🌱 Can You Build Muscle AND Lose Fat?...

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CAN YOU BUILD MUSCLE & LOSE FAT?

417 words | 1 min 31 sec read

A question I frequently get asked when speaking to people is “can I gain muscle and lose body fat at the same time?”

This is a process called body recomposition.

People may often call this ‘toning’.

Call it whatever you want, it is simply the adding of lean muscle tissue whilst simultaneously losing fat mass.

But can these two things happen at the same time?

Let’s look into it…

This paper by Murphy & Koehler (2022) concluded that a sustained energy deficit (~13-15 weeks) did limit muscle growth but not strength gains when combined with resistance training.

This paper suggests that resistance training is important during fat loss to maintain (keep hold) of the muscle we already have.

When the main focus is fat loss you need to adjust your expectations around the amount of muscle you expect to gain in that period.

Okay.

So if you want to maximise both, it will require a greater amount of inputs into the system:

Protein Intake > 2g/kg/bodyweight each day

Resistance Training - Stimulating each muscle group adequately across the training week to maximise muscle growth.

Protein Timing - Before and After training to maximise the growth response

Progressive Overload - Adding sets/reps/weight each week to provide novel stimuli to the muscles.

Recovery - Sleep and Nutrition are Pillars of Progress

So it’s do-able..

You won’t gain the volume of muscle tissue you would if you were at an energy balance or surplus.

But it’s possible, especially if you are new to resistance training.

To maximise muscle hypertrophy you need to be training each muscle group at least twice per week.

You can split this up in a myriad of ways.

I used to think that there was an optimal training split back when I first started.

They all have their pro’s and cons.

Finding a split that works for you is the best thing you can do for your long term progress.

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TAKEHOME MESSAGE

Muscle Hypertrophy is a slow process.

When you restrict your body of the energy it needs to grow, It becomes more difficult but not impossible to grow muscle tissue.

So you can technically do both at the same time.

It just depends.

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