JJ Virgin explains how to lose fat while building muscle: restrict calories by 25% for five days a week, then eat at maintenance the other two days. This cycling approach, based on Dr. Bill Campbell's research, preserves muscle during weight loss.
Now the next thing is caloric restriction. And in order for you to lose weight— now you can lose body fat and put on muscle and shift some of that without much caloric restriction if you're trying to keep your weight the same. But if you want to drop overall weight, you're going to need to be in caloric restriction. And if you want to lose body fat, it's going to be a little easier to be slightly in caloric restriction, right, while you're putting on muscle. If you want to lose more body fat, you're going to increase the caloric restriction. Now I really like the research that Dr. Bill Campbell's been doing where he's found that if you want to hold on to or build muscle while losing body fat, that you do cycling caloric restriction. What does that mean? That means 5 days a week you are going to do 25% caloric restriction, 2 days a week you're going to eat your maintenance calories.
