Build Muscle and Cut Up At the Same Time?

"No freakin' way" is what I've heard virtually all of my life, pre-teen years included. This is why the "Bulk up and cut down" training systems are what you hear about all the time.

It's an easy sale, too. Your body is much more adept at building muscle OR cutting fat than it is trying to do both at the same time. In fact, cutting up and building muscle at the VERY same time is impossible.

However, that is not to say that, over the course of six weeks, you cannot gain muscle and lose body fat. You can start out at 200 pounds at 15% body fat and wind up at 200 pounds at 10%.

You see, you split your training into cycles. I've talked about this before. Interestingly, you can break up the cycles into even smaller chunks than I did in that old post – we're talking intra-day stuff here, folks.

When you do your weight training during the day, your muscles break down and are ready to build back up again immediately after your workout. They are super-efficient. This is the time when you run a calorie surplus (more on surpluses and deficits in a moment, and NOT of the federal budget variety!).

Most of the rest of the day, if you want to cut up, you can run a calorie deficit.

Over the course of a 24-hour period, you may need 3,000 calories, depending on your weight, activity, metabolism, etc. However, each hour is not simply 1/24th of a day, in caloric-need terms. At rest, you may need only several hundred calories for an 8-hour period.

During your peak activities, you may need A LOT more calories.

When you're running a calorie deficit, if you do it right, you're burning fat. Conversely, when you're running a surplus, you're setting the stage for anabolism (muscle growth).

You have to know how to do this. Timing, as they say, is everything.

And Vince Gironda was right after all – successful bodybuilding is 85% nutrition!

For more info on this, check out The Holy Grail. It's free, for a limited time, but with a catch. But, in my opinion, it's worth it.