Losing Fat While Building Muscle Is A Myth?

Summary

In this video by Renaissance Periodization, Dr. Mike Isrtel delves into the myth of losing fat while gaining muscle simultaneously. He argues that while this concept has some merit, it’s often misunderstood and not sustainable for most individuals. The discussion covers why distinct muscle gain and fat loss phases are more effective for achieving fitness goals, highlighting the conditions under which simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain might be possible, and why they often yield technical (rather than notable) gains.

Highlights

• The idea that you can easily lose fat and gain muscle simultaneously is largely a myth. 🤔
• For most, distinct phases of muscle building and fat loss yield better results. 🚀
• Beginners or those coming back from a training break can achieve both goals for a limited time. 🆕
• Advanced lifters typically see only minor, technical gains if they attempt to recomp. 🔍
• Focusing solely on recomp can lead to slower progress compared to targeted phases. 🐢

Key Takeaways

• Simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain can occur, but it's often not substantial or sustainable for most people. 💪
• A 'phasic' approach of distinct muscle gain and fat loss phases is typically more effective. ⏳
• Newcomers or those returning to training after a break may experience significant gains in both areas initially. 🏋️
• Highly lean individuals will find it tough to recomp effectively due to the body's resistance. 🚫
• Understanding when to switch between muscle gaining and fat loss phases is crucial for significant progress. 🔄

Overview

Dr. Mike Isrtel from Renaissance Periodization is here to debunk a common fitness myth that you can lose fat while gaining muscle at the same time. Although it's a concept many would love to be true, Dr. Mike explains that this idea, while not entirely unfounded, is often misconceived and not usually effective for sustained progress.

He explains that while 'lean gains' and 'recomping' might be feasible in specific situations, such as for beginners or those returning to an exercise routine after a break, they are less effective for advanced athletes. For these individuals, he suggests that more deliberate phases of muscle building or fat loss should be employed for more distinct and noticeable results.

The video emphasizes understanding when to switch between these two phases to maximize results. Proper sequencing and strategic periodization are key to more significant transformation, rather than sticking to a static plan of simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain which could lead to stunted progress.

Losing Fat While Building Muscle Is A Myth? Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hey folks dr mike isrtel here for renaissance periodization nutrition myths number 10 losing fat while gaining muscle oh boy we're going to talk about the claim why it's wrong some silver linings as to how it could be right in some cases and then best practices moving forward here's the claim okay it's kind of a four-part claim with a fifth clarifying part a little bit more of a technical myth here
• 00:30 - 01:00 claim number one is you can readily gain muscle and lose fat at the same time there are ways in which that is true we'll get into it a bit claim number two you can gain tons of muscle with no fat gain at the same time much less true we'll get into that in a little bit number three you don't have to do distinct muscle gain and fat loss phases because you can have it all at the same time in one phase and getting in shape gaining muscle and losing fat isn't a kind of phasic process where you gain some muscle but you also gain some
• 01:00 - 01:30 fat take some steps back and then you lose some fat but you're not gaining a ton of muscle during that time so it's not taking steps back but it's kind of a holding pattern until you lose the fat and then back in it's not this phasic process of trade-offs it's an all into results just a linear process of just get better better better better better lose muscle or lose fat and gain muscle at the same time it just just keeps going right that's the claim a lot of folks would like to believe this and it is in most instances for for most people
• 01:30 - 02:00 who are most interested in it more incorrect than it is correct okay so this is a bit more of a nuanced one where it's not like biohacking or it's just straight up bullshit this has some stuff to it but that's why we're making this video to dig into that stuff and some important terms that we're going to be using later and just important ones for you to be aware of people say lean gains that means essentially gaining mostly or all muscle and no fat and when they say recomping that's when you gain muscle and lose fat
• 02:00 - 02:30 at the same time both of those are sort of the claims here both of them have severe limitations okay severe limitations so here are the reasons this claim the series of claims wrong we don't want to see wrong here but highly highly lacking more wrong than right decent analogy here is if your friend says to you like dude i'm a winner in the casino like that's certainly true some of the time under some circumstances but under the average circumstances in
• 02:30 - 03:00 the average time it's not true it is not a dependable thing to think you're a winner at a casino over the long term will lose all of your money that way just the same way if you think your best efforts are spent in recomping or lean gaining and you never pay attention to intentional massing or fat loss phases you're not getting the most bang for your buck most of the time you're eating less paying for your buck than you could be so you can notably gain lots of muscle and lose lots of fat at the same time in a few circumstances
• 03:00 - 03:30 and here they are one is you're not used to much or any of diet or training structure okay you're a noob or you make your diet and training structure much more intelligent and much more efficacious than it previously was so for example you used to never time your carbohydrates around workouts you start doing that you eat one meal a day now you start eating five you used to train and sort of kind of be hypercaloric um but you know sometimes your calories are really off sometimes not
• 03:30 - 04:00 now in a recomp you uh just nail your calories every single time you're finally eating enough protein stuff like that these big changes that like if you start doing more of them you absolutely can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time for sure right another one is you're coming back to training and die from a long layoff like if you've been you know covered messed you up or something you've been out of dim for three months six months you absolutely when you start lifting weights and eating relatively normally again at hell or just start lifting weights you can gain muscle and lose fat notably like
• 04:00 - 04:30 seriously a lot of impressive results at the same time absolutely true if you're dipping into special sports supplements either for the first time or taking more of them than usual you absolutely can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time professional bodybuilders do it all the time but we're not all special sports supplements so it doesn't exactly apply to most people and here there's a distinction we say notable gains there are two terms here notable gains are like impressive gains that you can reliably put a stamp on and say i'm comfortable
• 04:30 - 05:00 getting these this is a good rate technical gains are what are measured in studies so a lot of people refer to studies but say see recomping is real even in advanced athletes you look at the magnitude of fat loss and muscle gain it's detectable in the study but barely detectable with fine-tuned scientific instruments and a huge sample of people in an individual applying that you would barely notice a thing so you could say look dude i'm recomping and then you do six months of recomping
• 05:00 - 05:30 if you're advanced then you've already been doing all the things right and you can get a dexa or something and it says you like lost one percent fat and gained one percent muscle were you technically successful yes were you notably successful well literally no because nobody can tell you come back to the gym the next day after getting your dexterity fellas you know yeah and they're like what are you doing like just flexing my one percent more muscle should be easy to see with my one percent less fat and they're like
• 05:30 - 06:00 you're an idiot so yeah you did that for six months and that's what happened cool technically you made gains i don't think you're tuning into this channel to make technical gains i think you're tuning in to all these youtube fitness channels to make notable gains that's what you want so when someone tells you recomping works they're probably right it does work but it doesn't work nearly as well in most cases as intentional muscle gain phases and intentional fat loss phases sequence together okay so here's the deal other than this
• 06:00 - 06:30 these three things where you're not used to what your diet training structure if you're coming back to it after a long layoff or you're taking special sports supplements if you're not in one of those groups people can you lose muscle sorry can you lose you can definitely lose muscle and gain fat at the same time can you gain muscle and lose fat at the same time yes but it's painfully slow and often very tough to notice at all and if you are relatively lean it becomes almost impossible except for incredibly rare cases
• 06:30 - 07:00 if your sub 10 fat as a male or sub 18 fat as a female in order to grow muscle under such restricted conditions your body has to burn fat it's gotta be if you're growing muscle but you're not gaining weight because you're recomping you're not in a surplus growing muscle no weight gain you have to burn a concomitant amount of fat for you to have the sheer anabolic drive to gain muscle while at the same time having the catabolic drive to burn fat and resist the catabolic impetus of getting that lean because you guys
• 07:00 - 07:30 know the leaner you get the more your body fights against you the more difficult it makes fat loss and the tougher it makes muscle retention but you're not even trying to retain muscle here you're trying to gain it while you're trying to get even leaner can you imagine someone being at six percent body fat getting down to three percent fat while increasing their muscle three percent that's insane it just doesn't happen under almost any under almost any circumstances so it's just not reliable so if you're already lean recomping is just not a bet at all
• 07:30 - 08:00 okay lean gains maybe but barely recomping is pretty much out of the window if you're already lean and muscular if you're not lean and muscular yeah it has a bit more play but it's still probably not the best option here's the thing what is the alternative distinct muscle gain and fat loss phases are much better if you do one and then you do the other in combination you can get much further sequencing them than just trying to do lean gains or
• 08:00 - 08:30 recomping the entire time why because the most profound thing other than resistance training and eating protein on how much muscle you gain isn't a hypercaloric condition if you eat excess calories by just a little it is unbelievably anabolic and the most profound fat catabolic signal is a caloric deficit if you create a caloric deficit then it's the thing that burns fat it's the most powerful fat burning machine if you're at maintenance you get to use
• 08:30 - 09:00 zero of them you literally throw away your two best weapons not a good idea not a good idea at all you want to use your best weapons at first to gain muscle or to lose fat and then after you switch the script and do it again stupid analogy but if you are trying to speak english and chinese to a group of americans into a group of chinese people none of whom speak the other language
• 09:00 - 09:30 is it a good idea for you to speak in both languages at the same time something will be understood but a lot will be missing why don't you just be like hold up chinese people and you speak to the americans blah blah blah they're like okay you get it and then you speak in chinese the chinese people are like got it best of both worlds not to be mixed there's a lot of other things like that you don't mix you don't mix spaghetti and cake even though they're both good there's a timing there's a sequence element there it's much better to do distinct fat loss phases and distinct muscle gain phases
• 09:30 - 10:00 sequencing them once you get lean you put upon some muscle and some fat once you put on some muscle and some fat you need another fat loss face to get rid of the fat boop so on and so forth then you get big and you get lean that's how pretty much [Music] almost every if not every competitive large bodybuilder has done that's the most muscular lean people in the world do exactly and only that right for good reason because it works trying to look for lean gains where you gain only muscle and no fat severely severely restricting yourself in order to do that or recomping
• 10:00 - 10:30 to the moon is a fool's errand because even if it works marginally your margins could be higher if you did it another way that's like saying to yourself like if i want to visit my friend in a city that's 50 miles away i can take a bicycle because that false no you can probably ride a bicycle for 50 miles if your normal decent shape will be super fucking hard it'll take you forever and you'll be super tired afterwards but you can get there but if you also have a car
• 10:30 - 11:00 why not take the car and someone could say well there's got all these other downsides and for sure it does like you know it's uncomfortable to gain a lot of weight and a little bit of fat sure of course that's the downside but it's just more effective so if you're looking for pure effect the phasic approach is better than trying to lean gains and trying to do recomping all the time however lean gaining and recomping absolutely work well for beginners especially okay and it's often good to just get beginners and do a pretty healthy diet
• 11:00 - 11:30 and regular weight training because you don't want to inundate them with a hypochlorous diet or hypercaloric diet like it's weird to get a healthy diet and start stuffing yourself or healthy diet and get really restrictive you just want beginners to start with like a good healthy muscle building diet plenty of protein plenty of energy regular meals and then teach them how to lift weights and then you just don't even look at their body weight right and they normally just either in a slight surplus light deficit or just on average just keep maintenance level intake and then they build tons of muscle and lose tons of fat for months and months and months
• 11:30 - 12:00 and then once you uh you know they don't need to press these powerful levers but also they can't to some extent or less likely to because it takes a lot of cognitive bandwidth right like it's tough enough to learn how to train and make that a habit it's tough enough to learn how to diet make that happen you don't want to push any other pedals on like force-feeding them or on dieting them too hard you just start them out with the recomposition approach which for them works powerfully enough to be very notable and you can just let them coast
• 12:00 - 12:30 eventually you'll have to take them to the next best thing but they do gain excellent result uh results for months with without a whole lot of effort which is awesome especially for the beginners that can't yet be expected to put out a crazy amount of effort now in the same boat if you're coming back to diet or training either one or both from a long layoff of either one or both like for example if you have been training but your diet's just been total shit and you start eating really well you can also recomp anderling gain no problem
• 12:30 - 13:00 and you just have to be aware enough to realize when the process of recomping has slowed and you don't want to try to get into a situation where you try to boost your recomping abilities again people will say like man i was just eating at maintenance i cleaned up my diet i was training really hard i gained a ton of muscle a ton of strength lost a bunch of fat in the first six months in the last two months it's month eight now it's really like i can't tell if i've gained muscle or lost fat i think i have maybe a little bit
• 13:00 - 13:30 the question to ask then is not okay how do i like relight the fire of recomp that's not the question the question to ask is what should i do next a fat loss phase or a muscle gain phase you guys with me on that like that's the next step for advanced athletes that need the most serious form of intervention so what is the most serious form of dimension what are these best practices if you're a beginner to diet under training just starting and being body weight stable for months is totally fine
• 13:30 - 14:00 getting into the rhythm of eating getting into the rhythm of training you'll get really amazing results for sure it works for these folks and no it's not your fastest fat loss like look if someone is a hollywood star and they come to you and they're like six months to get shredded for this roll you're not going to recomp them that's insane you're going to put them right into a deficit because they said shredded you will lose fat faster at a deficit period there's no way to do it as fast in maintenance as it is in the deficit if they said to you
• 14:00 - 14:30 hey i gotta have this role where i have to be and they're pretty lean to start they say i have to be much bigger uh and more muscular like it's okay if i'm not super lean but i have to be jacked in six months you're not gonna keep them at maintenance that's insane like someone says like hey willem dafoe you got to be jacked and you keep my maintenance for six months like we said jacked he weighs 150 pounds and he's like six months the hell is going on right at least 180 or something you have to introduce a hyper caloric condition you have to eat at a surplus so beginners who start and stay at a body weight level that's the same at
• 14:30 - 15:00 maintenance they don't get their best possible results those would come if they started the fluctuations but the bandwidth thing and it's totally fine it does work really well for them once you've gone either coming back into training or dieting or as a pure beginner of about 6 to 12 months at maintenance calories usually that's when the results start to peter out a little bit now you will still make gains for years in recomp but there's just going to be technical gains and not notable gains they're going to be very very slow and painful
• 15:00 - 15:30 so once you get there you can begin either a fat loss phase or a muscle gain phase based on whichever you want first and we're going to have other videos coming out later about which one you should pick depending on what all these other details but the end of the day it doesn't matter a ton i'll give you the tldr if you're pretty over fat and you don't like how you look because you have too much body fat you just need to cut and that's probably the best thing once you are relatively lean and you're at least comfortable like i'm pretty lean then you can bulk but if you get after
• 15:30 - 16:00 recomping if you're like pretty lean you could just go right into bulk that's the short answer this way by doing the maintenance recomp first and then once that process essentially runs its course as far as having notable yield and switches to just technical yield then you go into intentional massing or cutting or intentional fat loss or muscle gain phase and that way you get excellent results you get the easy gains when you're prying for them you don't have to manipulate your diet like crazy stuff
• 16:00 - 16:30 yourself or starve yourself and you're switching to more effective intentional weight gain or loss when you can't get much out of her comping anymore which is just intelligent right like again the question to ask when recomping doesn't work well for you anymore isn't what can i do to make recomping work better it's what can i do to gain more muscle and lose more fat because that's what you really want and the answer there is probably dedicated phases and it gives you the easy gains but it also prevents you from hitting your head against the lean gains wall for too long too many people get
• 16:30 - 17:00 i don't want to say addicted to get the expectation that their noob recomp is just something that's going to keep happening and they're going to say you know i started at 170 pounds i started lifting weights i got 12 months later i was 170 and i had like abs and my muscles were popping out i just want more of that to keep coming not a good idea it won't and if it hasn't there really are no levers to pull and now at this point you need to either lose fat or gain weight lose fat gain muscle etc they need to be separate phases
• 17:00 - 17:30 that's how you put your best foot forward folks thanks for tuning in give it some thought let me know what you think in the comments below have a good one you