Weight Lifting and Calorie Defecit - Advice Needed

[Davey_Sprockett]

Basically, last year I made some decent muscle gains but also retained a hell of a lot of fat, I thought that i'd be able to shed the pounds while simultaneously bulking up. Now i've realised the error of my ways, i've decided to go down the low calorie diet and lose fat route exclusively. Is there any way of doing this while losing as little muscle as possible?

Would carrying on my weights routine, while stepping up my cardio and reducing calories allow me to retain muscle mass?

I'm looking at stripping down about 25lbs of fat before embarking on a properly planned out bulking up cycle, and the timeframe i've given myself is early march. Is this goal realistic?

All advice will be massively appreciated!!!

 

[Jeanette401]

Hmm, basically two months to lose 25lbs? Whether or not it's realistic probably depends on how much you weigh now. It might be a bit of a stretch.

The main factors in terms of retaining muscle is enough protein (normally 1g to 1.5g of protein per pound of lean body mass is considered the minimum) and doing weight training, hitting all of your body parts at least once every five days.

To do what you're talking about, there a few options. One - cut calories a lot, and do weight lifting twice a week. Do bare minimum on the weights, because your body won't like being in a big deficit and sometimes doing too much exercise while dieting heavily can be counter productive. Also get plenty of protein to fuel the muscles. Two - cut calories moderately, do a minimum of 2 days a week weight training and up cardio to give you the deficit you need to hit your goal. 25 lbs in ~9 weeks means 2.7lbs a week, or a deficit of around 1400 calories a day. That may or may not be possible given your current weight.

Hope this helps!

 

[Aaronxy]

Weight Lifting and muscle building is quite a tough task as it results in lot of loss of calories.Actually you need to maintain a balance in your diet that will result in low calories lost especially the protein count.

 

[Scott_Jones]

I would do two things. Focus your strength training on compound exercises in supersets. Second, structure your cardio sessions into intervals.