Trying to accomplish building muscle while simultaneously losing a considerable amount of body fat, will often leave you frustrated & therefore your results will be sub optimal for both fat loss & muscle gain.
With the exception of absolute beginners, drug assisted individuals, or returning to training after a lay-off, it is more appropriate to focus on one goal at the time.
Realise past the beginner phase, building muscle will almost undoubtedly mean you will gain to some degree of body fat in the process. It's a case of minimising this body fat accumulation while trying to build muscle.
Vice versa, if your goal is fat loss. Depending on how lean you would like to get, there will be some degree of muscle loss. Like bulking, its more of a case of minimising the side effects (in this case muscle loss).
Deciding on whether to bulk or cut can sometimes be a difficult decision because there is usually an emotional attachment to do one or the other. Thus, I have quoted Lyle McDonald's formulas & body fat percentages to help you decide using his numbers, which is the best decision to make.
"If you’re above 15% body fat (about 24-27% for women), diet first. If you can get to the 10-12% (19-24%) body fat range or so, I think you’ll be in an overall better position to gain mass. Trying to get super lean will probably end up screwing you in the long run because your body will be primed to put back fat on (and most other physiological systems are screwed up as well) when you get super lean.
After finishing your diet, regardless of how lean you get, take 2 weeks to eat at roughly maintenance calorie levels before starting your mass gaining phase. The reason has to do with the physiological adaptations to dieting described briefly above. Although you can’t reverse all of them short of getting fat again (or fixing the problem pharmaceutically), 2 weeks at maintenance, which by definition should be higher calories than you were eating on your diet, will help to normalize some of them.
Leptin, thyroid, SNS output should improve a bit, along with other hormones, putting you in a better place to gain mass without super excessive fat gain. Make sure to get at least 100 grams of carbs/day or more during this phase so that thyroid will come back up.
Only try to add mass/bulk until you hit the top end body fat percentage listed in #1 above. So that’s about 15% body fat for men and 24-27% body fat for women. What this would mean in practice is that you diet to 10-12% body fat for men (22-24% for women), eat at maintenance for two weeks to try and normalize things, and then add mass until you hit 15% body fat for men (22-24% for women) and then diet back down.
Over a number of cycles, you should be able to increase your muscle mass while keeping body fat under control."
I know this point came up at the Alan Aragon Conference. However, I agree with Lyle with this point, I see no benefit getting overly fat in a bulking phase.
www.jameslaytonfitness.co.uk
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