Any of you had success losing fat while gaining muscle?

Originally Posted by Maico

Hey everyone,

I just recently I really started to get serious about working out and going to the gym, and I have been going on strong now for 2 months now after joining a new gym, unlike before when I would go every once every couple of days or even weeks, I am now going 6 days a week and doing weight training mostly.

Good for you. Love it, make it a change in your life, and you'll have a good body.

Originally Posted by Maico

I have been keeping a notepad just about a month ago so I can track my progress, and I have seen myself getting stronger from the numbers I'm tracking, and also in size, seeing muscles grow bigger on my body (especially with my pecs, since I didn't have any before, and now I am growing some titties, it's exciting).

That's a good thing. I would suggest you keep your notebook, but also make a digital copy (more about this at the end of this post).

Originally Posted by Maico

Anyway, I used to weigh at my lowest 120 pounds, and then when I started going off and on, I went up to 140 pounds, but maybe that was due to me eating more too, I don't know. Now after working out for a couple of months I am at 165 pounds, and I want to keep gaining more, I don't really have a set target weight, but just so long as I won't be a skinny twig anymore at my height of 5'10" or somewhere around there, I haven't measured lately.

Since you just started weight lifting your probably gained a lot of muscle very rapidly. It's great isn't it? Unfortunately this won't last for too long. Later on it will become harder to gain muscle.

You need to drop some weight now. Your body fat percent is probably getting kinda high, so you'll need to change your diet and how you lift weights (the later will change only slightly).

Originally Posted by Maico

But now I am considering on cutting out my bulking phase and working on cutting, because I have always had a little pot belly, just a little bit, probably from all the visceral fat of my past days of eating piece of shit junk fast food and whatnot, and I have like 2 stretch marks on my belly from probably constantly hunching over a little and not sitting completely straight up, and no one likes a pot belly no matter how small.

As said just above, you need to loose the fat now. It's bad that you got stretch marks. Drop the fat soon and use some well chosen topical treatments on the stretch marks and hope that they will go away. Stretch marks are usually permanent, sometimes if they are red you can get rid of them. As you decided, it's time for a cut.

Originally Posted by Maico

So, have any of you had any success doing something like this? It's like a paradox, because if you want to lose fat, you've got to eat less and burn more calories doing cardio and shit, but when you're bulking up and building muscle, you've got to increase your caloric intake and all that jazz (especially when you're a hard gainer ectomorph body type like I am). I'm not sure if it's going to work, but I want to try it out. And I think it would be better anyway to lose my pot belly and stay toned and then try to gain the muscle, instead of trying to bulk first and cutting down later.

To answer the first question, yes you can do it. I did it. It requires that you eat a perfect diet at maintenance level calories with a very solid exercise routine of both resistance training and cardio.

You don't need this. You need to just loose some fat so that you won't cause yourself problems (including, stretch marks, fat cell production, and overall health).

Originally Posted by Maico

Anyway, my current work out sets are like this:
Monday: Chest, Arms, Abs
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: Shoulders, Back, Abs
Thursday: Chest, Arms
Friday: Legs, Abs
Saturday: Shoulders, Back
Sunday: Rest

Looks like a good split. Your body can probably handle legs 3 times a week, but that's not necessary. The only thing that I would say is that doing chest, arms, and abs on Monday is a lot. I mean, forearms, abs, and triceps will amount to a lot of exercises (You need to get these in). You may want to add some exercises to your abs day for the core, that's personal preference though.

Originally Posted by Maico

Any ideas on where I could throw in cardio to my routine? I was thinking I could do cardio like 30 minutes every day after my weight training sessions (probably the stationary bike or the stair stepper), and that I might have to cut back on the amount of different exercises I am doing during my weight training, since I usually do 6-8 different exercises per set of muscles I'm training. I usually work out anywhere from 1 hour to 2 and a half hours, depending on how long I rest between sets (but I think probably because I do so many different exercises per muscle set), but I think I will try to set my weight lifting to a maximum of 1 hour and then doing the 30 minutes of cardio. I'll have to fine-tune my eating again too, I guess, but I think the biggest factor will be finding the time and right place for cardio, so I don't lose too much muscle while I am trying to burn the fat or get way too exhausted.

Ok, there's a lot here. First off, the idea of doing 30 minutes of cardio after your workouts is pretty good. I would actually recommend 15 minutes of high intensity interval training after your resistance training. Also you can do your cardio in the morning and do your workouts at night (that's best) or the other way around. Your choice. During a cut cardio helps a lot especially if you do it twice a day (this also builds up a lot of endurance).

Next, 6-8 different exercises is a huge amount of exercises. Are you sure you're doing the right amount of weight, reps, and sets, with the right tempo and rest? On the last rep of your last set you should barely be able to complete the rep with keeping proper form(no bouncing around, flying elbows, etc.). For example when I do tricep extensions I do 3 sets of 12 repititions with 30 seconds of rest inbetween. Sometimes I do ok(still getting pretty hard by the end) through to the last rep of the last set, other times I almost fail on the last rep of the last set. I know that this is the right set/rep/rest/tempo because of this. Now with that in mind, you should only really need two or 3 exercises for each muscle. For example, triceps could be tricep extensions and weighted dips. Chest and abs are a little different, chest it's good to do 2/3 or 3/3 of the bench presses (incline, level, and decline) and maybe DB and flys. For abs you can do 2 for upper abs and 2 for lower abs and 1 or 2 for all the abs.

Now for the length of your workouts. If you don't consume anything while working out then keep your workouts to about an hour. After about an hour your body runs low on energy and needs more nutrients. If you want to go longer then consume simple carbs during your workout, or some carbs and protein. This is a huge topic that requires a lot of careful decision making on your part. Read what others say and evaluate it against research and decide what you want to do for "during workout" nutrition.

Originally Posted by Maico

Here's the workout I do for those of you interested, if you have any suggestions on what exercises I should cut out and put in cardio in its place:

Chest: Dumbbell Bench Press, Dumbbell Flyes, Decline Bench Press Machine, Fly Machine

Arms: Dumbbell Concentration Curls, Supinated/Pronated Wrist Curls, Dips Machine, Tricep Rope Pulldowns

Legs: Smith Machine Squats/Power Squat Machine, Seated Calf Raises, Hamstring Curl Machine, Glute Kickbacks, Hip Adductor Machine, Hip Abductor Machine

Shoulders: Dumbbell Shoulder Press, Dumbbell Shrugs, Barbell Vertical Rows, Dumbbell Deltoid Abduction, Shoulder Press Machine, Deltoid Abduction Machine

Back: Lower Back Machine, High Row Machine, Row/Rear Delt Machine, Lat Pulldown Machine

I do 3 sets of each of these exercises and alternate muscle groups per sets of exercises (like if it's Monday, I'll do a chest exercises, followed by an arms exercises, then chest, then arm, so I don't kill myself before finishing my work out), except on the beginning part of my chest and arms exercises I do 4 sets of the DB Bench Press, DB Curls, DB Flyes, and Wrist Curls, because I want to work on those muscles more than the other ones first, since I am a skinny guy, want to beef up my arms, you know.

I'm not a professional at creating workouts. I would suggest you go and use someone else's workout plan. I would just say that yours doesn't exactly look the best.

Now for the biggest piece of help in the world. Use forum.bodybuilding.com/index.php. You will get a ton of help from there. You can ask millions of questions, read millions of threads, and get tons of good workout schedules. Just be weary of bad information, evaluate well. Use their bodyspace for keeping track of stuff online, it's a pretty well done site.

Get big.

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Originally Posted by Maico

Yea, I've been to BodyBuilding.com before, and got a shaker bottle and gym towel from their commercial side, good shit. Yea, there's probably better workout plans out there, and I should be tracking my nutrition better, but I'm just trying to get into the routine of making exercise part of my lifestyle still, so just doing things I like and think are kind of fun. I was thinking I could try doing the cardio after my weight lifting sessions for a week and then the next week trying an alternate plan of doing weight lifting one day and then the next day just cardio and then alternating like that back and forth and see if I like either one of those plans. I'll have to do more reading on that HIIT; first time I've heard of it, and it sounds really good for burning those calories.

Do cardio after your workouts. 3 workouts a week will leave you too few workouts to fit everything in.

HIIT is great, if you do it right it's hard as hell though. You get the same thing accomplished in about 15 minutes that someone else would accomplish in about 45 minutes doing a regular run.

To work out your nutrition will be the hardest thing to do. To start I would just keep track of calories. Use a good online calculator to get your maintenance calories, then take off about 700-900 calories from that. That's the caloric intake you want to head towards. Start from the calories that you currently consume and take off maybe 100 calories every other day till you hit your cutting caloric intake. If you drop down to it immediately it can cause your metabolism to drop as well, and you don't want that. Then start watching the pounds come off. If you loose more than 3 lbs in a week then you need to consume more calories (the equations aren't perfect obviously). Also as an added note, to keep the muscle that you've gained you should consume around 40% of those calories in protein. Also with this high of a protein intake you will need to consume enough calcium, either in a pill or in orange juice and milk or something. Good luck.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I've never used a stationary bike, but on a real bike I can easily do 5.3 miles in 20 minutes (that's my bike ride to school), so it's not very hard to imagine using levels on a stationary bike and getting 10 miles in with 40 minutes.

HIIT is hard. So start around 5 minutes and work your way up to 15 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Will

What's being neglected here is the importance of transition. If you move directly from a serious bulk into a cutting phase you will lose a lot of lean mass in addition to fat. So definitely add in the HIIT and clean up your diet before you even think of cutting. Even for a beginner, 25 lbs in 2 months means you're putting on some fat. A little fat is fine, but you don't want to be putting on more than necessary. See the thing is fat cells can shrink, but the only way to actually get rid of them is surgical removal, so you want to avoid making a bunch of new ones. Personally, I was already overweight when I started, so I'm happy to keep things in the confines of my former fatness. You may want to be a bit more careful (which I think you've realized).

A lot of people swear by the bulk/cut method, and some insist that it's better to gain muscle slowly and consistently while remaining lean. Well, both camps are right, depending on the situation. Let's face it, you're still tiny, and you can still take advantage of beginner gains. You should build a solid base before taking the slow and steady approach. So take the next couple months to slow things down until you feel like you're mostly gaining muscle. Add in a bit of cardio, make sure you're eating every three hours, swap out all carbs for fruits and vegetables and make sure you're getting a good balance of saturated and unsaturated fat. I would recommend you keep bulking until you hit 185. Then you'll want to maintain that mass for a few weeks or even longer. You can think of this as the body recomposition phase, where you can both lose fat and gain muscle while maintaining a constant weight. Just realize that this is far from ideal for either goal, but it's necessary to let your body adjust to your new muscle.

The matter of fat cell production along with stretch marks is why I don't think that he should actually continue to bulk till he hits 185. If anything he should loose some fat quickly then do a clean bulk to avoid the fat cells and stretch marks.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

For a while, I would suggest carefully logging your diet so that you can get used to it. Eventually you'll get a good idea of how many calories you eat with each meal. As far as what to eat I would suggest you go and start reading a whole ton of material. Some topics I see as important (probably missing a lot too)

Protein requirement
Macro nutrient balance
Nutrient timing (how often to eat, pre- and post-workout nutrition)
Carbohydrate release and it's importance in relation to workout
Kinds of fat
Kinds of protein and their uses

I probably missed plenty... but oh well.

Just one note. I found it difficult to consume enough protein through whole foods so I supplement protein with whey protein powder. Also just to be careful I consume vitamin E when I'm not eating fish, multi-vitamin, and amino acids.

Originally Posted by Traumatized Rat

In regards to your question, you have to cycle between fat loss and muscle gain. It is very difficult to do both at once because fat loss is catabolic and muscle gain is anabolic.

It is hard to gain muscle and loose fat at the same time, but it's possible. Since he can still take advantage of newbie gains he probably can.

I was speaking idiomatically.