Medically reviewed by:David M. Joyner, MD, FACS
About 99% of the time, you can rely on conventional wisdom. But sometimes, innocent misconceptions disguise themselves as nuggets of insight. One major offender? The idea that you can’t burn fat and build muscle at the same time.
Unfortunately, most people have two main goals for their fitness: lose fat, gain muscle. But once they hear these are mutually exclusive goals, they pursue one at a time (such as by loading up the calories for gains, then aggressively cutting).
If you’re about to embark on a fitness journey, take heart: it’s possible to shed pounds and gain muscle simultaneously.
Why Combine Muscle Building and Fat Loss?
When you chase muscle gains alongside fat loss, your body undergoes a process called recomposition. This means your physique’s ratio of fat to muscle shifts in a positive direction. Recomposition produces benefits like:
- Increased strength
- Higher resting metabolism (i.e., your body employs more calories while at rest)
- Reduced risk of diseases like cancer and diabetes
Traditional weight loss protocols fixate on shedding overall body weight, as measured by a scale. While this approach certainly won’t hurt you, it’s better to focus on achieving a healthy fat-to-muscle ratio.
Understanding Body Recomposition
You’ve probably witnessed an out-of-shape friend or family member begin a fitness regimen and quickly take on a trimmer, toned appearance. Maybe you’ve experienced this yourself.
After a while, however, the cycle stalls. So, to make further progress, they switch to a bulking/cutting split.
This early shift is body recomposition in action. Let’s explore what’s going on here.
What is Body Recomposition?
While early gains often occur naturally, conscious body recomposition uses targeted strength training, cardio, and nutrition to simultaneously burn fat and grow muscle.
Your body never remains static—it constantly shifts between development and disintegration. You can take advantage of this fluid state and nudge it toward optimal proportions.
The Science Behind Muscle Growth and Fat Loss
What drives the body’s cycle of growth and dissolution? That would be its metabolism, which stems from the interplay between two critical processes:
- Catabolism – Your body constantly breaks down hefty structures (like fats and proteins) into smaller, usable components (fatty acids, glucose). We call this catabolism.
- Anabolism – Once your body has broken food down into its components, anabolism takes this material and assembles it into new structures, like tissue and muscle.
As you might imagine, these processes play a critical role in muscle gain and weight loss.
Hypertrophy (muscle growth) occurs when we challenge our muscles with resistance. While healing, they rely on anabolism to transform protein into fresh tissue and repair damaged muscle fibers.
After each repair, these fibers return larger and stronger than before. For this reason, it’s essential to maintain ample caloric supply when aiming for muscle gain.
Fat burning, on the other hand, requires a caloric deficit. That way, when repairing muscles, the body can’t depend on incoming calories. Instead, it must utilize what it already has in stock: the energy stored in fatty tissue.
Body recomposition occurs when you get these two processes working in tandem.
Strategies for Building Muscle and Losing Fat
The best way to lose fat and gain muscle? Follow a holistic, time-tested game plan. You’ll need to tailor your approach to your lifestyle and capabilities, but adhering to the below blueprint will set you on the right path to a leaner, stronger, and overall healthier physique.
Prioritize Strength Training
Nothing grows without facing resistance; muscles are no different. To expand, they must repeatedly overcome opposing forces. While working against resistance, your muscles draw on a higher number of fibers than when at rest. Over time, this results in size and strength gains.
The best workouts to lose weight and gain muscle begin with a solid strength training regimen (at least 2 days a week). This should encompass a variety of compound exercises, which refer to movements that utilize multiple muscle groups.
A few time-tested exercises include:
- Squats
- Deadlifts
- Push-ups
- Chin-ups
- Planking
These movements force disparate muscles to collaborate effectively (which improves coordination alongside producing strength gains).
One thing to keep in mind: normal exercise fails to engage all your muscle fibers. Even during a vigorous workout, many remain dormant and miss out on benefits.
To combat this issue, consider adding whole body vibration (WBV) to the equation. WBV uses gentle, consistent vibrations to stimulate your muscles, activating fibers that often remain dormant during traditional workouts.
By engaging a broader range of muscle fibers, WBV can lead to more comprehensive muscle stimulation. This increased activation may result in greater muscle adaptation and growth over time. Additionally, WBV has been shown to reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), aiding in quicker recovery post-exercise.
Combine with High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
While it’s true that cardio can counteract the explosive strength generated through weight training, you still need to get your heart pumping, both for fat loss and overall health.
Fortunately, cardio comes in different forms, and high-intensity-interval-training (HIIT) perfectly suits body recompositioning:
- Longer, steady-state cardio (like using a treadmill or stairmaster) taps more resources than rapid activity bursts.
- HIIT, on the other hand, alternates between short bursts of intense effort and brief recovery periods. This method keeps metabolic demand high and delivers cardiovascular benefits.
Limiting your cardio to short, intense attacks preserves your muscle gains while shedding fat. For best results, divide your cardio and strength training into separate sessions, ideally on different days.
As an added bonus: Many common HIIT exercises also utilize compound movements that challenge your muscles, contributing to further strength gains.
Note: Anyone interested in beginning HIIT should check with their doctor regarding existing or potential health risks for high intensity training.
Maintain a Balanced Diet
Positive change requires fuel. As you craft your body recomposition regimen, evaluate your diet and nutritional intake.
Protein
Protein plays a crucial role in muscle growth, and your body needs an ample supply of vitamins and healthy fats to repair itself.
Some stellar high-protein foods include:
- Eggs
- Chicken breast
- Turkey
- Lean beef
- Almonds
- Cottage cheese
- Fish such as Salmon
Maintaining a steady flow of protein allows your muscles to come roaring back from intense training.
Healthy Fats
Combining your protein intake with healthy fats can also help you grind through extended exercise sessions. When meal planning, try to incorporate:
- Avocado
- Olive oil
- Nuts and seeds
Healthy fats also come loaded with calories, making them strength-training rocket fuel.
Carbohydrates
Working out can leave you feeling exhausted. To maintain energy levels, stock your diet with healthy carbohydrates, such as:
- Quinoa
- Oatmeal
- Buckwheat
- Sweet potatoes
- Oranges
- Blueberries
These superfoods provide sustained energy during your workouts (plus they come packed with additional nutritional goodness).
Calorie Intake
When threading the needle between fat loss and muscle gain, monitor calories carefully. Take in too many, and you’ll just replace the fat you burn. Consume too little, and muscle growth becomes impossible.
No two bodies are identical, but generally, when it comes to body recomposition, maintaining a slight calorie deficit (where your body takes in fewer calories than it burns) delivers optimal results. This means consuming 100-500 calories below replacement level on a daily basis.
Leaner individuals, who easily relinquish muscle mass, should aim for a smaller deficit (100-300 calories), while those with excess body fat should get more aggressive with their cut (300-500 calories).
Use Whole Body Vibration to Enhance Results
Standard exercise forces your body to contend with gravity alone. When you add whole body vibration to your routine, however, your body must resist the gentle destabilizing force it creates and gravity’s pull. Studies show that this extra challenge boosts muscle gains.
Plus, adding resistance:
- Intensifies your workout
- Increases your metabolic rate
- Incinerates more calories
Together, these form a positive trifecta that triggers accelerated fat loss.
If your goal is to burn fat and gain muscle, whole body vibration (paired with strength training and HIIT) offers a cutting-edge tool to level up your results.
Rest and Recovery
It’s no secret: vigorous workouts enhance health. But since your body requires time to heal and recover, overtraining works against your goals.
As you embark on your body recomposition journey, plan to include days for:
- Total rest (no strenuous activity)
- Active recovery (think light exertion, like walking or yoga)
Quality sleep also plays a critical role in increasing muscle mass. Give your muscles time to heal by catching seven to nine hours of Zs nightly.
Remember: a fitness journey is an endurance race, not a sprint. Burnout poses a real threat to your motivation; staying well-rested combats workout fatigue and helps you stay on track.
Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them
No reward comes without challenge. As your body transforms, you’re bound to encounter a few roadblocks. Fortunately, with the proper approach, you can easily power through these obstacles.
Balancing Muscle Building and Fat Loss
Even with a well-tailored plan, achieving strength gains alongside fat loss remains daunting. It can become especially tough if you experience rapid initial results followed by a slowdown.
When stagnation occurs, it helps to set realistic goals—don’t define “success” by your early gains.
At times, you may notice an imbalance in progress. For example, perhaps you’re experiencing phenomenal fat loss but no perceivable muscle gain. When stuck in this pattern, it can help to temporarily break up your routine into muscle and fat loss splits. Spending some time focused solely on strength training or cardio can help restore some balance before resuming your body recomposition plan.
Staying Consistent
Change happens gradually, not overnight. Have faith that continually showing up for yourself, sticking to your routines, and observing scheduled rest days will deliver results.
On days when you wake up sore, perseverance may seem especially out of reach. Incorporating powerful tools like thePower Plate Move (a top-notch, portable WBV system) can help loosen tight muscles and enhance circulation (and healing).
Managing Plateaus
Making gains—it’s a rush, for sure. But rarely do fitness journeys unfold in a steady upward trajectory. Usually, you’ll experience sudden jumps followed by plateaus. Compared to the jolt of quick gains, plateaus can cool your motivation and make further progress elusive.
When you’ve caught a case of the plateau blues, try a few of the following to reignite your progress:
- Modify workout intensity – Take your foot off the gas and lessen your load for a bit. Or try alternating between light and heavy workouts.
- Vary your exercises – Your body readily adapts to repetitive motions. Spice up your routines with fresh exercises to keep your muscles sharp.
- Incorporate WBV – Up the challenge by adding some whole body vibration. Pushing your muscle fibers further can help power through plateaus.
Stalling out is no fun. Just remember that they’re only temporary bumps in the road.
Power Plate: Start Your Journey to a Leaner, Stronger Body
Lean and strong. By fusing resistance training with bursts of HIIT, proper rest, and a diet loaded with protein and healthy fats, you can achieve both goals at once (and level up your health along the way).
But this journey can be lengthy, and riddled with plateaus. Accelerate your gains by adding WBV—delivered via the precision design of a Power Plate Move or Personal Power Plate—to your regimen. Push your resistance, boost your circulation, and recover faster.
At Power Plate, we believe that everyone has a right to radiant health. That’s why our team of veteran engineers has dedicated 22 years to producing the finest vibration technology available. Explore our collection today.
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