Quote:
Originally Posted by kscherer
The latest thing that I learned is that you need to either pick bulking or cutting. That is to say, you need to decide whether to lose weight or gain muscle. Doing both at the same time is quite hard, and I wish I had learned it a lot sooner. That's actually why I have been losing more the past few weeks.
When bulking, you need to eat at a calorie surplus to sustain muscle growth and conditioning. When cutting, you need to "cut" dietary intake and hold a sustainable calorie deficit to shed more fat. This is why I've recently changed my goals. I want to cut off the fat and make 165, then build back up to 175 while eating healthy and working out to build muscle mass.
If you attempt to both cut and bulk at the same time, it requires a lot of dietary supplementation and doesn't work for most people.
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What you're talking about at the end here is what people call "recomp", short for "body recomposition", which yes is
really hard to pull off and not a realistic path for most people. It is technically possible to gain muscle while losing fat on a calorie deficit, and I've seen a few success stories, but the overwhelming majority of what I've read says that you have to have a very disciplined workout regimen
and genetics and hormones (and
age 
) still play a big factor in it. Unfortunately, the old tried and true "bulking and cutting cycle" is the best solution in the long term for most people trying to change their bodies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kscherer
1) For the average person, 2000 calories is the equivalent of 1 pound of body weight. So, to lose a pound in a week you need to have a weekly calorie deficit of 2000, or about 285 calories/day.
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Strictly speaking, one pound of fat equals 3500 calories (plus or minus about a hundred). This is where the common recommendation of a 500 cal/day deficit to achieve a healthy and sustainable 1 lb/week fat loss comes from. Of course, as you lose fat, there is also water weight/retention that fluctuates along the way, making the science of tracking a little fuzzier if you're
only looking at your scale. Folks who are
really into the numbers go out for DEXA scans and O2/CO2 measurements to get precise data for their fat/muscle/etc. density over time.