People with high body fat percentages or anyone who's been bulking for 12-16 weeks should focus on losing fat before building muscle. People who are skinny fat, new to strength training, or those who want to prioritize their performance in the gym over their appearance should consider bulking before losing weight.
Building muscle should be your main focus as it increases your metabolism and makes losing fat easier. If you want to lose fat first to improve your body composition, you'll need to strength train and up your protein intake to minimize the amount of muscle you lose, too.
Should you bulk or cut first? Generally, it's better to bulk first and then cut if your goal is to build muscle. But, again, it all depends on your goals. Bulking first and then cutting allows you to increase muscle mass and then cut down excess fat or weight you gained during the bulk.
“Gaining muscle while losing fat, also known as body recomposition, is possible,” says Chavez. Resistance training and protein intake are key to successful body recomposition, according to both Chavez and lafelice. Eating a maintenance number of calories or at a slight calorie deficit is also key, says Chavez.
Be prepared to gain some fat as well. It isn't possible to increase muscle mass without also increasing body fat.
You will first lose hard fat that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and then you will start to lose soft fat like waistline and thigh fat. The fat loss from around the organs makes you leaner and stronger.
Gaining muscle and not losing fat often comes down to diet. It's possible that you're eating too much and may need to decrease your calories slightly. You'll also need to analyze your workouts and overall daily activity levels and consider adding in more calorie-burning activities to boost your fat loss efforts.
How Long Does It Take To Burn Fat Into Muscle? Your body does not burn fat into muscle. It can take the energy from fat oxidation and use it to help build muscle tissue. This process can occur in as little as 6 weeks of proper training and dieting.
2. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn when resting. "Having more lean muscle can speed up the fat-loss process, as increased lean muscle increases your resting metabolic rate — so simply put, you are burning more calories in a resting state," Worthington said.
You should bulk first if you are skinny fat. A 10% caloric surplus is optimal to build muscle while ensuring you don't put on a lot of excess body fat. Stay in a surplus for a minimum of 4 months and then begin a slow, gradual cut.
If you are underweight, you should bulk. If you are overweight, you need to cut; however, the less training experience you have, the more likely it is that you will gain muscle simultaneously as you lean out (though you'll lose weight overall).
Despite what many novices (and even some strength coaches believe), lifting heavy is still an essential part to cutting. Lifting heavy, relatively speaking, is ideal for preserving strength and muscle mass during the cutting phase.
Because average weight loss is approximately 1 kilogram per week, you can expect to safely lose 10 kilograms — which, at a conversion rate of 2.2 pounds per kilogram, equals 22 pounds — in about 10 weeks.
Some other signs of fat loss are:
It leads to a slimmer appearance and more muscle definition. Your exercise stamina increases, and you are getting fitter. As a result, your physical activity level shows improvement. You don't feel any energy slump in the afternoon and experience a better mid-day energy level.
As against areas such as legs, face and arms, our stomach and abdominal regions possess beta cells that makes it difficult to reduce the fats easily and lose weight in these areas. However, as per research, belly fat is the most difficult to lose as the fat there is so much harder to break down.
Everyone's body, say experts, follows a fat-storing order. The order is not the same for each individual. Usually, when you lose the fat, it comes off in the opposite order that it was stored. If your body tends to store fat in your face or belly first, these will be the last places where it would shed from.