A lot of people believe that you can't burn fat and gain muscle at the same time. I myself have been victim to this line of thought. The line of thought is the two are mutually exclusive; you need a excess amount of calories to build muscle and you need a deficit of calories to burn fat.

But it is entirely possible to do both at the time!

The key is to avoid normal training. No long slow cardio, no lifting light weights for high reps, none of that! You have to lift heavy weights, first of all, if you ever want to build muscle. Secondly, you have to keep your reps at or below 10. Once you go over 10 reps, you begin working out your slow twitch muscle fibers, which don't have much potential to grow.

Lifting heavy forces your body to spark new muscle growth. It wants to adapt to the new stresses your putting on it. Lift heavy weights 3 times a week and don't lift more than that because you'll just hold yourself back.

The second key to burn fat and gain muscle at the same time that I already touched upon is completely turning your cardio workouts upside down. We're going to do short but incredibly intense interval workouts. Basically, you do 30 seconds of very intense exercises like sprinting, punching a heavy bag, jumping rope, whatever you like. But understand, this is a maximum effort for those 30 seconds. You should not be able to talk whatsoever.

After, take a 1 minute rest and repeat up to 7 more times for a total of 8. Interval workouts work your muscles similarly to resistance training, forcing them to become bigger and stronger in very short periods of time. There have been tons of studies done on interval workouts vs regular cardio workouts, and intervals always come out on top, hands down. They burn tons of fat and they also increase cardiovascular fitness even better than "normal" cardio.

Even better is they help preserve muscle mass. Just think of a competition sprinter. Don't they have very nice bodies?

If you want to build muscle and burn fat at the same time, start lifting with heavy weights 3 times a week and add 1 or 2 days of interval training into your mix. The pounds will literally just start melting from your body so fast that you won't even recognize the person staring back at you from the mirror.