Retaining mass for a hard gainer

[bigguns47]

Hi guys, I am, according to my trainer, what gym goers call a 'hard gainer'. I struggle to put on any mass and when I do, I will lose it if my training or diet slips. I have finally put on enough mass to be happy with but have incurred unsightly body fat as a result of a high calorie diet. My question is this, how can I reduce my body fat while retaining my hard earned mass? I don't want to change my diet if I don't have to, just coz I am afraid it will mean I lose muscle mass. Any advice would be appreciated.

[severe]

A lot of that mass is the fat.

How about limiting your eating of grains? Like cutting out bread?

I have no idea of your diet or your training so have no idea where to start.

[thatwaslight]

if you put on lots of fat then your not a hard gainer.

/thread

[severe]

if you put on lots of fat then your not a hard gainer.

/thread

[Ninja]

if you put on lots of fat then your not a hard gainer.

/thread

Strong agree.

[Luigi]

if you put on lots of fat then your not a hard gainer.

/thread

^dis

so basically OP isnt a hard gainer just wasnt eating very much and then ate a lot of crappy food and got fat.

[DBawce]

How bout increasing your cardio? Not sure if you doing any but might help if your not wanting to change your diet. There's a great article on here by Joseph Rakich (i think that's his name) about macro's might help shed some light...

[FellowshipOfTheRon]

How bout increasing your cardio? Not sure if you doing any but might help if your not wanting to change your diet. There's a great article on here by Joseph Rakich (i think that's his name) about macro's might help shed some light...

yup what he said.

1) forget categorising yourself in things like hardgainer/ecto/endo etc. forget about those and the excuses that come with them such as difficult to gain/lose fat/mass because 99.99% of the time they are bs.

2) find out how much you need to eat (BMR) and experiment from there depending on whether you want to continue bulking (generally implies more fat gains along with muscle gains) or cut for a while (burning fat, some muscle lost in process)

3) have you taken measurements to scope out how much of your new 'mass' is fat content and how much muscle content? if not, go take some fresh measurements now so you can monitor your progress in future.

to answer your question though, regarding retaining muscle while losing fat the key as always is to try your best to keep your body in that 'anabolic' or 'nitrogen positive' state.... some people supplement heavily with additional BCAA's on top of their protein shakes while going on cuts (and still lose muscle in the process), other's just acknowledge that there will be a bit of muscle loss and just do what they gotta do.

just remember that muscle memory is a great thing, even if you may lose some during the cut, it'll come right back when you're back to carbing up & bulkin up again.