle gain, assuming your training is optimal - but about half will go to muscle, and half to body fat, at best.

I was responding to your assertion you could lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, and your prescription of bulking with significantly less than 1 lb/week as an option -- e. g. 100 calories extra/day will, indeed, see most of the gains go to muscle, but will also be a very slow rate of gain, overall.

People have been playing with this for decades. There just isn't any free lunch. Unless you're an overweight beginner or trying to get back to a previous level of fitness, you'll either gain body fat with muscle gain, or gain muscle exceedingly slowly.

[Kythe]

To sum up where I'm coming from: at 500 calories surplus/day, you'll basically maximize muscle gain, assuming your training is in order. More than that, and you're just adding fat needlessly. BUT, even at 500 calories surplus/day, you're putting on significant fat with the muscle. The human body just isn't 100% efficient at muscle building.

Dial the surplus down towards zero, and you're likely looking at a greater ratio of muscle to body fat gain, but again, overall, you're reducing the rate of muscle gain, as well.

Is it possible to, as you say, gain muscle and burn fat at the same time? If you're an overweight beginner, or getting back to where you were at one time, yes.

Is it possible to gain body weight slowly enough that body fat gain is relatively insignificant, and most of it is muscle gain? Again, likely. But remember: the OP wanted something in two months.

[Kythe]

Also, I'd like some clarification - was it a typo when you asserted that 500 calories surplus/day would lead to "4 lbs of muscle gain and 4 lbs of fat loss in 2 months"? If not, where do you believe the 3500 calories surplus/week going?

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

@kythe What I'm telling you is, above 500 calories is the get fucking huge approach. And your body being in partial catabolic moments throughout the day is no less efficient than having a whole cutting cycle where you're constantly in a catabolic state.

We know (or I assume you know) from several studies that the slower you lose weight, the better the fat to muscle loss ratio and also lifting while cutting betters your ratios as well. So why would you assume bulking, then cutting all that weight at once is more efficient than slowly cutting out fat as you build muscle?

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

What you don't comprehend is your body does not need a surplus of calories to create muscle. There's no direct interaction between the food you eat and your muscles getting the protein and glycogen it needs. The two interact indirectly through a medium --- our blood. Your muscles do not know that you ate however much beyond or below maintenance. It only grabs protein and glycogen in the blood based on their concentrations. So assuming you're eating a high protein diet there will be enough protein in the blood for maximum muscle growth.. and knowing your body regulates glycogen in the blood stream so it's constant (insulin if it's too high, fat conversion if it's too low).. it doesn't matter if you're a couple hundred calories over or under, your muscles still interact with the same glycogen concentrations.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

And so, if the muscles are interacting with blood that has the same glycogen and protein concentrations, they will have similar growth. The difference is how much your body converts fat to maintain glycogen levels or if you're eating so much it has to send insulin in to convert glycogen into stored energy. The only instance where you are partially correct is if you're under-eating so much that 1.) your body isn't converting fat fast enough to maintain sugar levels and therefor your muscles are facing lower concentrations of glycogen in the blood 2.) you're calorie reduction is effecting your protein concentrations.

But neither of the instances are a concern in a diet that seeks to be maintenance level calories or just slightly higher.

[Kythe]

There are multiple problems with your thesis, among them being: 1) insulin levels are also influenced by protein, 2) fat storage can take place in the complete absence of insulin (see the ASP pathway, for example), 3) the body converts protein for energy purposes, especially in cases of caloric deficit, 4) cells, including muscle and fat cells, do not just respond to protein and glucose levels in the blood; rather, nutrient uptake/lipid and glucose storage in fat cells respond to metabolic pathways mediated by hormones, which most certainly do reflect energy balance (your own post hinted at that, when you mentioned insulin as a response to too-high glucose levels, but left how insulin does its work hanging).

What you're proposing is not new; the idea that one can mediate fat storage independently of other factors by managing blood glucose/insulin/lipid levels is fairly old -- and it simply doesn't hold water.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

It is possible to lose fat on a calorie surplus.. I know it's hard for you to comprehend, but extra calories means more weight, it does not necessarily mean more fat. So you can very reasonably be on a surplus of calories and lose fat, but gain muscle and weight. This notion you have that every calorie of surplus comes with some ratio of added fat, is entirely wrong. You can be on a surplus of 200 calories and go from 15lbs of fat in your body to 10lbs while overall gaining weight. Millions of people have maintained their weight and reduced their body fat % over the course of just a couple months. It's not magic. It's not unproven. It's a well established fact. Maybe you need to try working out? Or look up some program testimonials. Not every transformation is fat loss or muscle gain. In fact, most are a combination of both.. just look at programs like p90x.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

I did not assert that 500 calories a day could lead to +4lbs of muscle and -4lbs of fat. I did not set caloric parameters to that statement.. I said if you followed my method you could get +4lbs of muscle and -4lbs of fat and stay at a similar weight thereby reducing your bodyfat % by approx. 3%. If you read more thoroughly, you'd know my suggestion was to take in 0 to 500 calories. That's a range. That's not specifically 500, that's not specifically 0. If you could get exactly 0 or 500 calories a day just by estimation of your consumption and what you think you burned.. you'd be quite the genius. Except you're not. I gave a range because I think before I speak.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

Your logic is riddled with contradictions and irrational conclusions. You stated that my range of 0-500 is poor, but then state that anything beyond 500 is excessive. You state that 100 calories surplus is inefficient and yet admit it maximizes muscle to fat gain/loss ratio. You say a caloric deficit causes protein conversion, and yet we're talking about a diet that retains a surplus. You basically eliminated all scenarios above and below my range, and yet somehow retain my range is ill-constructed. You inform me that fat storage can be done in absence of insulin, but fail to relay how that at all matters in this scenario.

I suggested 0 to 500 calories surplus-- a realistic range that you can estimate that prevents excess and yet eliminates deficiency. What would your suggestion be?

[Anonymous]

It'll pay to do some in-depth research, but the general gist is that you should eat a few hundred calories over your maintenance intake level while keeping your strength training pretty intense. You basically are trying to jumpstart your body into the mode where it burns out any excess fat stores and doesn't commit anything else to storage, while prioritizing the muscle recovery due to the increase in activity it's experiencing.

[Anonymous]

What's the question here?

[Kythe]

You don't generally do both at the same time, unless you're pretty overweight to begin with, or just starting out with weightlifting. Especially with the 2-month timeframe involved, you're probably better off choosing one (gaining muscle or losing fat).

[Kythe]

I see in your update that you just want to gain muscle. In that case, follow @NotJustAnotherGuy's post, below.

[SteamBuns]

If you want to gain muscle fast a protein shake would do well for you and Pumping those Irons will help Pum the weight man pump the weight!!! and make sure toy take the protein shake :) good luck

[Anonymous]

Are you planning on doing weight training or just body weight exercises?
I can help with the muscle gain bit, but the cutting fat I have no experience in at all

[Anonymous]

can't happen without steroids. it takes additional calories to build muscle and a reduction in calories to lose fat.