When  a personal trainer first asks a new gym attendee what their goals are, they most often hear replies such as: “Build muscle lose fat”,  “build muscle then lose“, “burn fat build muscle”, ”build muscle and burn fat”. So it seems that most people want to build muscle mass and also at the same time decrease their waistline and body fat percentage. In this article I ask is it really possible to achieve this or is it just a myth sold to you by food supplements and slick advertising agencies?

Is it possible to simultaneously to build muscle mass and lose fat?

The short reply is ‘yes’ but not I might add without a lot of difficulty, working out calorie intakes and discipline but it is possible! To build muscle mass you have to eat more calories than you use up throughout each day leaving a decent amount left to build muscle but not so many that they get stored as fat tissue. If you don’t consume excess calories then you you won’t build muscle for sure, with too many extra calories then you may grow some muscle but you will of course add body fat tissue at the same time. The trick is too eat just enough calories to build muscle but not enough so that you put on fat. There are

If you wish to avoid adding fat at the same time as building muscle then you really have to work out your exact calorie requirements and then stick to them. to work out your calorie requirements then use the following simple equation that provides an approximate answer:

Find out your body weight and you percentage body fat e.g. A weight of 200 pounds with 10% body fat.

Workout your body’s lean mass.g. 200 pounds - 10% equals 190.

Take your lean body mass and multiply it by 19 e.g. 190 multiplied by 19 equals = 3610

This is then the amount of calories you approximately need to eat to gain muscle mass provided you are doing effective workouts too. Although this is an approximate figure if you ate 500 or 100 more you would maximize your muscle gains but you would also put on body fat as well. This calculation is approximate as well and it would also be rather difficult to track exactly how many calories you are eating too.

So I am guessing you are not overly excited at the prospect of the above methods, if so what are the alternatives available to you. The second option comes highly recommended and is what most bodybuilders do. First thing you need to do is build muscle then lose weight. This is also known as going through a bulking up phase and then going through a cutting phase. This is a whole lot easier a in this first phase you can simply consume as much high quality food as you like, eat lots and often. Therefore all you need to do really is to take on board more calories than the above total. This phase typically lasts for 3-6 months after this time you should have put on quite few kilos in muscle mass and also probably a few in body fat as well. Now you star eating less food and do more cardio work so that you are burning off each day more calories than you are using.

Maintaining your muscle mass and burning off excess calories will thus be the main focus of the newxt few months. So a year on the results will in deed have built muscle and burnt fat but you will have done so in two very distinct phases. The final outcome is exactly the same however you will have made your way there a good deal easier by using two distinct steps.

So if you do wish to build muscle and burn fat I highly recommend that you build muscle then lose fat in two separate stages. Expert author Tom Venuto has the entire process and more broken down into simple steps for you, read the ‘Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle E-book’ Review here for more information on how to build muscle then lose fat.