Ever feel like you're caught in a tug-of-war between burning fat and building muscle? Well, you're not alone. Join me, Rob Maxwell, as we navigate the tricky waters of achieving a leaner, stronger you without succumbing to the siren call of extreme diets or the myths of the fitness world. With a methodical glance at the science of caloric balance, I reveal how the seemingly contradictory goals of muscle gain and fat loss might not be as mutually exclusive as one might think. No more sacrificing muscle to shed pounds or piling on the fat for the sake of gains; this episode promises strategies that embrace the nuance of body transformation.
As your expert guide through the labyrinth of nutrition, I also serve up a hearty portion of wisdom on fueling your strength training effectively. Say goodbye to guesswork and hello to a targeted approach in consuming complex carbs and lean proteins, striking just the right balance to maximize every rep and every calorie. Pull up a chair and prepare for an enlightening session that arms you with the knowledge to sculpt your physique with the deftness of a master, ensuring your journey towards a stronger, leaner body is as efficient as it is rewarding. No guests, no distractions—just pure, unadulterated fitness truth.
Ever feel like you're caught in a tug-of-war between burning fat and building muscle? Well, you're not alone. Join me, Rob Maxwell, as we navigate the tricky waters of achieving a leaner, stronger you without succumbing to the siren call of extreme diets or the myths of the fitness world. With a methodical glance at the science of caloric balance, I reveal how the seemingly contradictory goals of muscle gain and fat loss might not be as mutually exclusive as one might think. No more sacrificing muscle to shed pounds or piling on the fat for the sake of gains; this episode promises strategies that embrace the nuance of body transformation.
As your expert guide through the labyrinth of nutrition, I also serve up a hearty portion of wisdom on fueling your strength training effectively. Say goodbye to guesswork and hello to a targeted approach in consuming complex carbs and lean proteins, striking just the right balance to maximize every rep and every calorie. Pull up a chair and prepare for an enlightening session that arms you with the knowledge to sculpt your physique with the deftness of a master, ensuring your journey towards a stronger, leaner body is as efficient as it is rewarding. No guests, no distractions—just pure, unadulterated fitness truth.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to. There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell. I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I'm the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. That is a long time.
Speaker 1:
The purpose of this podcast is to give you the science behind things. Hence the name, the Method to the Madness, because you know what there really is one. Today we're going to talk about a great question I got from somebody. She asked how do you cut and gain muscle? So, in other words, how do we lose body fat and gain some muscle? Now, for those that aren't like totally interested in this, like maybe you think it's a physique competition question or bodybuilding question and in a way it is it is still extremely applicable to every one of us that wants to get stronger and lose body fat at the same time. It can be done. But guess what? There is a method to the madness, all right.
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 1:
So let's talk about this. How do we cut and gain muscle? So first you need to know that it can be done. It's a very delicate balance because on one hand, you're saying how do I grow, and on the other hand, you're saying how do I shrink? So how do you do that when everything comes back to energy, and everything does come back to energy. Regarding body composition, for example, to gain one pound, you have to consume 3,500 calories, which are energy units, above what you need. To lose one pound, you have to have a deficit of 3,500 calories over what you need. Over the course of time, that deficit could be a day, and that's a really hardcore deficit. If you're eating 3,500 calories less than what you need, you're almost starving yourself by doing that. Or it can be over the course of a week, where you lose or gain a pound a week. So the time frame doesn't matter as much as the fact itself.
Speaker 1:
Regarding calories in and calories out. So if we want to cut, I mean, then we got to cut calories. So how do we do that? And if we want to gain gain, well, then we have to increase calories so we can gain muscle. And before I go like further into that, I really need you to let that sink in, because we hear a lot You've heard me go on my rants, if you've listened to this podcast before about kind of screaming at people who say things like well, I don't want to get bulky, I don't want to gain muscle.
Speaker 1:
You know we hear that sometimes. You maybe have said it before. So you have to understand that to gain any kind of weight, whether it be muscle or fat, you have to have a caloric surplus. So if you're working out and you're still gaining weight and you're not happy that, the fact that the weight is muscle which is obviously a good thing by most accounts that means you're eating too much. In other words, we don't gain muscle without a caloric surplus. It doesn't happen. We cannot gain muscle without a caloric surplus. You just can't Just because it's muscle. The rules of physics work the same way and the rules of chemistry work the same way, whether it be fat or muscle. It just depends Are you growing adipose tissue or are you growing muscle? So you still need a surplus of calories, just like if you are dieting or restricting your calories and you're working out, you're most likely going to lose some muscle, like when you lose weight.
Speaker 1:
Hardly anybody loses even the ratio of, say, 90% fat and 10% muscle, which would be a really nice ratio, but that doesn't happen too often. It's usually closer to 50-50. So when we lose weight we typically lose like 50% fat, 50% muscle. That's why it's so critical and so important to not have to lose weight to begin with. But I also understand once it's happened there's nothing we can do about it except to lose weight. But that's why we caution against crash diets. That's why we caution against losing too much weight too soon, because then it is going to be a lot of muscle that you lose. So like if you lose weight over time, like maybe two pounds every two weeks or something like that, which is really slow, so one pound a week you're going to lose less muscle that way. So that's why we always say try to keep it slower like that, all right. So we get that point. Now how do you do it? Is it possible? Yes, it is, but it's going to be very, very difficult.
Speaker 1:
Now, in the old days of physique competition whether it be bodybuilding men, bodybuilding women, or now men's physique or women's bikini, women's physique that the old school method was. You just go into an off season and you gain a lot of muscle. You just say you know what, especially the men, especially the bodybuilding Women's physique and women's bikini, don't do as much of that because they don't have to get as bulky. They don't need to have as much muscle to begin with, but they still need more than what they have when they step out on stage, because once they start to lose, the objective is they don't want to lose too much muscle, because then they're going to lose their shape. So there's always a nice happy medium that we have to pay attention to.
Speaker 1:
But in the old days guys would just bulk. I mean, they would just add muscle, they would just gain weight indiscriminately. In other words, they do a show and say I don't know, let's just keep it simple. So the end of the year they do a show and say I don't know, let's just keep it simple. So the end of the year they do a show in December.
Speaker 1:
They compete, they do how they do, and then they say, all right, I'm going to go in the bulking season for anywhere from, say, four to six months and they just eat as much as they want to eat and they just lift, and they lift and they don't do a lot of cardio, if any at all, and they gain a lot of muscle and they gain a lot of fat. And then they get closer to their competition time and they say, well, you know, I got six months to cut. Now you know that's a long time in the bodybuilding world, but I got six months to cut and now I'm not going to gain any more muscle, I'm going to lose the weight I put on and hopefully I'm two or three pounds heavier in muscle than I was last year at the end of this cut. Because they know once they start to cut, they're going to lose muscle but they're going to lose fat. So it's sort of a necessary evil they have to do. That was old school Now. Well, I mean, like everything, you still have your old school people holding on, but now there's a science that we know. You know, maybe that's not the smartest idea. So now what most people do and this gets away from the question I got a little bit because she wanted to know can you basically gain muscle and lose fat at the same time? And again, the answer is yes, but it's going to be very challenging.
Speaker 1:
But now, what a lot of the modern day physique competitors do is they do go into a bulking phase. They just don't gain as much weight as they used to. So, depending on their body weight, they might gain if this is a man, say, eight or 10 pounds instead of like they literally would gain 70 pounds and then lose 70 pounds. So you know something like that gain 70, lose 68, whatever. But they would gain a ton of weight based on, you know, their height and all that kind of stuff. I mean and for those of you that this is like shocking them, just keep in mind some of these body builders get on stage at 270 pounds. I mean, they're just mammoth and I'm no way saying this is a healthy or good thing. You know some of the natural physique competitors I've competed in that it's way different. You don't see nearly that kind of weight gain and weight loss going on because the people just aren't as big.
Speaker 1:
So now the science is gain a little bit of weight like I said, five to ten pounds, eight to ten pounds somewhere in there, depending on the height of the person and the size of their frame and then lose a little bit over the course of six months to get cut for the competition. So now it's instead of, you know, feast or famine, get big, get small. It's instead of, you know, feast or famine, get big, get small. Or let me just try to factor this out to the perfect science and try to gain a little without gaining any fat, which can be done, but it's very difficult. I'm just willing to gain a little bit of muscle and then I'm willing to sacrifice a little muscle and I hope I come out on the right side of this at the end. That's what most people do and, by the way, the closer you stay to your ideal peak weight like, the closer you go to not having to go up and down, really the better off you remain.
Speaker 1:
Regarding that, you don't get too lean in the season, because that can be detrimental to your hormonal response. All right, so that's like for the elite bodybuilding level people. So you know, can we gain and lose at the same time? So you have to really, really, really pay attention to your caloric input and output. So you have to know exactly how many calories you need to sustain your current level of body weight and your current level of activity. So you need to know that and you can do that by doing some formulas online or you can just really pay attention with the good old fashioned scientific method. Is I've got a hypothesis and now I'm going to measure it, so like you can start with that and have like great guesswork and think I need about this much and you start consuming that much and you measure everything and you weigh everything and you log everything and then you see what's going on with your body regarding your weight, regarding your body composition and regarding your strength, Because if you're not getting stronger, you're not adding muscle tissue. So it's very important to pay attention to that metric because it's the one thing you can see. I mean, the numbers don't lie. If you're not getting stronger, you're not getting stronger. If you're not getting stronger, you're not adding muscle.
Speaker 1:
And so I think we all know that we can be pretty subjective when it comes to the mirror, when it comes to pictures. You know, most of us go in the direction of oh, I really hate how I look. I mean, there's just, you know, the more fit people are, sometimes it almost seems like the more body dysmorphia there might be. So everybody's pretty self-critical on that. So that's something you have to watch with. You know, they say a picture tells a thousand words, but maybe it does if you're showing somebody else, but when you're looking at yourself it lies to you right. We're pretty self-critical. So that's not the best way. You know, the best way to know if you're gaining the muscle is through body fat composition. So checking the body fat legitimately, like with skinfold calipers or dexa scans or things like that, and really just measuring your strength. So are you losing weight and are you getting stronger? I mean, right there that tells you you are gaining some muscle and losing some fat. But in order to get that done, you you're going to have to pay so close attention to your calories. You're going to have to make sure you're measuring everything appropriately.
Speaker 1:
Now, one mistake people make when they're trying to get leaner is they cut their carbs too much. They become too carb phobic. They believe the myths that carbs are the bad guy, that carbs are the devil, and they're not. That's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I mean sure, like you know, if you're going to eat a donut which is full of carbs and fat, yeah, that's not good. Or if you're going to eat a bunch of candy or drink a lot of soda, you know those are all artificial sugars and I think almost everybody in this planet knows that. For most people, in most situations, that artificial sugar isn't good. But just because sugar is a carb, it doesn't mean all carbs are bad. So the only thing that can fuel the muscles to grow is carbohydrate.
Speaker 1:
Protein is a repair macronutrient, meaning it's the macronutrient we need to repair the muscle tissue, which doesn't require that much. So we ordinarily don't need as much protein as influencers are trying to force down your throat. Literally, you don't need as much. Sure, you need some protein. Protein is a critical macronutrient. You need some protein. Protein is a critical macronutrient. And, yes, we tend to take longer to digest protein, which makes you feel a little more full and then have a tendency to eat less if you're eating more. Those things are true, but we still will not grow muscle without good complex carbohydrates. That's what muscles need. Anaerobic metabolism is fueled by carbohydrates. Aerobic metabolism is fueled by carbs and fat. So if we don't have enough carbs? We cannot.
Speaker 1:
It is physiologically impossible to gain muscle. If you want to gain muscle, you have to eat your carbs, all right. So to answer the question, here's what we have to do. We have to, like, really play the calorie game close. We have to know what our needs are and eat just above it. And we do have to eat almost impeccably perfect, meaning good, complex carbohydrates, lean proteins, not a lot of fat. So we need only quality calories that aren't going to be stored as fat more when we consume them, such as fat and sugar, not carbs, sugar. So we really need to eat a balanced diet of good carbohydrates and lean proteins and we have to eat very close to just slightly over our means. And then we hope. What happens then is we're gaining muscle and we're maybe not losing fat, because it's almost impossible and I know that's kind of a play on words but because we are gaining muscle, we're now speeding up our metabolism a little bit and then, as we start to back off a little bit, we're going to start to actually burn some more fat because we have cranked up our metabolism. So, miss question asker, it's actually her name is Natalie. Then here is your answer Pay attention to strength gains.
Speaker 1:
Try to get stronger. Stay close to your caloric needs barely over, but slightly over. Make sure you're eating complex carbohydrates and make sure you're eating lean proteins and make sure you're cutting out all junk, because you are not going to have room in your diet for calories that you don't need. You're going to have very little wiggle room. If you're attempting to do this, all right.
Speaker 1:
And for those that, like, are already happy with their body weight, I mean, then it's just about gaining muscle and it becomes so much easier. Just you can eat a little bit more because you're gaining muscle. Just make sure you're working out hard. Make sure you're working out to try to gain strength and make sure you're still following the rules of good macronutrients, lean proteins and complex carbohydrates. Don't be carb-phobic, all right. Now let me thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the best garage door company in the state of Florida bar none, and we're fortunate to have them here locally in Daytona Beach, owned by Jeff and Zach Hawk. Them here, locally in Daytona Beach, owned by Jeff and Zach Hawk. If you have any needs in that direction, give them a shout at overheaddoordaytonacom.