Build Muscle Or Lose Body Fat First? (The Great Debate…)
Read time 15 minutes
The question of whether to begin a body transformation goal by building muscle or losing body fat first is right up there as one of the most commonly asked.
Over the years, I would say that I’ve been asked this by more men than women, however that’s not to say that I haven’t also met women who were equally as curious as men.
And quite rightly so, the strategy you choose will ultimately dictate how quickly you get from point A to point B.
Let’s start by exploring one of the most commonly held beliefs around this topic that I’ve heard from clients before and one that you probably have too.
Building muscle first will replace the body fat that I have…?
It’s not hard to see why this train of thought is so common…and potentially true for that matter. When you gain muscle on top of a frame that is already holding excess body fat, it’s easy for the appearance of your new physique to mask the amount of body fat that you have.
For example, picture a ‘dadbod’ frame, one with very little muscle, quite a bit of excess fat. And now imagine a frontline rugby player, with quite a large amount of muscle but still holding quite a bit of body fat.
It wouldn’t be too hard to convince someone that the rugby player has less body fat than the dadbod using just the naked eye as typically having more muscle mass can lead to the appearance of having less body fat.
From a physiological point of view, there’s an argument to be made that when you’re lifting weights and attempting to build muscle, your body fat (triglycerides) could be contributing towards the energy that is going towards your training session. After all, body fat is simply stored energy. Therefore, there might be a small case of ‘losing’ body fat as it continues to be utilised as energy and as a result of consistent training, your body composition improving over time.
If you’re building this muscle whilst sustaining a calorie surplus, we can also expect to gain fat as well as muscle, which could negate the point made above. So unless you had access to regular body composition testing, it would be pretty hard to know.
Whilst this running hypothesis wouldn’t be impossible to figure out, it would require a decent amount of continuous monitoring. Probably more than most people have time for.
But deciding whether to utilise a calorie surplus to build muscle or a calorie deficit to lose fat as the primary strategy is one of the first and most important decisions to be made when setting out for a body transformation.
So, how would somebody decide?
This fairly significant decision ultimately depends on where your starting point is. I’ll explore 3 of the most common that I’ve seen.
*Just to be clear, the aim for all people within the following categories is the same; develop a lean (15-20% body fat), toned, muscular physique. They are just starting from different places.*
Category A - Under-muscled & low body fat
Category B - Under-muscled & high body fat
Category C - Moderately-muscled & high body fat
Category A - Under-muscled & low-medium body fat
This category offers the most straight-forward line of thinking of all 3. It represents those individuals who have always been naturally skinny/lean and have had no issues with their weight management over the years. Neither have they had much of an exercise or sporting background growing up and therefore haven’t developed much muscle over the years.
The nature of their work now is sedentary but they manage a decent amount of walking throughout the week, which, alongside ‘ok’ nutrition habits has helped them keep their body fat levels low. Roughly speaking they are somewhere between 10-15% body fat and can either see some abs, or have a pretty flat stomach. There is also a genetic propensity here to stay leaner.
For these folks, a calorie surplus to build muscle first makes sense.
They don’t need to lose any body fat but they are desperately in need of gaining some weight, in the form of lean mass. They will also be very encouraged by the fact that they should respond to weight training and a calorie surplus very well and should see results pretty quickly (provided that they are training well and hard enough).
Category C - Moderately-muscled & high body fat
This category is fairly straight forward in the scheme of things but poses some nuances that makes it less straight-forward than category A but more so than category B.
So who would fit into category C?
These are your individuals who have either grown up playing sports or have done some beginner/intermediate gym based work and so therefore have accrued some muscle mass over the years. Having said that, they’re not quite where they want to be just yet and would like to build some more.
Over the years they have let their routine slip, been inconsistent with training, poor nutritional habits have slowly crept in and as a result, have gained some body fat. We’re talking somewhere in the neighbourhood of 25%+ and 10-15kg overweight in accordance with BMI.
Their clothes have gotten very tight and as a result, they no longer feel confident with their body image and so reducing their body fat is also a priority for them. Ironically, they generally underestimate how much body fat they have.
For these individuals, beginning a calorie deficit to lose body fat first makes the most sense.
There’s often kickback here when I tell these folks that a calorie deficit is probably the right course of action. Largely because this generally means going through a period of weight loss, feeling smaller, and not really maximising any muscle growth.
But when you consider the fact that to lose 10% body fat (or roughly 10-15kg) which would be what’s needed to get lean, could take somewhere around 4-6 months, this period of dieting could be extended to 8-12 months if you opt to go ahead with a calorie surplus first. Dieting for this long just isn’t going to be pleasant and could make an already difficult task, even harder.
Why would this length of dieting time increase?
Because when you move into a surplus to build muscle, you will likely be building fat as well. If you’re currently sitting at around 25% body fat, chances are, your nutrition and lifestyle habits aren’t exactly in tip top shape. Beginning a further calorie surplus at this stage could be a slippery slope as this may lead to what the fitness industry calls a ‘dirty bulk’ whereby you take advantage of the assigned extra calories in a not so effective way.
This ultimately means that you risk moving into the 30 percent club of body fat which isn’t going to be all that healthy.
But more importantly, the extra weight could also bring a feeling of sluggishness, heaviness, tiredness and just general fatigue that you’d have to constantly contend with and tolerate.
So whilst you might feel strong in the gym with all those extra calories, your day to day livelihood might be impacted. And I hate to state it, but if a lean, toned and muscular physique is the ultimate aim, there’s a good chance that you’ll feel like you’re moving further and further away from your original goal as it’ll be hard to see any of the muscular definition from the gym work that you’re putting in. It’ll be covered by the ever growing layer of body fat.
However, let’s say you invested 4-5 months on a calorie deficit, lowered your body fat down into the teens, trained effectively and intensely and also optimised your nutrition to preserve your lean mass, not only could you come out the other end feeling amazing, healthy and sharp, but more importantly, you’ll also prime yourself to begin a ‘bulking phase’ as the 2nd phase of your transformation in the best possible position.
What do I mean by that?
Well, you’ll have spent 4-5 months dialling in and optimising your nutrition habits, from understanding portion sizes better to becoming an expert at hitting your required protein intake to understanding macros better. You’ll also have become consistent with your training routine and never miss a session.
Can you see how working on and improving all of these areas first will infinitely improve how well you execute a ‘bulking/gaining’ phase by having the fundamentals of nutrition and training established already?
This in essence, will help you to limit how much fat you gain whilst putting on muscle during the 2nd phase of your transformation by doing something we would call a ‘lean bulk’.
So to summarise, within this population, by leaning up first you practice and establish great nutrition and training fundamentals. This will then put you in a strong position to move into a calorie surplus to embark on a ‘clean bulk’ as you’ll be in tip top shape and already strongly invested in your journey.
Category B - Undermuscled & high body fat
Lastly, we have the people within category B, who, for lack of better terminology, are often referred to as ‘skinny fat’.
These individuals will have little to no exercise experience and have body fat levels similar to those in category C, so roughly 25%+, however, they won’t have nearly as much muscle.
For these people, the question of whether to build muscle or lose fat first really is a pertinent one.
There’s good news and bad news for these folks at this point.
The bad news is that out of all 3 categories, they have the most amount of work to do to get to our common established ‘finishing point’ of having a lean (15% males, 20% females), toned and muscular physique.
Not only do they have high levels of body fat which needs reducing, they also have low levels of lean mass, which needs increasing.
However it’s not all doom and gloom. The good news is that these individuals are most likely able to achieve something not very many people can; build muscle and lose fat at the same time.
This phenomenon, also known as body ‘recomposition’, defies what most people know to be true about building muscle and losing fat.
Which is that to build muscle, you must eat in a calorie surplus and to lose fat, a calorie deficit must be present. Except that that isn’t exactly true.
You see, the principle of building muscle is based around signalling. When you lift weights and challenge your muscles, your body responds by creating a physiological signal that stimulates muscle growth in order to make the next time you lift, easier to handle.
When you first start out lifting weights, each session results in a huge signal (provided that you were pushing yourself reasonably hard). So much so that even when not in a calorie surplus and just eating within maintenance calories, that muscle building signal is so loud and strong, it pushes that task up the priority list. The body manages to utilise the calories that it has in order to get the job done (mainly the protein component of your calories). Not only is the signal for building muscle super loud, the body is also very sensitive to it as it hasn’t heard it much before.
This initial period of beginners grace won’t last forever however. The body becomes more and more adapted to lifting weights and to no longer perceiving the muscle building signal as something of utmost priority.
It’s kind of like sitting in a quiet room and then all of a sudden, blaring heavy metal music is blasted on full volume. At first it’ll be almost intolerable, but over time, you’ll get used to it and become less sensitive to it.
Over time, that same muscle building signal becomes weaker and less potent. To continue building muscle at that stage, a calorie surplus will be required.
Now, as you’re building muscle in the early stages, there is definitely the opportunity to be losing body fat at the same time. As mentioned right at the beginning of this blog, there could be a situation where body fat is being utilised to fuel training sessions that goes towards muscle building.
And similar to how much muscle you can build without being in a calorie surplus, how much fat you might lose without strictly being in a deficit will be limited.
At this point, when you’ve run out of ‘beginners luck’ and progress has slowed, a decision will have to be made as to whether to begin a designated calorie deficit period to continue with fat loss or to move into a surplus to build muscle.
Experience tells me that even after riding this beginners wave of luck right to the end, chances are you’ll still have fairly high body and that beginning a designated fat loss phase probably makes most sense first, before switching gears into a calorie surplus for all the same reasons as those individuals from category C.
In summary, people in category B with very little lean mass and training experience, have the potential to build muscle and lose fat whilst eating maintenance calories and should definitely start there. Once a true plateau is reached, a decision needs to be made about which way to go. Most of the time, if body fat levels are still high, a designated fat loss phase will make most sense before moving onto a calorie surplus and a gaining phase.
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