Whether you’re just starting out in the gym or you’ve been lifting weights for years, it can be tempting to lose sight of your ultimate goal: a leaner, stronger body. When you first begin lifting weights, you are bound to gain muscle and increase your overall strength.
But if that isn’t balanced with an effective fat-loss plan, your results will diminish over time and soon you’ll find yourself looking more like the hulk than Mr. Olympia—not exactly what you set out to achieve!
Whether you’re trying to bulk up or simply tone up, you don’t want to find yourself gaining fat at the same time as muscle mass. However, this can happen if you don’t include the right types of food in your diet and train using the right exercises. To gain muscle without losing fat, try these tips on maximizing your results.
Strength training: Gaining Muscle But Not Losing Fat
Training to increase your body’s muscular strength is an excellent way to gain muscle but not lose fat. A short strength-training session of 10-20 minutes twice a week is ideal, with a lighter weight and higher repetitions than you’d use for more traditional resistance training.
It can help improve metabolic health and keep you at an optimal weight, too—great news whether you want to bulk up or simply lose fat without sacrificing lean muscle mass. To make sure you’re doing it right, try these tips from Men’s Health fitness advisor Sean Hyson, C.S.C.S., owner of NYC’s BodySpace gym:
Do compound exercises that work multiple muscles at once, he says. These types of exercises tend to burn more calories during and after workouts. Good examples include squats, bench presses, pushups, pullups, and dips (see below).
Hyson also recommends incorporating planks into your routine two days a week as they are one of his favorite core exercises because they require no equipment and force you to focus on form rather than how much weight you’re lifting. You’ll get better results in less time, he adds.
The key is to do them correctly: Start by lying face down, then raise yourself onto your forearms so that only your toes and forearms touch the floor. Keep your back straight, your abs tight, and your glutes squeezed. Hold for 30 seconds, then rest for 30 seconds before repeating three times.
It’s important to realize that everyone will respond differently to different workout routines, says Hyson. Don’t be afraid to experiment. The key is consistency – if you stick with it long enough, you’ll eventually find something that works best for you.
Eat what you want
Despite what you’ve heard, you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. A recent study published in The Journal of Obesity found that men who followed a weight-gain diet for 10 weeks actually gained muscle while also losing fat.
It wasn’t just a fluke—the researchers also did another six-month trial with 100 obese men and found they all increased their lean mass by approximately 3 pounds after following a similar plan. When it comes to building muscle, shoot for about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day (about 175 grams for most adult men).
If you want to avoid gaining fats, be sure your calories are high enough so that you’re gaining about one pound per week on average. Check out more info on diets and fitness plans here. Include these exercises in your workout routine: You don’t need to do full-body workouts every single day if you’re trying to build muscle; you’ll overtrain quickly.
Instead, concentrate on two or three areas of your body per session, such as the chest and triceps or back and biceps. Then, alternate between different types of exercise: Bench presses are great for chest muscles, but other exercises like pull-ups will help increase overall strength. Incorporate weights into your routine to maximize results:
According to research from Ohio State University, training with weights is superior when it comes to gaining muscle to doing resistance training alone. Why? With weight training, you get stronger and better able to recruit your muscles—which means better gains down the road.
That’s why using weights when lifting is recommended. Take a multivitamin: If you’re trying to gain muscle but not lose fat, adding vitamins may help keep gains leaner too! In fact, a review of studies published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism found that taking multivitamins could help prevent some unwanted fat gain during periods of rapid growth. Just make sure to take them daily so you reap their benefits.
Also Read: The Most Effective Guide to Gaining Weight Fast
Getting enough sleep
Sleep is not something you can make up for on weekends or skimp on if you’re feeling tired during the week. Rather, it’s a physiological necessity, just like eating and breathing. Without it, your body actually begins breaking down muscle tissue in order to stay alive.
To gain muscle but not lose fat, incorporate seven to nine hours of sleep into your schedule every night; never compromise sleep if you have other things going on in your life—it’s that important. If you find yourself short on time, plan ahead by making sure you get to bed early enough so that you wake up with plenty of time to get ready and eat breakfast before heading out.
If possible, avoid napping during the day as well—you’ll only end up waking up groggy and more tired than when you fell asleep. Remember, getting enough sleep will help you reach your fitness goals faster!
Track your nutrition
Tracking your calories and macros is one of the best ways to make sure you’re gaining muscle and losing fat. Even if you don’t want to track your diet, it can be useful just for getting a good idea of what a balanced meal looks like.
Apps like MyFitnessPal are great for this because they allow you to easily log meals quickly; these tools will allow you to see where your calorie intake is and if it’s low enough to put you in a deficit. The other benefit of tracking is that it becomes much easier to hit specific macro goals, meaning that you’ll know exactly how many grams of protein, carbs, or fats you should aim for at each meal.
This is especially important when trying to gain weight—if you’re not hitting your targets, then you’re either eating too little (and therefore losing weight) or too much (and therefore not gaining). If you’re trying to lose weight, on the other hand, it’s important to eat fewer calories than your body burns every day.
This means counting everything—meals out with friends and drinks with coworkers count as well as food is eaten at home. Failing to do so could lead to unintentional overconsumption of calories, which could mean missing out on potential fat loss! There are several smartphone apps available that can help you track your nutrition.
I recommend Lose It!, but there are also some options available for Android users such as My Diet Coach Pro and Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by MyNetDiary.
Consistency is key
So, how do you gain muscle but not lose fat? Consistency is key. If you can stick with a workout routine long enough, and eat at a deficit long enough (ideally by creating an energy gap of 10-15%), then your body will adapt accordingly.
If your goal is more muscular gains, lift heavier weights and do more reps per set while maintaining adequate protein intake and consuming an appropriate amount of calories. If your goal is lean mass gains, start pushing yourself harder in each workout session by adding intensity techniques such as supersets or drop sets, raising weights/reps slightly, and increasing protein intake while maintaining adequate calories.
Whatever route you take, consistency is crucial for success. The most important factor for gaining muscle is progressive overload—which means that if you’re lifting something heavy one day, it’s imperative that you try to lift something even heavier next time.
Also Read: The Effective Best Time to Workout for Weight Gain
And if you’re lifting something light one day, it’s critical that you try to lift something even lighter next time. In order for your muscles to grow larger and stronger over time, they need a reason to grow larger and stronger—and that reason comes from progressively challenging them through hard work!
It’s all about balance: There are many different ways for people to try to build muscle but avoid losing fat at the same time. You can lift heavy weights and do fewer reps per set, or you can lift lighter weights and do more reps per set. You can consume lots of protein, or you can consume less protein. And so on and so forth.
Don’t be afraid of cardio
In most cases, even while trying to gain muscle, a person should also focus on cardio workouts. The reason is that excessive fat will be used up during exercise and could slow down muscle growth. However, there are ways for people who want to gain muscle but not lose fat by doing cardio in their own way.
For example, adding sprints to your workout can help you burn more fats than your ordinary jogging or walking; however, it won’t make you lose muscle mass as long as you do it frequently so that your body will have time for regrowth.
It is advisable to do it every other day so that your muscles would have enough time to recover. It would be better if you add some weight training in between each set of sprinting sessions because it would enable your body to build muscles and reduce fat at the same time.
You can also try to do high-intensity interval training (HIIT) which is an excellent way to maximize your workout routine in less time. HIIT involves short bursts of high-intensity exercises followed by low-intensity recovery periods; it allows you to work out longer and harder than with steady-state cardio, which means more calories burned overall.
You can perform HIIT on almost any piece of equipment like stationary bikes, elliptical trainers, treadmills, stair climbers or rowers. When performing HIIT workouts, it is important that you allow yourself adequate rest between intervals so that your heart rate has a chance to return to normal levels before starting another burst of activity.
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