How To Lose Weight And Build Muscle In The Gym

Fat-loss and muscle-building are sort of like the chicken and the egg of healthy body recomposition. When you shed pounds and lose fat (especially around your belly), you speed up your metabolism and have the energy to take on harder workouts and, in turn, build muscle. However, muscle-building can also support fat-loss since muscle is highly metabolically-active tissue. That means the more muscle you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate (BMR), or the number of calories your body burns at rest, explains Ben Tzeel, a registered dietitian and certified strength and conditioning specialist. Up your muscle mass, and you can also lose more fat.

Naturally, this leads to a difficult question. Which should you focus on first: slimming down or building muscle? Experts take sides in the great fat-loss versus muscle-building debate and share what you should do first, no matter your goal.

Not only will you see weight loss sooner than muscle growth, but you’ll also experience benefits like improved mood and better sleep. When you focus on building muscle first, you might

Top Questions And Answers On Losing Weight & Building Muscle

When you get lean, you improve your body’s hormonal balance and pave the way for optimized muscle-building with better insulin sensitivity (the way your body responds to and processes blood sugar).

Building muscle should be your main focus as it increases your metabolism and makes losing fat easier. If you want to lose fat first to improve your body composition, you’ll need to strength train and up your protein intake to minimize the amount of muscle you lose, too.

Losing fat and building muscle aren’t mutually exclusive, and both are important for lasting weight loss and lifelong health and fitness. With a balanced workout and nutrition plan, you can accomplish both goals simultaneously.

Yes, You Can Lose Weight And Gain Lean Muscle At The Same Time With This Strategy

It depends on your body fat percentage (which most gym trainers will measure for free). If you’re living with obesity (over 25% body fat for a man or more than 32% body fat for a woman), aim to lose fat first. The higher your body fat percentage, the harder it is to gain muscle while minimizing fat gain. If you have a lower body fat percentage and don’t need to lose as much fat, your body is more supportive of building muscle first.

There are numerous benefits to fat-loss including improved sleep and mood, improved cholesterol and blood sugar levels, reduced blood pressure, decreased risk of heart disease, diabetes, certain types of cancer and early death. Fat-loss also boosts energy.

You can see results from fat-loss significantly faster than muscle gain, which tends to be a longer process. When you lose fat first, you reveal the musculature you have underneath, which you can then refine and sculpt. While it’s true increasing muscle mass can potentially help you burn more calories by increasing your metabolism, that requires a considerable gain in muscle mass which takes time.

Experts Debate: Should You Lose Fat Or Build Muscle First?

Increased muscle mass speeds up your metabolism, especially the amount of calories you burn at rest (considering we burn anywhere from 60–75% of our daily calories at rest, this can be a big boost for fat-loss).

Eating and exercising to build muscle with a high-protein diet helps you slim down as well. For example, a study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on people who lifted weights, did high-intensity exercises, and had a calorie deficit, found those who ate more protein lost 27% more fat and gained eight times as much lean muscle mass.

Along with an improved metabolism, there are numerous benefits to muscle-building: You can improve your cardiovascular and joint health, decrease your risk of diabetes and certain types of cancer, improve your mental health, and build strength and support bone health, which decreases your risk of osteoporosis and falls.

Build Muscle Lose Fat Guide

Whether you choose to lose fat or gain muscle first depends on your personal health profile and fitness goals. A registered dietitian or certified personal trainer can help you choose the best route for you, says Wilson.

To support fat-loss efforts, use an app like MyFitnessPal to set a daily calorie goal for a slow-and-steady weight-loss plan. “Make sure you’re including at least 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight (or 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram) to ensure you’re losing primarily fat, not hard-earned muscle and find an accountability buddy to help you stay on track, ” says Tzeel. For optimal results, add workouts you enjoy to your life, ideally including a variety of cardio exercises like a HIIT workout,  interval workout and long walk or run plus 2–3 days of strength training each week to preserve muscle mass, suggests Wilson.

If you’re looking to build lean muscle first, a similar program will do the trick — higher weight, lower repetition strength-training makes your muscles stronger while aerobic endurance exercises like running, cycling or walking uphill increases your resilience, says Buckingham. Make sure to fill up on high-quality proteins like seafood, chicken, turkey, beans, lentils and tofu and spread your protein intake throughout the day with at least 20 grams of protein per meal to encourage muscle growth, says Wilson.

How Much Protein Do I Need To Build Muscle?

All in all, losing fat and adding muscle have a lot in common when it comes to the process, says Woodward. For both, you need to eat properly,  move your body regularly,  set goals,  manage stress and ensure you’re getting enough restorative sleep.

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Lauren Krouse Lauren Krouse is a freelance writer who covers health, domestic violence, and self-advocacy. Her work appears in Women’s Health, Men’s Health, Prevention, Self, HuffPost, and elsewhere. When she’s not writing, you can find her trying to meditate more, weightlifting, or walking in the woods with her partner and black lab.I want to lose fat, but I also want to build muscle. How should I eat and work out to achieve both goals at the same time?

Weight Loss: Lose Belly Fat, Gain Muscle And Achieve A Six Pack In Just Eight Weeks

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I'm not hugely overweight or unfit, but I'd really like to get in better shape. I want to lose fat and build muscle, but I'm confused about whether I can do both at once. Should I focus on one goal first and then switch to the other? I'm eating a balanced diet and have seemingly been consuming maintenance calories for a while, as my body and weight haven't changed. Training-wise, I like working out and do a bit of light weight training, classes like HIIT and Pilates, and sometimes go for a run. What do I need to do to start seeing change in both areas at the same time?

There's a lot of conflicting advice out there, but you'll be pleased to know I've spoken with three experts in the area to find out the truth.

How To Lose Weight & Build Muscles Like This Guy Who Followed An Easy Yet Quantifiable Regime To Get Ripped

People often talk about wanting to lose weight, but in most cases that's not really what they mean. They usually want to lose fat.

If you lose weight, you're losing both fat and muscle, so though your body may get smaller, your shape won't really change. This means you won't reveal the athletic toned physique many people desire.

That, my friend, comes from having muscle definition, and it's why you don't want to chase weight loss but rather shift your goal to be about fat loss.

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The general rule is that losing fat requires a calorie deficit and building muscle requires a calorie surplus, which would make it seem like these two goals are incompatible. But it's not necessarily the case.

Although many people claim that you cannot do it, it is indeed possible to build muscle and lose body fat simultaneously. This process is often referred to as 'recomping, ' Ben Carpenter, a qualified master personal trainer and strength-and-conditioning specialist, told .

Part of the confusion is that people understand you need a surplus of calories to gain weight and a calorie deficit to lose weight, so these two concepts sound completely opposing, he said. However, this refers to total body weight as one. You can lose body fat and gain lean body mass at the same time.

How To Lose Weight And Gain Muscle

Carpenter cited a study that found that men eating in a 40% energy deficit for four weeks while resistance training, doing high-intensity interval training, and consuming a high-protein diet were able to increase their lean body mass.

A second study found that women who did resistance training and ate a high-protein diet simultaneously lost fat and built muscle. (We'll come back to the importance of these things.)

Knowing how much to eat depends on your body-fat levels. If you don't have much fat to lose, Carpenter suggests continuing maintenance-calorie consumption.

How Can I Build Muscle & Lose Fat At The Same Time? Easy, Use These 6 Tips

If you have more fat to lose, going into a slight calorie deficit might help you achieve your goals, the important word here being slight.

If you drop your calories too low, it'll be a lot harder to hold on to your muscle, let alone build it.

You're likely to lose muscle tissue, feel run down, and potentially fall off the bandwagon, Emily Servante,

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