How to burn fat and build muscle at the same time I Can you build muscle while losing fat

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to this video. In this video we're going to be talking about, can you build muscle in a calorie deficit? When you're trying to lose body fat you have to go into a calorie deficit. You know that. I hope you know that. So when you go into a calorie deficit can you still build muscle? You've probably heard something to the effect of, you can't build muscle in a calorie deficit because you have to be in a calorie surplus. Which means you're gonna be eating more calories than what your body burns and all these things. Let's cover it step by step in depth. All right, that's what we do here. It's what we do on this channel— education, learning, dispelling myths, all the stuff we do here on this channel. All right, so there's 3 main points I'm gonna cover here, and really stick with me because I'm gonna go in depth. And I— somebody messaged me or said something to me on Instagram, which, if you don't follow me on Instagram, @ericrobertsfitness, Somebody said something to me on Instagram about how they enjoyed the YouTube videos because I go so in depth and you can actually learn so much more. So if you're here right now, pat yourself on the back because that means you like to learn and you actually take the time to learn, which means you are gonna see the best results. Now, the first thing is going to be to answer the question, can you build muscle in a calorie deficit? Yes, but there are certain, 2 main certain scenarios That have to happen, that you have to fall under. All right, the first one is going to be if you are new to following a real strength training program. And this is where I really want you to stick with me here because you're probably going to benefit from this fact right here. When I say new to following a real strength training program, I don't mean Beachbody, I don't mean Orange Theory, I don't mean P90X, I I don't mean whatever else. I don't mean HIIT boot camps or CrossFit. I don't mean any of that. Nothing wrong with those things if that's your form of exercise or modality, totally fine. But for the point of this video, we're gonna be talking about following a real muscle building strength training program. If you are new to following a real program, you will be able to go into a calorie deficit and still see progress. And I mentioned all of those things, P90X, Beachbody, CrossFit, all of those things, right? And even you can throw in there, like, if you've been going to the gym for 2 years or a year or 9 months or whatever the case may be, but you just kind of like go around and do this machine and do that machine and do this exercise, which I know happens a lot because you might not have a real program you're working on. If that's you, if you fall under any of those categories, you are considered new to following a real strength training program. And I I say that because this actually works in your favor because so many people think like, oh, well, I've been working out for a while so I'm not gonna be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. It's not really true. And this benefits you because, again, I can't tell you— I've had people who come to me who are like, Eric, I've been working out for the past 10 years consistently. I'm like, sweet. What has your workout been? What has your form of— what is the modality? of exercise, of strength training you've been doing? Again, Beachbody, HIIT, Orangetheory, da-da. And I'm like, so here's the thing. You've been exercising for the past 10 years. You haven't been following a real program for the past 10 years or 2 years or 6 months or whatever the timeframe is. So you are actually still considered new to following a properly designed, getting enough volume, getting enough sets per muscle group per week, Bringing enough proper intensity to your workouts, having progressive overload, you're new to all that. And again, if you don't really know what that means, you're definitely new to all that, which is totally fine. It's actually a good thing. If you want to learn more about everything I just said, I've done a video here on YouTube covering like how many sets you should do and reps you should do and all that kind of stuff. So I'll leave that here somewhere above. You can, you know, watch it after this video— after the video, because you got to finish watching this one first. You can watch it after the video, but— That means you're new. And obviously if you're somebody who has never really lifted weights in your life before, because again, I can't tell you how many people, for example, they lose 50 pounds doing just cardio in a calorie deficit and they're like, oh, okay. Like, all right, I'm starting to lose weight, but I don't look the way I want to look. And so I want to build muscle now, but I still want to lose some body fat. Sweet. You can still do that because you've never really followed a real strength training program before. And this is because When you truly start to follow a real program, it's a new stress on your body. Your body's going to have to adapt to it regardless, no matter what. Your body's going to have to adapt to it. And the way it adapts is by growing stronger, more defined muscles. So your body's going to have to adapt to the new stimulus that you are providing to it, no matter what, whether you're in a calorie deficit, calorie surplus, calorie maintenance, whatever. Your body's going to adapt no matter what because it has to, because it's a new stress. And so this is why you are going to be able to build muscle in a calorie deficit when you are on the more beginner side of things. And again, I wanna stress this again because I can't tell you how many people have come to me over the years of the background of whether it's P90X or at-home workouts or YouTube video workouts or whatever the case may be. And they actually, you know, we get them on a real program and they start seeing change in their body. Not overnight because nothing happens overnight, but they start seeing change in their body 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, 6 months in. And they're like, wow, I was working out for 10 years and I never saw this kind of progress in my body. And that's because they never really followed a real program. So if you are new to following a real program, any of those scenarios I just listed, and you'll know, like if you're just kinda going in the gym and doing this and that, or if you're doing YouTube video workouts, or if you're doing, you know, Orangetheory boot camp, whatever, again, nothing wrong with it, but that is considered new, right? So it actually works in your favor because you will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. So that is the first scenario where you can build muscle in a calorie deficit. The second one is if you're restarting a program. So for example, I have a lot of people who have come to me over the years where, let's say they're 32 years old and they used to play high school, college sports. They really were in a program. They actually built a lot of lean muscle mass over the time period, but then they graduated college, started a job, got married, started a family, new responsibilities. All these things happen, right? So they've taken, you know, an Yeah. Extended period of time off from following a real program. You're gonna ask me, how much is an extended period of time off? I would probably say anywhere from, call it, 3 to 9 months, anywhere in between there. If you've taken that, like you haven't touched a weight in, you know, 3 to 9 months, your body's, again, it's gonna have this new stimulus to it. So your body's gonna have to recover and adapt and recover to this no matter what, whether you're in a, again, surplus Deficit, maintenance, whatever, your body is gonna have to adapt and grow stronger, more defined muscles no matter what, because you're providing it that new stimulus it hasn't had in 3 months, 4 months, 6 months, 6 years, 20 years. Again, like, you know, if you graduated college at 22 and you're now, you know, 39 and you wanna get back into the workout scene, number one, I think that's awesome. But number two, you know, your body's been off of following a real program consistently. Again, maybe here and there you do this, you do that, totally fine, but consistently following a real program, it's been a while. So your body's going to pick it up and adapt to it no matter what. And this is a scenario where, again, if you've let myself go or whatever the case may be, you will be able to kind of hop right back in and lose fat, build muscle at the same time. And so if you have taken an extended period of time off from following a strength training program, you will be able to lose fat, build muscle at the same time. Okay, now you're probably going to ask me like, how long does this last, right? Because I said if you're a beginner, right, if you're new, these 2 things are if you're more of the beginner, quote unquote beginner. And how long does this last? Usually anywhere from 6 to 12 months, and I've seen up to 18 months. All right, so again, you are considered like new, more beginner style from the first 6 to 12 months and pushing it up to maybe 18 months. This is important because if you have a certain amount of body fat you wanna lose or whatever the case may be, you can, excuse me, kinda think in your head like, all right, if I'm able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time for the next 8 months, let me push really hard so I can make sure I'm in my deficit, make sure I'm hitting my workouts really hard, being really consistent. And you can really, really do some damage in a good way, really do some damage to your body and changing the way your body looks. After that, you know, again, I say 18 months as the top because I've seen some of my clients— again, this is more just like anecdotally speaking— I've seen some of my clients be able to push that number up to about 18 months. Different for every single person. It's obviously why I'm giving you a range because I don't know you as an individual and I would have to know you as an individual. But in 6 to 12 months, maybe up to 18, that's about how long these, call them newbie gains, are going to last. Why? What happens after that? Why do you need these newbie gains? What happens? So let's talk about now if you're not one of these two scenarios, right? If you're not somebody who's new, if you're not somebody who's restarting, right? If you're not one of those two things, it is going to be really hard to build muscle in a calorie deficit. Why? Why is this the case? Why can you not? We just talked earlier about you are able to build muscle because it's a new stress. It's a new stimulus on your body and your body's gonna have to respond and adapt to that stress no matter what, no matter what else is going on. Again, no matter your calorie intake, your body's gonna have to adapt and respond no matter what. So that's why you will be able to as a beginner, but over time as your body says, all right, like this individual is clearly doing this for a long period of time, being very consistent, they've built some lean muscle mass, your body starts to say, all right, we're gonna start adapting to this a bit better. And it's gonna be harder and harder and harder For you to be able to build muscle because think of it like your body gets used to things, right? So it's like, all right, this individual went from not lifting weights at all to now lifting weights, right? Okay, I'm going to have to adapt to this. But over time, your body's like, it becomes very efficient. Your body's very smart. It's way smarter than you are and it doesn't want to change. Your body does not want to change as much as you might want to change. Your body does not want to. So it says, all right, like— I'm gonna get really good at recovering from this because I can't just keep doing this because that takes time, energy, calories, which we're all gonna talk about here in a second. And plus, on top of that, like, think about it from a logical perspective. You can't just like keep going up and up and up and up and up and up and up because like we would all be like just jacked and like lifting cars and houses and stuff. Like, that's not how— it's not how the stress recovery adaptation response works. Like, at some point there's gonna be, you know, You're gonna go this way, but, you know, the bell curve kinda goes down a bit or it stalls out a bit, right? So you can't just keep going up linearly forever. And that— it's because your body's gonna require more stress to it to be able to then adapt to that stress. Because if you just keep giving it the same amount of stress you were giving it before, that's not gonna be enough to change your body. Because again, your body needs a certain level of stress, of stimulus placed upon it to say, crap, this person's, you know, Again, it doesn't know whether you're lifting a boulder rock or lifting weights or whatever the case may be. It just knows stress. So your body's going to say, all right, there's a stress that really kind of stressed me out. I got to recover from this stress. But over time that gets harder to build up that stress because your body just adapts and gets used to it. So over time your body's gonna say, you know what? Nope. We are not, we are not becoming proficient at building muscle anymore because of all those reasons. Right? So what you would have to do is going to a calorie surplus. This means you are eating more calories than what your body burns in order to optimize muscle building. And why is this? This is because I often use this reference when it comes to counting calories and eating whatever you want in a calorie deficit. I've done a video on this before, so feel free to check it out. But essentially speaking, let's say you're trying to lose body fat and you're counting calories, right? People ask me, can I eat whatever I want when I'm in a calorie deficit? My response is always yes, but you got to pay your bills first. And what I mean by that is like you have to hit your protein goal first. You got to get 2 servings of vegetables first. You got to get 2 servings of fruit first. Like you have to pay your bills in the same way. If you were doing a financial budget and you wanted to spend money or whatever, you make $5,000 a month and you have, you know, $4,500 in bills. That $4,500 has to get taken care of first and then you have like $500 to, spend on shoes or clothes or massages or whatever you want to do, right? So you have that extra $500, or let's just say 500 calories or whatever the case may be, to put towards— yeah, you can have some gummy worms or some donuts or whatever the case may be, as long as your bills are paid first. This is kind of the same thing when talking about building muscle. Your body has to pay its bills first. When talking about calories, calories are a unit of measurement of energy. Calories are literally energy and fuel for your body. You know, you probably heard the old adage like food is fuel. Yes, like there's more to food than just fuel, but food is fuel from like a, from a scientific, like physiological standpoint. Calories are energy, so food is fuel. So your body says, you know what, I need, like it has so many other things that it has to do before building muscle. There's so many things. It has to take care of your organ function, Has to take care of blood flow throughout your body, has to take care of digestion. Literally so many things. Has to take care of your reproductive system. So many things your body has to do before building muscle. Building muscle is the last thing on the totem pole, the very last thing. And again, your body doesn't want to change. Your body likes homeostasis, which just means you, you're staying the same, right? So in order for you to be able to significantly impact it and optimize your muscle building, You have to say, all right, body, you know what? Here's all the food, all the energy you need to get all of your functions done. That would be your maintenance calories, right? So let's say for example, your maintenance calories are 2,500 calories. You're telling your body, you know what? Here, here's all of your calories you need to pay your bills. You can do your reproductive system, you can do your organ functions, you can recover at night sleeping, you can do digestion, all the things you need to do. Here, but we have these extra calories here for you. I have these extra calories I'm gonna give to you, the extra fuel I'm gonna give to you so you can have fuel to do the muscle building process. Because again, everything in your body requires energy. So if you give your body extra energy, your body's gonna say, all right, this person's putting a stress on me, lifting weights, getting stronger, doing all those things. I need to recover from that stress, but I gotta pay my bills first. It's gonna say, All right, well, I got my reproductive system down. I have energy for digestion. I have energy for walking or whatever the case may be. All right, cool. Like, all right, now I can start this muscle building process. I can build bigger, more muscle fibers, more muscle cells, all of those things because I have this extra fuel laying around. I have this extra fuel this individual is giving me so I can put it towards muscle building now as opposed to if you don't have that, your body's going to say, No, no, no. I got to make sure I take care of all my stuff first. I got to pay all my bills first. I can't go over my budget. There's no more left in the budget, right? If your budget's $5,000 a month and that's how much you make, you ain't going over that, right? Unless you maybe do a credit card, but your body doesn't have a credit card, so you can't go over the budget, right? It's the same thing here. That's why you need extra calories in a calorie surplus in order to optimize lean muscle mass All right, so that's why after you're in that beginner stage, after that stage you need a calorie surplus. Now, how many calories extra do you need on average roughly to maximize lean muscle mass gain and minimize fat gain? Because there's gonna be— there's just gonna be some fat gain that comes along with it. There is things you can do to minimize the fat gain, like, you know, setting up specific macronutrients, which I talk about Yeah. In a separate video. I have a whole separate video on how to gain muscle without gaining fat. So if you want to, again, feel free to check it out after this video. There's certain ways you can set up your macros, foods you can eat, all that kind of stuff. But there's gonna be some fat gain, but your body's gonna say, all right, I know I have enough calories to build this lean muscle mass. And that's how you're gonna optimize your lean muscle mass building, by going into roughly a 300-calorie surplus. So again, let's just say your maintenance calories are 2,500 calories, right? Right? You would eat 300 extra calories from that. So you would eat 2,800 calories because 2,500 plus 300, 2,800 calories. That would be your calorie surplus in order to build lean muscle mass, in order to optimize building lean muscle mass. Because again, unless you give your body enough fuel, enough calories, enough energy to be able to do these processes, you are not going to optimize lean muscle mass because your body's going to say, no. Nope, not doing that because I don't even have enough calories to do what I'm— to maintain what I'm doing right now, let alone build muscle because you want to build muscle. Your body doesn't care you want to build muscle. I wish it did. It'd make my life a lot easier. It doesn't. It doesn't care. So that's why the answer is kind of no if you're not in one of these scenarios. All right? So those are the 2 main biggest things. Hope you understand that thus far. The last thing I want to talk about is body recomp. You've probably heard this phrase. You've probably heard people say, No, you can build muscle, lose fat at the same time. Here's the reality. Can you do it? Yes. You can especially do it if you're one of these scenarios. You'll really optimize it then. But let's just say you're not one of these 2 scenarios and you're more of an advanced trainee. You've been training and following a real program for, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. Can you do it? Yes. Is it going to be the most optimal? No, not at all. It is going to be such a slow process for you. Think like watching grass grow versus watching paint dry. Think those 2 things had a baby. That would be you trying to build muscle at maintenance calories while losing fat at the same time. It's just going to be such a daunting, slow process that you are probably just going to get frustrated and probably quit because the results you're going to see are, are going to be next to none. Like they're going to be minimal, you're not gonna notice much. It's gonna get discouraging. You're gonna feel like you're working so hard but not seeing any progress. It's gonna be so discouraging. So again, my recommendation is, as opposed to— let's just say, for example, you were trying to body recomp for the next year, for the next 12 months, right? And again, you're not one of these 2 scenarios. If you're trying to body recomp, you would be just better off— drop my marker— you would be just better off going into Let's say 8 months of a calorie surplus phase, which by the way, typically speaking, when you go into a calorie surplus phase, you want to go at least 6 months, if not 8 or 9 months. So let's say you go into a calorie surplus for 8 months, build a lot of lean muscle mass, you know, get stronger, do all these things. And then after the 8 months is up, you go into a 4-month calorie deficit because you build, build, build, build, build. You have all this new lean muscle mass you have now built. You've seen a tremendous change in your body with the amount of lean muscle mass you have. And then you can say, all right, I've done all this work to build up this lean muscle mass. Now I'm going to go into a calorie deficit to kind of strip off some of the body fat that I either had or put on during this calorie surplus phase. Because again, you're going to put on some body fat during a calorie surplus phase and that's normal. It's expected and it's okay. It's not the end of the world because you're just going to go into a calorie deficit And then lose that body fat. And what would happen is over the 12 months you would see so much more progress if you did 8 months of a calorie surplus phase and then 4 months of a calorie deficit phase. You would see so much more progress in your body at the end of those 12 months because your side-by-side pictures, whether you did 12 months of a recomp or 12 months of surplus and then deficit, that 8 months surplus, 4 months deficit— what'd I say? 12 months. Yeah. I think I said it right. 8 months surplus, 4 months deficit, your body is gonna look massively different because you've built more lean muscle mass and you've lost more fat. So the end result is going to be better. It's gonna— it's— you're gonna look way different than what you would just 12 months of a body recomp phase. So you would essentially see better results by doing things separately as opposed to trying to do it all together. And a lot of times people try to do it all together in a body recomp phase because they're scared to go into a calorie surplus phase and build muscle because they think they're going to gain too much fat. Again, there's ways you can do this with minimizing fat gain and you should do that because you don't want to gain too much body fat. It's not smart, right? So again, if you want to watch that video I put on my channel, feel free to check it out. But that is what you can and should do as opposed to watching, you know, watching paint dry or watching grass grow. I would just personally, I would just go into an 8-month Build as much muscle mass as you can. Take advantage of it. Have fun eating more food. Have fun building muscle. Have fun getting stronger because like all those things are great. Have fun having more energy. And then once you get 8 months in, you can do your 4-month deficit, lose some body fat, and you'll, you'll see at the end of those 12 months, your body will look massively different. So can you body recomp? Sure. Is it the most optimal way to go about it? Not in my opinion. No. Unless you're one of these 2 scenarios. If you're not one of those 2 scenarios, it's not the most optimal, in my opinion. Now, some people might ask me, well, how do I know if I should go into a calorie surplus phase? Typically speaking, for women, you want to get to anywhere between, call it, 18% to 22% body fat until you— before you go into a calorie surplus phase. For men, you want to get anywhere between, call it, 10% to 15% body fat before you go into a calorie surplus phase because most people Just from a health standpoint, but also like a mental health standpoint. Like most people don't like seeing too much body fat. So if you get down to a lower body fat first and then work your way back up into a deficit, you kind of give yourself some leeway on the way up to be able to kind of like, again, gain some weight and gain some, a little tiny bit. Again, you should not be gaining tons and tons and tons of body fat. Not the way to do it. Gaining tons of, gaining a little bit of body fat along the way, you give yourself a bit more leeway because you already Started from more of a lean standpoint. So that's what I would say. Hope you enjoyed the video today. I feel like it was really informative, so if you did feel that as well, feel free to drop a comment below. I feel like I taught a lot in this video, so hope you enjoyed it. Any questions, feel free to drop them below, and yeah, hope you enjoyed. And again, if you want help on following a real program, I have tons of videos on here. I also have some links down below. Feel free to check those out. I have a membership site where I have tons of workout programs, all those kind of things, so feel free to check that out. And yeah, any questions let me know and we'll chat soon, okay? Thanks, Eric.