How to Gain Muscle without Gaining Fat

Every month in my membership community, we update macros. One of the questions I ask my clients to guage their macros is, what is your goal?

I typically note in parenthesis (choose one goal) because it’s truly difficult to both gain muscle AND lose body fat, unless you’re a n00b to lifting.

However — it is possible to lose body fat and see more muscle definition, and, as we’ll be discussing in this post — it’s possible to gain muscle without gaining fat.

There’s a lot of noise in the industry, and if you follow any fitness people on instagram, you’ll likely see them post about #datbulklife.

With that hashtag, you’ll likely see poptarts, ice cream,and “bulking foods,” and the sentiment that if one wants to gain muscle, one will inevitably also gain fat.

But here’s the thing — it’s NOT inevitable. Not if you do it right.

In fact, one of my clients is in a building phase, and her body composition has changed in that she’s leaner. While she’s increased her lean muscle mass, she hasn’t gained any body fat, so her body fat percentage has decreased. Pretty cool, right?

So, how do you do it?

How to Gain Muscle without Gaining Fat?

With calorie cycling!

We’ve all heard of carbohydrate cycling by now, and yes, that is still very much part of the equation, but what we also use is a tool called calorie cycling.

With calorie cycling — when used appropriately — you can gain lean muscle mass without gaining body fat.

What is Calorie Cycling?

Calorie cycling is simply manipulating your intake in order to see the results you want to see in the mirror (or in your measurements.)

Basically, it’s a period of eating in a surplus (while using a smart training plan,) and then eating in a deficit — and manipulating your macros to coincide with those two phases.

The problem with typical bulking is that when one eats in a calorie surplus for too long (and eats junk food during it,) it negatively impacts our insulin sensitivity, which in turn, makes it harder to gain lean muscle mass, but also makes it easier to gain body fat.

When cycled with calorie cycling and carbohydrate cycling, we can stay insulin sensitive, and thusly, gain muscle without gaining body fat.