Can you really gain muscle and lose fat at the same time?

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Can you really gain muscle and lose fat at the same time?
Gaining muscle or losing fat is always a permanent option faced by many body-oriented fitness groups. To gain muscle, our calorie intake must be in surplus; to lose fat, our calorie intake must be in deficit.
From the simplest energy perspective, gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time seems to be an impossible task. But some people claim that this can be done, especially in natural conditions without the participation of exogenous hormones, and their methods of implementation are not mysterious-the well-known combination of carbon cycle, high protein and strength training.
So, is it possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time? In fact, there are indeed situations in real life where muscle gain and fat loss are carried out at the same time, which are generally divided into the following 5 types.
1. Fitness novices, especially overweight fitness novices with more fat
The first and most important step to lose fat is to put the body in a state of calorie deficiency.
There are many different ways to achieve this, such as eliminating junk food, reducing overall food intake, intermittent fasting, etc.
In short, no matter what kind of diet we use to create a calorie deficit, once we want to lose fat, we must eat less than usual.
When we take in less energy from food than we need for physical activity, we are in a state of “calorie deficit” to maintain normal organ function, blood circulation, break down and synthesize new muscle protein, and all other substances related to maintaining life.
When we don’t have enough calories, the energy the body needs and the energy it gets from food are unbalanced, so it will have to find some new energy sources to restore this balance.
In most cases, this “energy” is a large amount of chemical energy stored in our body – fat.
For overweight fitness novices who have never done any bodybuilding training, this new stimulation of training is easy to make the body react. In layman’s terms, any novice is very easy to gain muscle in the initial stage of fitness.
Researchers at the American Sports Academy found that during a 14-week training program, a group of overweight fitness novices lost more than 16 pounds of fat and gained nearly 10 pounds of muscle.
This is because even if their calorie intake is reduced, the large amount of stored energy in their bodies can still provide energy for muscle growth, especially under the very stressful new physical stimulation of training.
If a person has never been exposed to bodybuilding training in daily life, once he starts to exercise, it will be easy for him to gain muscle while losing fat, but as he starts to become thinner (less fat), this state of muscle gain and fat loss will become more and more difficult.
This is like a bodybuilder who has been training for many years in natural conditions. He has approached or reached the upper limit of his muscle potential in natural conditions. Although he still performs very hard training, his muscle gain will not be as significant as in the first few years of bodybuilding.
More often, the training performed by natural bodybuilding enthusiasts with a long training period is to help him maintain his existing muscle mass. Once their training intensity decreases, the circumference and three-dimensional sense of muscle will also decrease.
2. Athletes who resume training after a long period of suspension
In a research case of natural bodybuilders, researchers followed a 21-year-old male bodybuilder who was preparing for a bodybuilding competition. He reduced his body fat by half in 14 weeks, and his body fat percentage dropped from 14% to 7.2%. However, almost half of his weight came from lean body weight.
Although he did everything within his power to help himself retain muscle, such as eating lots of protein and training regularly, he lost more muscle than he gained.
For any bodybuilder in his situation, the main purpose of strength training during a fat loss period is to retain muscle rather than to gain muscle. As our body structure changes during the fat loss phase, we need to gradually adjust our expectations.
Without the use of any exogenous hormones, it is easier for us to go from “overweight” to “skinny” than from “skinny” to “muscular”.
However, as we train for longer years, no matter how many supplements we take in the future, what complex carbohydrate cycling programs we use, or how many magical training methods are promoted, once we pass the primary stage, muscle growth will slow down and even stop. This is one of the facts that natural bodybuilders must recognize.
Chris Elkins: “I would love to know what my testosterone level is at this time, I know it’s low but I don’t know how low it is… My total testosterone is 43, normal levels are 250-1100, average is about 600, I have never seen a 43 year old in my life. Unfortunately, when body fat reaches the necessary level for competition, your body will shut down or reduce testosterone production because reproductive function is no longer needed during the period equivalent to controlled starvation, libido will no longer exist, mental depression and mood swings become common. As I became thinner and thinner, I could feel this transformation happening in my body. As a natural bodybuilder, we are not allowed to supplement or inject any exogenous hormones, so this happens to most natural bodybuilders. This will push their body to the limit, which is why I warn people not to diet if they are not competing. What is worse than dieting is that some people try to maintain such a low-fat state for a long time… The good news is that I have gained 10 pounds and feel much better. My mood and energy are ten times better. My libido is back. Once I recover, I plan to take hormone tests again in a few months. In the past, I always rebounded quickly, so hopefully this time will be the same…”
Natural bodybuilders who want to achieve a very smooth fat loss usually have a certain amount of muscle loss, because as body fat decreases, the level of testosterone, the most powerful anabolic hormone in the body, will become lower and lower, which fundamentally does not allow individuals to build muscle during fat loss.
But corresponding to this is another interesting phenomenon, that is, these “muscles that once existed” will recover quickly. The term to explain this phenomenon is muscle memory.
3.Combining a high-protein diet with strength training
Protein is important in both muscle gain and fat loss. If we want to lose fat and gain muscle, we also need to eat enough protein. In addition to strength training, getting enough protein in your diet may be the most important thing we can do to gain muscle while losing fat.
Researchers at McMaster University also found this in a 2016 study (the experiment is similar to fitness beginners): they gathered a group of young men and put them on a diet for a month. They only ate 60% of the food they needed to maintain their weight. In addition to dieting, these people also trained hard six days a week, strength training and interval training and various other forms of intense exercise.
Half of them took protein at a standard of about 1 gram per pound of body weight per day, and the other half took only half of that (about 0.5 grams per pound of body weight). The results showed that both groups lost fat. However, only the men on the high-protein diet gained muscle. They gained 2.5 pounds of muscle by the end of the study.
Although the low-protein group did not lose muscle, they also did not gain any muscle, which indirectly shows that it is possible to gain muscle while losing fat, but it is unlikely to gain muscle and lose fat at the same rate. While there are many carbohydrate cycling methods that claim to solve this problem, the available data shows that it is impossible for any natural method to gain a pound of muscle for every pound of fat lost.
The best result most people can hope for is to lose a lot of fat while gaining a small amount of muscle. A more realistic situation is to lose 10 pounds of fat while gaining 1-2 pounds of muscle.
4.Use anabolic steroids
As an essential part of the bodybuilding game, steroids play a vital role in muscle gain and fat loss. Allowing users to lose fat while gaining muscle is just one of its jobs.
Sean Rhoden’s guest performance at the PITTSBURGH professional competition in May (first from left) caused a heated reaction in the American professional bodybuilding circle. The basic view of everyone was that Sean Rhoden did not set a good example for Mr. Olympia and did not promote the sport by example. He made people believe that bodybuilders are just fat guys in the off-season…
Although the Olympia officially banned Sean Rhoden from participating, he still prepared for the competition as in previous years, and showed his unique preparation rhythm in the status updates before the competition: the speed of getting into the state was very fast.
In fact, compared with the muscle gain and fat loss rates listed above under natural conditions, the muscle gain and fat loss rates with the participation of steroids are significantly much greater.
As a mimetic and variant of testosterone, various oral and injectable steroids will push the anabolic environment in the user’s body to a height far beyond the genetic limit.
It will help the body increase protein synthesis, enhance nitrogen retention, promote red blood cell production, increase appetite, grow and preserve lean tissue, and improve nutritional efficiency…
The user will no longer face fat loss and muscle loss or fat loss and muscle preservation during the fat loss diet stage, but a dream-like fat loss and muscle gain.
5.Genetic freaks
All research cases and anecdotal experience show that overweight fitness novices, or athletes who resume training after a few months of suspension, or strength training combined with a high-protein diet, or when using steroids, muscle gain and fat loss will indeed occur at the same time.
However, there is a fifth situation, that is, genetic freaks, such as his food nutrition and body fat during the fat loss period will all flow to muscle energy and growth, or his body’s synthetic hormones will surge abnormally when he is under calorie deficiency…
As for why this is the case, I don’t know, and I don’t understand.

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