You can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time if you manage three things: patience with slower visual changes, enough protein to build muscle, and a resistance-focused training program. Gaining lean mass boosts your resting metabolism, which helps burn more fat.
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Hey guys, what's up? And welcome to this evening's Q&A. So tonight's question comes in from Jonathan, and his question is, is it possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time? Now, this question generally comes up because we tend to hear, oh well, you want to lose weight first and then build muscle, or you want to build muscle first and then do a cut. In order to then reveal that muscle you've built. So people are normally in either a bulking phase or— and sorry, a bulking phase or a cutting phase. Now, that's the way it's generally done because it tends to be easier for our mind to focus on one specific target. Plus, with that as well, we tend to see some of the changes that we want slightly quicker because we're focusing on one thing, and I can just monitor and track that one thing. So I want to lose weight so I can just track my weight. Oh, is my weight coming down? And so on. Yes, it is. No, it's not. Same with the muscle thing. When we're trying to do both at the same time, which yes, you can do, by the way. So simple answer is yes. But when trying to do both, there are a few things that we need to be conscious of in order to make sure that we are losing the correct amount of weight or sorry, the correct type of weight, as in body fat. We don't want to lose lean mass and muscle density, bone density, things like that when we're trying to, to do it in this fashion. And of course, we don't want to necessarily eat at an excess that's going to prevent the fat loss or the weight loss that we want, because then obviously we're going to end up in what we would call a bulking phase where we're gaining muscle but not affecting our body fat, um, amount and so on. So if we're looking to burn fat and build muscle, the 3 things that we need to be conscious of are: the first one is patience. So I call this the 3 Ps. Now, patience is the first one. The reason being is what you will likely find is that your visible results when you're looking at yourself in the mirror may not come as quickly. You know, if you were just going down the weight loss route, you would probably see the weight coming off pretty quick because that's the one thing you're focusing on. Or if you do the muscle thing and you're just trying to gain muscle, then you can track your weight and so on, and, oh, I'm gaining this muscle because we can be in a in a good calorie surplus and so on. So it makes it easier to do. Now, when we're doing the two together, often we don't see the scale weight shift so much. We do see changes in body composition, but if you don't have a way to track that, sometimes it's hard to just tell by looking at you until you get a few months in. So obviously you'll see changes within weeks and so on, possibly even the first couple of weeks, but they're going to be a bit more subtle and not necessarily as rapid as they would be if you— as if you were just focusing on one or the other. So patience is number one. That's the first thing. The second thing is protein. Now, you guys have probably heard me speak about protein before. I talk about it all the time. It is of most importance when it comes to our food and nutrition, regardless of whether we're building muscle, losing fat, trying to do both together, doing rehabilitation, just trying to stay healthy. Doesn't matter what, protein is king, and it's the first thing that we need to get right in our meals. Now, no different here. Trying to burn fat and build muscle at the same time, again, we want to make sure that protein quantity is adequate for maintaining our lean mass whilst we're trying to burn off some fat and so on, but also providing the raw resources that we need to obviously build new muscle tissue and so on. So that is the second P. So we've got patience and we've got protein. Now the third P is performance. Now what I mean by this is we chase performance. So we're going to be constantly trying to improve what we're doing in the gym. And the majority of what we are doing in the gym will be resistance-based. Yes, we can have some conditioning. Yes, we can have cardio and all that in there too. But we want it based around a good strength training program or resistance-based program that's going to enable us to stimulate the muscle adequately enough for our body to kind of go, holy fuck, that was challenging. I need to build more muscle. I need to maintain as much muscle as possible. And that's the, the best way for you to make sure that yes, you're going to build muscle, but also going to be keeping your calorie expenditure high enough that you're also going to be burning off fat at the same time, which will happen of course as a natural, a natural byproduct of the shifts that you'll get in your, in your nervous system and in your body's physiology and your metabolism and so on. So as you gain more and more lean mass, that's going to naturally take up your metabolism or increase your metabolism so that you'll be burning more calories at rest, in, in essence, burning more fat without doing more work and so on. So yes, it can be done, um, but you do have to be more patient, focus on protein, and focus on performance. So those would be my 3 key tips on that one. Of course, if you want me to dig into this any deeper, anybody that's watching, let me know in the comments below. and if not, that should be enough to get you going and start getting you some awesome results. Thanks for watching, people, as always, and I look forward to seeing you all in my next video. Take it easy, people, and I shall chat to you soon.
