Hello, I'm Monica Reinagel and you are listening to the Nutrition Diva podcast Welcome.

Joseph recently emailed me with a very common dilemma.

He says, we're told that we need to reduce calories if we want to lose fat and we need

to eat more if we want to gain muscle.

So what's the best diet strategy if I'm trying to do both at the same time?

The answer to this question depends on whether you're primarily interested in changing

your body weight or your body composition because the two are not the same thing.

Changing your body weight requires changing the balance between how many calories you take

in and how many calories you burn.

So if you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you take in.

If you want to gain weight, you have to take in more calories than you burn.

And obviously, if you want to stay the same, then you're looking for an equilibrium between

calories in and calories out.

Now there are lots of different ways to change the balance between calories in and

calories out.

You can adjust calories in by changing what and how much you eat.

You can adjust calories out by changing how much you exercise and move around during the

day.

And you can adjust both at the same time, hopefully, in opposite directions.

Now, a lot of people also try to affect the calories out part of the equation by trying

to manipulate their metabolism through various means, trying to burn more calories by doing

things like drinking green tea or vinegar or eating more protein or fewer carbs or taking

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