Which phase are you in? Why you cannot be in all of them

The question I get asked most is how to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. The honest answer is that you can, but slowly, and it is not for everyone.

There are four phases. Each one has its own goal, a place to start and a place to finish. Knowing which one you are in saves you years of work.

Bulking: the building phase

You eat above what you burn to give the body material to make muscle, you train heavy, and you accept that the scale goes up. Part of what goes up is muscle, part is fat. That is the deal, and there is no way to avoid it completely.

The ideal starting point is being lean: 8 to 10 per cent body fat for men, 15 to 20 per cent for women. There will always be exceptions, but the rule exists for a good reason. The leaner you start, the more time you have to build before you reach the point where it stops being worth it.

That is also why the weight should go up slowly here. Muscle is built in months; fat is gained in weeks. If you go up fast, before you know it you are carrying a high body fat percentage without having spent enough time to build any muscle. You gained weight and missed out on the thing you wanted to gain.

There is also a biological brake waiting at the end of the line. Past a high body fat percentage, the body starts living in a low-level inflammatory state, food stops being used in the same way, and the hormonal side loses its edge. Translated into everyday terms: you keep eating more, but almost everything left over goes to fat.

That is why this phase has a set finish: 17 to 18 per cent for men, 28 to 30 per cent for women. Once you get there, you change phase.

Cutting: the revealing phase

The opposite road. You eat below what you burn, and the whole job becomes losing fat without losing the muscle you built. Hence the protein going up and the strength training staying heavy. Training light with a thousand reps because "this is the definition phase" is one of the most expensive ideas out there.

A healthy pace is between half a kilo and one kilo a week, and it slows down as you get leaner. The first kilos come off almost by themselves. The rest asks for patience, and every percentage point you take off costs more than the one before.

Now the part nobody talks about: the drier you want to get, the more extreme the process becomes. There is a point, already very low, past which the body starts sending you the bill hormonally. Testosterone down, thyroid hormones down, constant hunger, ruined sleep, libido on the floor and training sessions with no strength.

This has been studied in natural athletes. In a 12-month follow-up of a natural bodybuilder (Rossow and colleagues, 2013), testosterone fell from 9.22 to 2.27 ng/mL over the 6 months of prep, with body fat coming down from 14.8 to 4.5 per cent. It only returned to normal values about six months after the competition. In a study with fitness competitors (Hulmi and colleagues, 2017), 20 weeks of aggressive dieting left T3, leptin and sex hormones falling, with altered menstrual cycles and a recovery that took just as many weeks again.

I am telling you this so you can choose, knowingly, how far you want to go. For the vast majority of people, a well-run cut ends at a point where you look good, you are healthy, and there are no months of recovery waiting at the door.

Recomposition: both at once

Losing fat and building muscle at the same time, with the weight barely moving. It does happen, and it happens mostly in people who are starting now, people coming back after a long break, people carrying extra fat with little training experience, and people who were eating too little protein and start hitting the target.

The mechanics are simple to describe: calories near maintenance, high protein, strength training with progression and proper sleep. The body has fat to spare to fund the building, and a new stimulus that justifies building.

And now the full honesty: in terms of effectiveness, recomposition may not be the best option for someone who wants faster results. Because you commit properly neither to the deficit nor to the surplus, both processes move at half speed. Someone with twelve kilos of fat to lose gets there faster with a proper cut. Someone who wants to build gets there faster with a bulking phase.

In this phase the scale is almost useless. What counts is the measurements, the photos and the loads going up in training.

Health and habits: the phase that holds everything up

The simplest of them all, and probably the one most people should live in most of the time. Calories at maintenance, enough protein, strength training three to four times a week, steps, sleep and decent food.

The goal here is a different one: feeling well, having strength and energy, keeping your bloodwork in order and holding on to what you have already won.

Why is it simpler? Because the margins are wider. A dinner out throws nothing off. A strange week gets sorted the week after. There are fewer rules to keep and far less weight on your mind, and that is exactly what makes it sustainable for years.

And there is one thing you only gain here: the habits. Cutting and bulking are periods with a beginning and an end. What sits between them, and what decides whether you are still in shape five years from now, is what you can keep up without heroic effort.

The mistake that costs years

Did you notice that none of these phases lasts three weeks?

The most common mistake is being in all the phases at once: three weeks cutting, two eating more because strength dropped, a new diet that showed up in a video, and back to the start again. A year later the person has worked enormously hard and is exactly where they began.

Pick one. Give it months of uninterrupted work. Measure with more than the scale. And when you reach the end of that phase, change because you decided to change, with the next phase already chosen.

If you are in this last phase and you catch yourself thinking you are not doing anything, remember that you are doing the hardest thing there is, which is maintaining.