What do you need to eat to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time ?
Let me start off with: It is absolutely possible to lose fat while building muscle.
It's not the fastest way to build muscle, per se, but it's possible.
Resistance training.
If you have a quality program or routine set up, you don't need to change it.
If you don't figure out a good program that works for you. I happen to be a fan of full body workouts, hitting the gym heavy twice a week and doing endurance calisthenic work on the days out of the gym, and have had great results so far, this is known as daily undulating periodization, a useful training tool for strength building[1]
In any case keep lifting and lifting hard.
Cardiovascular training
You can do it if you want to, I'm a fan of it, for a number of reasons, not solely aesthetic reasons. If you do cardio, I suggest doing it moderate to high intensity for at least 30 minutes a session.
People that fail to shrink their fat while doing cardiovascular are likely failing in the next session.
Nutrition
Nutrition is key. It's the absolute most important part of muscle building and adipose tissue shrinkage.
There's plenty of evidence out there that shows it's possible to both lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.
One study dissected in bodybuilding[dot]com [2] talks about how they were able to, very effectively build up muscle and lower fat mass by drinking a carbohydrate drink mixed with amino acids.
Other people have seen great success utilizing a ketogenic diet[3]. There are 2 clinical studies I'd like to call out:
- Overfat police officers put on a low calorie diet with increased protein consumption and put through a resistance training routine lost 9 pounds of fat and gained 8 pounds of muscle in 3 months[4]
- Elite gymnasts put on a low calorie ketogenic diet while still performing elite gymnast training lost 2% body fat and increased their lean mass by nearly a pound...and these people were super lean and trained to begin with.[5]
Long story short, you can do a ketogenic diet, getting 75% calories from fat, 24% calories from protein, 1% from carbs while eating at a slight deficit and you can gain mass and shrink your calories.
You could also simply eat at a deficit while getting enough protein (.87 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass[6])
If you are still a teenager, I would not recommend eating at a deficit, however, unless you're under a doctor's supervision. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't recommend anyone go into keto or starting a fitness program without getting a physical first.
Another strategy I'd suggest is intermittent fasting.
Your body gets most of it's energy from fat while you're resting, under normal fasted conditions[7]. When you eat, your "metabolism" goes up while you digest your food, but at the same time your body will function on the newly acquired sugar, fat, and amino acids rather than the energy sources you already have.
In an intermittent fasting program, you get all the calories you need (2000, for a normal guy) within a certain window (like 8 hours). You then don't eat for 16. During the fasted time your adipose metabolism may actually increase as your body starts telling you: "it's time to find food!", plus your fat storage will be the preferred energy source during this time.[8]
This strategy is actually how Hugh Jackman got into shape for his role for wolverine: Heavy lifting and 8/16 intermittent fasting.
As you can tell from the post, most what you have to do is look at your diet. Resistance training is essential to get your muscles built, but to get the results you're looking for you have to eat properly.
Read the footnotes to get some ideas. This post is specific enough to get you started, but you should be able to figure out what works best for you from it.
One thing to always keep in mind with body recomposition: patience. Patience is key. Muscles build slowly, fat shrinks slowly. You'll see big changes quick. The biggest changes, though, take time. It could take years to get to where you want to be, what's important is that you're on the journey.
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