When I first went in to see my trainer my goal was to get bigger muscles but when he measured my bf at 31% I decided to do 6 weeks or so of fat loss instead. Yes that is how I did it. I cut calories and added lifting into my cardio-based routine. I cut too far and actually crashed at one point. I even caught a virus at that time (I never get sick normally) I learned in doing that where my "edge" was with respect to calories and activity. I don't recommend this to everyone but it worked okay for me in the end when I got down to 18% bf. That was when I made a decision to go for gain or mass and that is what I am doing today. My bf% is still the same and I am gaining pounds.
Actually today I am averaging 2700 cals a day and this morning I found I lost weight again this week. (sigh....) So I am going to bump it up to 3000. My hope is this will allow me to have some more solid gains. In April when my cut time comes I will back off by around 500kcals a day. I suspect if you backed off my 300-400 that you would see some loss without too many side effects. You can probably do this through the zig-zag method as well as any other. End result is a calorie deficit which will leave you with less strength for some time so the shorter you can make that time the better (all in good health of course)
I believe that you can both loose fat and gain muscle at the same time but you can only do this in very tiny increments. It is much cleaner to have a goal for one or the other and shoot for that goal for a period of time.
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