 Question is from Nick mag for what's the best way to retain muscle mass while decreasing body fat specifically in terms of how to alter training and how to split up my diet. Yeah, you know when it comes to I've been thinking a lot about questions like this and the goal with resistance training should almost always be to try and build muscle and gain strength. Now why is that a goal when you're trying to cut because one of the inevitable side effects of decreasing body fat is that your body will try to reduce muscle mass to slow down your metabolism to make up for the difference. And one of the best ways to prevent the loss of muscle mass is to train as if you're trying to build. Now your diet is what will reflect the fat loss goal. So if I eat in a calorie deficit, then I'm going to burn body fat and I'm going to lose the least amount of muscle if I lift weights like I'm trying to build. I think sometimes people think oh I'm cutting now the way I train is going to be to burn the most amount of calories all the time. And you know they lose that muscle building signal and they end up with muscle loss along with it. I like this question because we also get a lot of questions around you know all of our programs because they're all broken up in three or four phases and people are always asking me like you know how should I diet through this program? Should I be on a bulk? Should I be on a bulk? Should I be on a cut? I'll tell you how I like to do this with clients and it all depends on where the person is metabolism wise, how fast is it or how slow is it on what I'm trying to do nutritionally with them. They're going to follow the program as planned no matter what like to Sal's point you're always training to build muscle or retain the most and that's why programs are phased the way are because one of the ways you can almost guarantee you're probably going to lose muscle mass is stay on the same program the same training regimen for six plus months straight consistently and then go into a hardcore diet and cut you want to you're going to lose muscle. The muscle building signal is lost it's luster yes and you're at a calorie deficit oh yeah so one of my simple answer to this that I love to do is and I'm about to do this right now I'm helping out a couple close friends with diet and coaching they're they're following one of them's falling strong one's falling anabolic both are female I've been trying to read speed up their metabolism one of them's about 2200 calories the other one's around 2500 calories the goal I'm trying to get them closer to 3000 and what I'll do is when I when I start to cut from them and reduce calories I also like to time it on a transition in the phase of the programming so like right now one of them is on phase one of strong and you know technically I could I could start to cut her calories right now but I like to do it right when I send a really different signal to her body on a new phase makes sense so you you want to cut the calories when she's getting the loudest most effective muscle building signal to offset and in my opinion my theory is that that not only benefits her with building muscle and or retaining muscle at least it also promotes fat burning because she's getting this unique signal now or different you know the novelty side of it because she's been in a phase for three or four weeks in phase one and now boom all of a sudden she's seeing new rep ranges new exercises body's going oh wow try and build muscle adapts oh my god we're not getting calories too so it's burning like crazy so even though it's kind of a competing signal it I find a lot of this how I used to train myself for shows is I always made moves in my diet when I was also making transitions in the phases to promote the greatest change that's really smart Adam I've never I've never thought of doing that but that makes absolutely that makes perfect saying I'll even also make intentionally bump their protein a little bit so I'll cut calories but then I'll also elevate their protein because most my my girls I like running or you know you know off like the 0.6 to 0.8 range when we cut I'll normally bump them through like to the more like the 1 to 1.25 range of protein but I'm also reducing calories and changing the no that and that's the second part is the other thing you can do is eat a high protein diet and push the upper limit of what is beneficial and studies show what you heard Adam referring to some numbers studies show about 0.6 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight is where you're going to reap the benefits of a high protein diet any more than that you typically don't don't reap any additional benefits but when your calories are low a higher protein diet is actually more important you actually can get away with lower protein when you're at a calorie surplus this is because the excess calories are protein sparing the body stops reaching for protein for energy it's got plenty of calories from carbs and from fats and it's not as important so if I'm in a bulk believe it or not high protein is important but if I'm in a bulk it's less important than if I'm going to cut when I'm going to cut and my calories are low that's when it makes the most sense to push the upper limit of the beneficial effects of protein and studies show consistently that that preserves the most muscle they also show that they also help burn the most body fat probably through the indirect effect of maintaining a faster metabolism so when you're trying to get cut whether you're trying to get cut or bulk up resistance training should be geared around building muscle it'll give you the best results either way also consider this resistance training like any tool is very good at what it's designed for and is it's kind of good for other stuff but it's really good for what it's designed for resistance training can you build lots of stamina and endurance with it yes can you get super flexible with it yes but it's best for building muscle nothing there's no modality that exists that builds muscle as effectively as resistance training so when you do the resistance training do it use it the way it's best used which is build muscle and that's regardless of whether or not you're trying to burn body fat or gain weight