Can You Gain Muscle and Lose Fat At The Same Time?

We have already covered HERE that if someone is carrying too much adipose tissue, weight loss of greater than 5% can increase one’s metabolic health [1-4] and losing substantial amounts of fat (≥15 kg) has even been found to put type II diabetes into remission [5, 6].

We also know that long-term weight loss is absolutely possible, but difficult [7] and that has been covered deeply HERE.

From a metabolic health and long-term functional capacity standpoint, Recomping seems like it could be the SHOW [8]. Given the potential appetite upregulation and increased muscular efficiency in the weight-reduced state, gaining muscle while losing body fat would likely allow one to eat more than they would have been able to in a significantly body fat reduced state. Furthermore, resistance training may even curtail the increased metabolic efficiency of skeletal muscle in the weight-reduced state [7, 9-12] and it is even possible that the body has some kind of inherent muscle or bone stat similar to leptin and body fat [13-16]. Unfortunately, what we do not have is any long-term data on the effect of losing a significant amount of adipose tissue while gaining a significant amount of muscle mass.

But, can we have the best of both worlds and gain muscle and lose fat at the same time?