I think people don't understand that it is physically imposable to loose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Well maybe not imposable but pretty close to it.
Let me try to explain. You can not build muscle wile maintaining a calorie deficit. It just doesn't work. Try to keep a fire going with out fuel. It doesn't happen.
I think that it would be fair to say that all body builders will ZIG ZAG their diets.
MASS, you gain 20 lbs. Now with the way or wonderful bodies work, you would be lucky if 10 pounds of that was pure lean mass. The other ten pounds will be water, glycogen and fat.
Diet, The goal here is to maintain all of the mass you worked so hard to gain.
When you deplete you body of the calories it was use to, you will tap into stored energy."FAT".... Here is the bad news. Your body will give up fat fairly easy at first, then things slow down and muscle will be used.
You lose 10 pounds. 10 pounds of that will be fat and 5 pounds of it muscle.
Dont think I'm dumb cause the math isn't adding up. You will end up with a lower total BF% than you started with.
Every thing is good in Body Building Land.
You have just lost a total of 15 pounds of fat and water. And guess what, you put on 5 REAL pounds of mass.
This is why you hear us talking about doing a mass building cycle, an intermediate cycle and finally our cutting cycles.
Now you do it all over again. Granted, I used 20lbs of mass as a goal number. This number is irrelevant. A guy could gain 60lbs with a longer bulking cycle. Chances are that with the more weight you gain, the more water and fat you put on as well.
I think that if a guy could put on 20-30 lbs of quality lean mass in a year, he could consider that exceptional. 15-20 is more realistic.
Now, to explain my comment about pretty close to imposable.
Take a person who is brand new to working out and dieting. This person will often times find themselves putting on muscle fairly easy. This new mass can increase your metabolism enough to start burning fat. This will only last so long before your body puts a stop to this. This is when you plattoe. You either have to increase your calorie intake to maintain the new muscle, or start to loose it..