It’s usually a tough balancing act between losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time. The reason being is the opposite demands these goals impose on our bodies.

To build a lot of new muscle tissue, your body needs energy. In the simplest terms, you’ll need to consume more calories than you’re burning each day. To lose fat, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn.

If you do try to do both things at once, your progress towards either goal will be so frustratingly slow that it won’t be long before you say “screw this” and throw in the towel.

Wouldn’t it me amazing if the energy your body needs to build new muscle tissue came from stored fat? Unfortunately, when your body is in a predominantly catabolic state (which it will need to be if you want to lose fat), gaining muscle is not its main priority.

I’m not going to bore you with the countless studies that illustrate the notion of eating more for building muscle and eating less for fat loss. They’ve been discussed, debated, and written about at great lengths.

What we need to determine is the appropriate course of action for burning fat and then gaining muscle?

Rather than trying to build a lot of muscle and lose a lot of fat at the same time, you’ll get better results by splitting your training goals into several phases, and working on one after the other. Tom Venuto, author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, suggests that you focus on one of two goals:

1. Building muscle while minimizing fat gain

OR

2. Losing fat while preserving muscle.

“It’s far more realistic to expect to lose 10 pounds of fat while gaining a pound or two of muscle, or to gain five pounds of muscle while adding a couple of pounds of fat”, says Venuto. Losing 10 pounds of fat at the same time as replacing it with 10 pounds of muscle is the exception and not the rule.

But how long do I spend on each goal, you ask?

One approach is to track your body fat percentage, states Vince DelMonte, author of No Nonsense Muscle Building. Let’s say that you start out at 10% body fat. In this case, you might decide to bulk up until you reach 12%. Then, you switch gears and enter the fat loss phase of your program until you’re back to 10% again.

If fat loss is a priority, you can take the opposite approach and start by losing fat until you’re down to 7-8% body fat. Then, you change focus and start gaining weight until you’re back to 10% again.

DelMonte suggests a diet providing 20-25 calories per pound of bodyweight during the muscle building phase. You’ll be able to lose weight during the fat loss phase with 9-13 calories per pound of bodyweight.

This type of eating produces a pattern of weight gain and weight loss, with the end result (hopefully) that you’ll end up with more muscle and less fat after going through the phases multiple times.

The big problem with this approach is that most methods available to track body fat and percentage levels are brutally unreliable. I prefer to use a more subjective, but in my opinion a much easier and more motivating way to gauge my progress.

For example: I know that it’s time to start losing fat when my lower abs become hidden under a layer of fat and I can’t see them clearly. Conversely, when I start to feel irritable, tired and de-motivated on a regular basis (which usually happens after an extended period of dieting), and I’m happy with the way I look in the mirror, then I decide to focus on gaining weight and building muscle.

Pretty straight-forward! All you need to do is look in the mirror and you have your answer.

If during the fat loss phase, I need extra help overcoming the hunger pains and the urge to put a buffet restaurant out of order, I’ll look towards high satiety foods to settle the storm.

For more information about what and when to eat for building muscle without getting fat or losing fat without losing muscle, check out our review of Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle Program by Tom Venuto.