Why is my weight staying the same
You CAN'T Build Muscle and Burn Fat at the Same Time!!
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Anyone with half a brain knows you can't burn muscle and burn fat at the same time.
Is that Professor Dickweed again?
What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere.
Athleanx.com.
And Jesse.
Athleanx.com.
Yes, I'm still doing that.
What is with the winter hat?
It's snowing outside not in here.
I'm still cold.
Leave me al one.
Today we're answering another one of your questions.
It's an AX Jeff, and Jesse, what have we got for AX Jeff?
All right, coming from Wayne Beckett, Jeff, why would you say that you can build muscle
and burn fat at the same time when everyone with half a brain knows that you can't??
With two question marks.
Geez.
Any exclamation points in there?
That was a little angry.
I'm surprised there's not.
Geez, Wayne.
Listen, Wayne, okay calm down.
All right, okay, listen.
I have a respect for all of my viewers' questions, so I'm going to respectfully answer the question.
But I'm going to tell you in advance I might get a little heated here because this is something
I've been pretty passionate about I think for about a decade.
It's been ten years, right?
Yeah, this is related to bulking and cutting, and I have actually talked about this many
times in this channel.
Here's me back in my basement, Angry Jeff, just screaming about bulking and cutting then.
Well, guess what, my opinion hasn't changed in the ten years.
But I think it bears repeating because this is a common question and we need to make sure
that it gets addressed in a real thorough way, all right?
So that everybody understands what we're talking about.
Where this comes from is the fact that many people hold the belief that these two things,
these two goals, are too much opposed from each other to actually be able to be achieved
together.
Right.
If you want to build muscle, they'll say you need to be in a calorie surplus.
Right.
If you want to burn fat, it's said that you need to be in a calorie ? Deficit!
Deficit.
I know that one.
It's starting to rub off on you, Jesse, you're getting good.
That's actually not true.
Yes, you do need to be in a calorie deficit in order to burn fat.
Right.
In order to build muscle, you don't have to be in a consumed calorie surplus.
There's a big difference.
Our body is smart.
We have ways to actually produce energy and create an energy surplus without having to
take them in through the consumption of food and calories.
That means, thankfully so, we can tap into our own body stores of body fight.
Okay.
In order to create the energy needed to support new muscle mass and muscle growth.
Right.
That's a good thing.
Because if you think about what the goal was in the first place-- building muscle and burning
fat-- obviously if that is something you were looking to achieve, you likely have body fat
to burn.
Unlike you.
Unless it's me, but the good news is I'm not looking to do that.
Because yes, it becomes way more challenging the lower level of body fat you get down to.
If you have very low levels of body fat, you don't have the luxury of being able to tap
into those stores to do that.
And what happens then is your body starts to tap into muscle because muscle's also willing
to provide the energy need to do other things in the body, but it's not going to be very
helpful to break muscle down in the goal of trying to build new muscle.
No, that's bad.
Right, that would be bad.
So we don't want to do that, but that requires though that we focus on the intake side first,
okay?
And we make sure we don't make some big mistakes.
And when we're talking about the intake, though I said it wasn't about the consumed calories
you take in, you still have to focus on how you're consuming what you're consuming.
And the first thing I would caution you is not to get too aggressive in the deficit that
you're trying to create in terms of the calories you take in on a given day.
Okay.
Because if you take in too few calories in the pursuit of trying to make this happen
fast-- and I'm going to talk about fast versus sustainable in a little bit here-- if you
try to make this happen too fast, you slow the whole process down to the point where
it actually doesn't even work anymore.
So what you want to make sure is you don't try to exceed anything higher than ten, 12,
let's say a top end of 15% of a deficit from whatever your maintenance level of calories
is right now to achieve this.
So let's throw some numbers around this.
If your maintenance level of calories is 3,000 in a day, let's do some math, Jesse.
What would be 10% of 3,000?
This is an easy one.
300! 300.
Good.
Now what about 15%?
Okay, now you're getting tricky with me.
It's not that hard.
It's half of that, so it's 150 plus 300, that's 450.
Okay.
So somewhere between 300 and 350 calories of a deficit that you want to create in terms
of what you're consuming on a day in order to make this work and not really exceeding
that.
Because when you exceed that you then start to walk that line again where you start to
look at potentially muscle protein as a source for providing the energy for what you're trying
to accomplish, which again, we said is not going to work.
No, that's bad.
Cutting into muscle to try to build muscle is not where we want to be.
One of the fat storages where we're using and utilizing to energize this process.
The second thing you're going to want to do rom the intake side, you're going to want
to make sure that you're eating enough protein.
Because many studies will show you that eating enough protein is going to be required to
make this process work.
Oh, I know this.
It's one gram of protein for every one pound of body weight.
A lot of people will say that, it's actually not true.
The good thing is you don't have to have that much actually.
Really?
No, you really don't.
Studies will show that .8 grams will do the job all the time, and some people even suggest
as low as .6.
I'm not necessarily one that goes that low, but I will say .8 is something that could
be done.
And there's a big difference between .8 and one.
By why is it one?
I think, honestly, I think it's just because people round up.
Well it's easier for people like me.
For you, yeah.
They make it Jesse-proof by just saying, Just do one, instead of .8.
But we know that the difference between .8-- or some of us know-- the difference between
.8 and one is 20%.
And 20%, if you don't realize how big that actually is in your total protein intake in
a day, think about it over the course of a month.
And think about paying for 20% more protein over the course of a month.
Oh.
We know how expensive protein can be in whatever form you eat it.
Yeah, that's a big grocery bill right there.
It's a big savings.
The third thing I want you to focus on in order to do this right is you need to increase
the quality of the nutrition that you put in your body.
Yes, of course.
Because what it does is two things.
As you increase the quality of what you eat, the nutrient density goes up.
In other words, more productive food, foods that can actually provide your body with vitamins
and minerals to accelerate the processes to do what it is you're looking to accomplish.
Which, in this case, is burn fat and build muscle.
The second thing is by increasing the nutrient quality here and the quality of the foods
you eat, they actually usually become calorically less dense.
So that allows you to actually take in more food and still be on that lower side of the
calories in that 10%, 12%, 15% range to accomplish this a little bit easier.
You still get to enjoy the foods you have, too.
So that means less of the kind of bullshit gummy bears and sugary crap that somebody
used to eat.
Yeah, that is all a bunch of bullshit.
By the way, what's Daisy doing over there?
Daisy?
What is Daisy doing?
I don't know, she's Hey, what are you Oh, you're impossible.
What?
You're impossible.
Daisy's right there, by the way.
Oh, hi, Daisy.
Now the next thing is the training side of it.
Okay.
So now we know that from the training standpoint there's two things we could do in terms of
training.
We could focus on conditioning and cardio, we could focus on resistance training.
Focus on resistance training.
As a matter of fact, that is one of the non-negotiables here.
You have to resistance train in some form.
And I say resistance because it doesn't have to be in the form of weights.
Although I would highly encourage you to do that.
But body weight training would work, band training would work.
Oh!
Water aerobics with nana down at the Y.
Do you do that?
Maybe?
Water aerobics with nana down at the Y.
With Jesse's nana down at the Y.
However you want to do it, guys, some form of resistance training is necessary because
that's what sparks the whole desire for your muscles to actually come back and grow back
bigger and stronger.
If you don't provide the stimulus, this whole thing goes out the window.
There's no build muscle portion on the build muscle and burn fat.
I will give you this other revelation that might shock some of you.
The conditioning part of it and the cardio part of it is completely unnecessary to achieve
that goal.
Really?
Now, I am going to follow that right up with if you want to be a normal, functioning person
with a healthy heart-- which all of us should aspire to be.
Yeah.
Then you should be doing conditioning and cardio.
I'm just saying that you can actually achieve this all through nutritional changes alone
and creating that deficit.
But it's going to be a lot more effective and it's going to be a lot easier for you
to do this if you incorporate some of the conditioning and cardio as well.
I'm going to go back to that example of 3,000 calories.
Okay.
Here's the problem that happens when you try to just do it through cutting your food intake.
All right.
If I were to take 500 calories out.
Now, let's say we've already made the changes to increase the quality of the stuff that
we're eating.
If I take 500 calories out of the equation, that's 500 calories of nutrient dense high
quality food, right?
Right.
Now, I have an alternative to do something different.
If I do, let's say, 300 calories that I take away, but then I burn 200 additional calories
doing some type of conditioning, right?
Right.
What's happened to the extra 200 calories?
You get those nutrients back in your system.
But I didn't have to take them out so I have them.
200 calories is a lot.
Yeah.
200 calories if you did it in strictly protein at four calories per gram is actually 50 grams
of protein.
That's a lot of protein.
And when you consider that you only need, again, that .8 grams per pound of body weight,
that's going to add up very quickly.
Yeah.
So you're going to become a lot less likely to walk that thin line between burning fat
and sort of tapping into muscle storage in order to achieve your goal of building new
muscle.
So the holy grail here is really trying to find the balance between the two and realize
also as you build more muscle that number's going to go up.
Your caloric maintenance levels are going to go up because sustaining new active muscle
tissue is going to require more calories than on a given basis.
So you can actually start to upwardly adapt this number as you start to make changes and
build muscle at the same time.
Here's the recap.
Wayne, it can be done.
Wayne, it can 100% be done.
Wayne, yes, it's likely going to take more time than a successful bulk and cut.
I still use the word successful because that's the key word here because for every successful
person that makes it through a bulk and cut, there are millions?
That's a lot of people.
Millions of people that don't make it through a successful bulk and cut because they get
into the bulk, and what happened is they never learned the key requirements of realizing
what good nutrition is and how to be dedicated to good nutrition, and how to remain consistent
with your training.
That makes this a sustainable, long term lifestyle change that makes this something that once
you incorporate it like I did back in my teens, it's something you're still doing and living
every single day, almost as second nature because it's part of your life.
The bulk and cut cycle, though it may happen faster if you do it successfully, is not going
to be a sustainable approach for many.
And what happens is-- I've mentioned this before and I'm not accusing you, Wayne, I'm
just throwing it out there-- is you start to adopt something called the big guy lie.
Remember that?
I think so.
The big guy lie is the guy who starts off wanting to build muscle and burn fat, and
then when he starts his bulk and never gets out of that, it's that perpetual bulk, he
then all of a sudden says, You know what?
Being ripped doesn't really matter.
Having abs is overrated.
Just being big and strong and being able to lift things is really the only important thing
in the world.
That's the big guy lie because we know that wasn't your original goal.
You would have liked to have done it, and I'm tell you, you could do it.
You can still do it if you're willing to put in a little bit more time to get there.
I promise you guys this will work.
My stance has not changed in ten years, it won't change ten years from now.
It's going to work if you're willing to put the work in slowly but surely.
That being said, guys, I want to answer your next question.
If you can, put your question down in the comments below, and Jesse will look through
them and pick the next one.
Yes, I will.
Hopefully one a little less angry than Wayne, but if we have to, we'll address him.
In the meantime, if you're looking for programs, guys, we actually map out nutritional strategies
and meal plans that will allow you to do this at the same time-- build muscle and burn fat--
and we make it a lot easier than you think it is because we show you the step-by-step
way to do it.
You can get them all over at Athleanx.com.
If you haven't done so, guys, make sure you click subscribe, turn on your notifications
so you never miss a new video when we put one out.
All right, guys.
See you soon.