Trying to lose weight and gain muscle at the same time

R

redryder

0
Hi all,

I'm 1.8m tall, and currently weight 90kg. I used to do weight training 3 yrs ago, and my weight then was about 80kg. I have since gone on to gain about 10kg of fat due to 3 yrs of sitting on my ass, and I want to lose that fat. So I started going to the gym about 3-5 times a week since October, with 20 minutes of cardio and 40 minutes of weights. I'm starting to see some results in terms of body shape, such as a flatter belly and less flabby arms. But my weight is still 90kg. It actually dropped to 88kg after 3 weeks of the gym but has steadily increased back to 90 kg now.

Basically, I want to get back in shape, and down to 80kg. My exercise regimen doesn't seem to be working, so what do I need to change? Should I do more cardio and less weights? What kind of diet should I take? I've cut down on carbs, but am still eating quite a lot of protein - meat, fish and eggs. I want to lose weight,but build lean muscle at the same time so I'm really quite confused on what diet to adopt.
 
Its hard to lose fat and gain muscle at the sametime. To gain muscle you need a calorie surplus and to lose fat you need a calorie deflict. However, some newbies can do both sometimes on a near to below mainantance level of calories.
 
Newf is right - it's nearly impossible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. I wouldn't worry about your total weight. A more accurate measure of your progress would be to measure your body fat percentage. Did you know you could actually gain weight and actually be leaner and look thinner? The reason is, muscle weighs more than fat so if you put on more muscle (which is a good thing), you will naturally weigh more. However, if you measured your body fat percentage, you'd probably find you are leaner overall (and when you look in the mirror you will look thinner) even though you weigh more. I know it's confusing, but it's true.

Travis Van Slooten
 
If possible try splitting it up so you have dedicated weights on on day and cardio on off days. If not at least seperate them to different parts of the day. Also a lot of people say that at 20 minutes of steady state cardio is where you just start to really burn fat. So if you can go longer, 30-45 mins is good but you can progress up to that.
 
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