Diet for lean bulk

[Tydollas91]

Is there a way to burn fat while still gaining muscle ? Last time i tried i ended up losing gains .

 

[Joshlm69]

Have a very high protein diet, drop your calories by only 250-500 (max). Not sure you’ll be able to gain muscle but you’ll be able to retain

 

[Resolve10]

Not really outside of more unusual scenarios (newbie, return to training, etc.) or without certain assistance.

Theoretically you can in the sense that if you widen your view enough and are patient enough, just most of the time that ends up as spinning tired for most people.

You will generally need a surplus to gain muscle and a deficit to lose fat, so you'd only really lose your gains trying to do this if you weren't consuming enough or had inadequate training.

 

[Gator762]

It seems possible to hang on to most of your muscle with enough light activity so that you're trying to burn it off vs. dieting it off.

Lately I've found walking seems to do very well here. It's very low intensity so that most of what is burned is fat, and also it doesn't gas you out. You can lift 5x a week and still walk everyday. Walking 10K average pace flat terrain IIRC is 300-400 calories (ballpark, lots of variables).

If you keep your cals at maintenance and then walk 10K+ steps every day that's some decent fat loss. Step it up to 13K or so and that gets you in the 1lb/week neighborhood.

ETA: If you can, walk 5-10 minutes after each meal. Work breaks too especially if you are a desk jockey. There's additional benefit to not just sitting on your ass for 8 hours straight and breaking it up is less monotonous to me than 30-40 minutes straight.