How To Build Muscle And Lose Fat At The Same Time: Step By Step Explained (Body Recomposition)

how can you build muscle and lose fat at the same time a lot of people on the internet think the answer is simple you can't if you want to build muscle you need to do a proper bulk and if you want to lose fat you need to do a proper cut I think this idea has made its way into the mainstream from old a bodybuilding lure where it was thought that you had to be in a massive caloric surplus to build size and then trim down for competition but recent scientific evidence has challenged this idea

for example this 2013 study from Garth and colleagues found that even when they overfed subjects by 600 extra calories per day they actually didn't gain significantly more muscle but did gain over three times the fat mass so nearly all the extra bulk came as fat now I should say I don't actually have anything against cutting and bulking in the right circumstances I think it makes perfect sense and many of you guys know last year I ran a pretty hefty bulk myself that I called it bear mode and I still think that if you want to

gain as much muscle and strength as possible as fast as possible than being in a bigger caloric surplus is the way to go however this quick our muscle gain will come at the expense of more fat gain as well and many people simply don't want that but just accept it as an inevitability but it doesn't have to be that way in fact it's perfectly possible to build muscle without a large surplus or even without any surplus at all because fat tissue and muscle tissue are separate systems and I've broken down the math explaining why this

is possible in another video that I'll link below now many people will get on board with this and say ok building muscle while losing fat is possible but not really practical because it only applies in a handful of more limited and obscure scenarios but I think these scenarios aren't as limited as they seem and I would say body recomposition is a realistic goal not only for some people but nearly all people so let's quickly cover the situations where I think recomposition makes the most sense first of all new lifters newbies can build muscle and lose

fat at the same time quite easily because as a new lifter you're the most primed for muscle growth you'll ever be this means that calories can be pulled from stored body fat to fuel the muscle building process with just basic progressive resistance training and a reasonable diet second because overweight individuals have very large energy reserves stored in body fat they can eat in a caloric deficit and still have plenty of stored energy to fuel the muscle building process thirdly detrained individuals who got Jack before but then stops training due to injury or other commitments are

in a similar camp to the new trainee we're going to the very powerful muscle memory effect they're able to rebuild a lot of muscle very quickly making recomposition common and finally using anabolic steroids allows most people to build a lot of muscle very quickly allowing the body to tap into fat stores to fuel muscle building but at this point I would say even if recomposition were limited to these four groups walk into any commercial gym and most people will fall into one of these four categories for example even if you've been in the gym for

several years you might still fall under the newbie category if you haven't been training nearly hard enough or smart enough over the years I'd also add a fifth category to this list the sub optimized trainee this would include anyone who's been going to the gym for a while they even count themselves as an intermediate or advanced level lifter by training age but deep down hasn't really been putting in their best effort with their training or nutrition and according to my good friend and co-author Chris Barakat he sees recomposition in his lab all the time even

in more advanced trainees so I literally see this every single semester every training study we had we've ever ran I've seen body recomposition occur once you really start paying attention to some of the - some of the details to a higher extent like nutrient timing and really optimizing their macro nutrient intakes we can't see recomposition with some of the best athletes ever this one subject in particular he gained 20 pounds of lean mass in ten weeks and he actually lost like a pound of fat mass at the same time so he was a basketball player

pretty well trained when it comes to resistance training he was able to squat 1.75 times his body weight so he set the criteria for the study and he just blew up he basically came in the lab looking like a normal basketball player and then he looked like Phil Keith [Music] so I think there's really only a tiny subset of the population that recomposition wouldn't be practical for truly advanced trainees already with perfectly optimized training and nutrition who are near their genetics ceiling for muscle growth but in my opinion this is the Obscure scenario and it

only occupies a tiny sliver of the total population looking to improve their physique ok so body recomposition is not only common but practical now how do we do it let's break it down into five simple steps first you need to recognize that raining is the driving force of body recomposition in any scenario can have the most optimal diet in the world eat over 9000 grams of protein per day and you still won't build much new muscle without a progressive training stimulus in the book we use the analogy of a car where we can think of

our training as the engine and our nutrition as the gasoline to fuel performance better the fuel the better the performance however without the engine the car simply won't move regardless of the fuels quality we can also think of sleep and stress management as the oil changes and tire rotations required to keep things moving so when it comes to training you want to focus on progressive overload applying effort and using proper technique and once you have the fundamentals in place fine-tune your volume to fit your advancement level generally speaking 10 to 20 sets per body part

per week is a good ballpark for most people and most muscles next you need to decide on a primary goal even though you may want to do both at the same time it's important to establish which is more important to you for example if you're currently on the leaner side let's say 8 to 12 percent body fat as a male or 18 to 22 percent as a female then your primary goal should probably be to build muscle and if you're not so lean so somewhere between 15 to 20 plus percent as a guy or 25

to 30 plus percent as a girl then maybe your primary goal should be to lose fat once you've decided on your primary goal next you want to Center your caloric intake around maintenance calories the number of calories you need to eat to maintain your weight if your primary goal is to build muscle you should enter a slight chloric surplus adding 5 to 25% to your maintenance intake if your leaner less advanced and more genetically gifted for building muscle you can get away with a bigger surplus if your primary goal is to lose fat you should

enter a slight caloric deficit slashing 10 to 20% off your maintenance intake the more fat you have to lose the bigger the deficit should be and in the book we outline other considerations such as if your detrained highly-advanced skinny fat or significantly overweight next you need to set up your macronutrient targets starting with protein the most important macro for recomposition in the book we recommend a sliding model for protein intake based on lean body mass wear the leaner you are the closer you should be to 1.6 grams per pound of lean body mass and the

more body fat you have the closer you should be to one point two grams per pound lean body mass using myself as an example I currently weigh a hundred and sixty-five pounds at about ten percent body fat using our sliding model since I'm quite lean I should be more toward the high end of intake I'll pick 1.5 multiplying it out that would give me a daily protein intake of two hundred and twenty two point eight grams per day so I can round that up to two hundred and twenty-five which is what I'm eating at the

moment and my last full day of eating video I explained the benefits of going higher on protein than might be required just to build muscle so even though you could probably get away with less I think eating a higher intake is both safe and advised for those looking for recon from here you want to determine your fat and carbon take personally I set my fat intake at a minimum of twenty percent of caloric intake and then fill in the rest with carbs ok the fifth and final step to achieving paneer II composition is to pay

attention to the details like I mentioned earlier this step might not be required for beginners they can get recom Phi's following the first four steps but as you get more advanced we comp gets more difficult so it's more important to optimize your approach we spend a lot of time in the book laying out these optimization strategies I'm gonna focus on a few of them here the first is to sleep more I think sleep might be the single most underrated factor when it comes to transforming your physique just consider this 2018 study from wining colleagues they

split 36 subjects up into two groups that both entered a caloric deficit except one group slept one hour less five nights per week they were also allowed to sleep one hour extra on the weekends to catch up as it turns out after eight weeks of dieting weight loss was the same in both groups but the group that slept well lost 83 percent of their weight from fat whereas the sleep restricted group lost 85% of their weight as lean mass that is crazy now it's worth mentioning that these subjects weren't weight training so lifting probably would

have flattened out the results a bit but I don't think it would have been enough to offset that enormous difference that sleep made the next area we can look to optimize our approach is through parry workout nutrition or the timing of nutrients around the workout now I already discussed some of the misconceptions around this topic and my latest full day of eating video so I'll just link that video down below we can also turn to supplements to optimize but it's worth noting that there aren't any recon supplements that just cause recomposition on their own however

there are a few worth mentioning that can help in the book we organize our supplements list in two tiers at the top of the list in tier one we have protein powder creatine and caffeine protein powder is especially important for vegan lifters and I recommend so-called vegan way a blend of rice and pea protein that offers a full spectrum of amino acids and has a high leucine content whey protein can be used at any time of day to help make meeting total daily protein goals easier in consuming a casein source before bed might have merit

as well creatine is by far the most well studied supplement on the market and given how cheap it is and how low its risk of side effects are it's a pretty obvious choice to supplement 3 to 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day and I'll link my creatine science explained video down below if you'd like more info on that caffeine rounds out tier one of our supplements shortlist for increasing strength prolonging time to fatigue increasing acute fat oxidation and more however unlike creatine caffeine is susceptible to tolerance so it might be smart to reserve it

for your heaviest our most demanding training sessions are periodically cycle off it to resent eyes yourself to the effects and of course we dive into many other optimization strategies across the 15 chapters in the new nutrition guide including sample meal plans pre and post-workout meal examples more supplements cardio strategies and a lot more so if you guys are looking to take your nutrition up a notch you can save 25% off the ultimate guide to body recomposition at the first link in the description box below for the launch or you can head over to Geoff nipper

calm go to the nutrition plans tab and you can find it over there and after launch week so next weekend it'll be going up to full price so the manual has over a hundred and forty scientific references an exact step-by-step guide for setting up your calories and macros a list of foods to focus on and even a full chapter on training for recon it also include customer service so if you guys have any issues there's a support email that you guys can contact so hit up the link over here next to my head if you

guys are interested in checking it out don't forget to leave me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video or if you found it helpful subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you guys all here in the next one