Don’t listen to these sissies. You *CAN* build muscle and lose fat at the same time. You just can’t do it at the rate you desire, esp if you’re older and/or are near your physiological peak in terms of the amount of muscle you have. You can burn fat quickly, but you won’t be able to build muscle unless you’re young. You can only build muscle while burning fat if you have a little bit of excess fat, work REALLY hard in the gym, and burn fat SLOWLY (not fast). And even then, how much muscle you already have, your age, and how close you are to your physiological maximum will also affect this as well.
So, how to do it ‘correctly’? Fasting. Only give yourself a 1-2 hour window each day for you to eat, preferably 3 - 4 hours before you go to bed. Your entire caloric intake for the day should be within that time frame. This is because fasting increases HGH, testosterone, and cortisol. HGH shoots up like 500x the normal amount (or something like that). These hormones begin to rise at the 16-hour mark of not eating, and continue to rise until they peak at the 24-hour mark (to which they then decrease at the same rate that they rose). Most of this increase occurs within the 18-24 hour range though.
You could also try not eating at all for a few days. These hormones will spike up again around the same time, except that they will rise much higher, but for not as long. The exception to this is when you’re asleep though, HGH and testosterone should go up during then.
Another thing: cortisol gets a bad rep for being the ‘stress’ hormone with a lot of articles saying that cortisol increases fat storing. But the thing is, that’s only true when insulin is present. If cortisol levels are elevated when insulin is not present, then cortisol will actually increase lypolysis (fat burning) instead.
Furthermore, when fasting, adiponectin levels rise. Adiponectin is a hormone that also increases fat burning.
And no, you don’t have to worry about losing muscle. The test and HGH increase is to prevent that. You preserve ~4x as much muscle when fasting as when you just do a regular cutting diet.
If you’re gonna take a supplement, omega-3s and L-Carnitine are good. Omega-3s increase anabolic activity, and carnitine is basically a fat transporter (makes it easier for your body to actually burn the fat).
You’re welcome.