Ideally, you should be focusing on either fat loss or muscle gain (which can help with weight loss). While our bodies CAN do both, the eating requirements often clash. To burn off fat, you need to reduce calories (but still have a balanced diet), but to gain muscle, you need to eat MORE calories than you burn. In the rare balance of protein intake, you can burn off fat while feeding muscle growth, but this is difficult to find your own balancing point.
Depending on how chubby you are, I'd skip the fat loss, and just focus on muscle gain. Each pound of muscle adds around 10 calories per day to your metabolism. The weightlifting itself will burn away fat too, and if you consume a fast digesting protein immediately after the workout, such as whey, egg whites, or lean chicken meat, as the proteins will be more likely to go right to your muscles. Don't forget to rest a couple days between sessions, though you can do a cardio session in between. Assuming you eat right, and persist on a consistent routine, you should see some results in a month. Since you're building muscle, don't get obsessed with the scale, it will either stay the same as your body recompositions, or, even go up a little. Look for visible results like your gut going down, clothes fitting better. And don't let a bad week bring you down, it happens.
If you're really out of shape you can do both, but longer term, its almost impossible to lose fat and gain muscle simultaneously. One requires a caloric deficit, the other a slight caloric surplus.
Fat loss will be much faster if you're eating right. Muscle gain is a bitch.
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6Opinion
I go to the gym every other day as I am older.My diet is good but more geared towards muscle growth rather than weight loss so I just keep on eating what I think is good my sessions last anywhere between 60 and 90 minutes with 30% cardio.
When I was much younger I did not have any problems shedding weight I remember I was 16 and had 70kg then at 27 I had 55kg ad reasonably maintained my weight proportionately until my my 50
A side note.
The thing about lifting that many people don't understand is that it's not the amount of time you spend 'lifting'. It's all about how hard you push yourself and how much time under pressure you are.
People that treat their lifting in the same way as their cardio will not see as much improvement as they would otherwise.
I dropped 55 pounds over an eight-month period (from 221 to 166) this year while in Europe by virtue of not eating the Murkkan diet. I came back in August and have been racking up muscle ever since.
I have a similar metabolism and I lost 15 pounds after working out for 1.5-2 months. 3 times a week for about 60-90 minutes per work-out.
Judging by looking at myself ---- never.
it's quick man - I've lost 25 pounds in 2 months.
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