I’m looking to gain weight, however at the same time I want to lose fat. There are two other girls my height and I am the lightest of three of us. Girl A is 6 lbs heavier, Girl B has 14 lbs on me. I’m already at the heavier end of healthy for my height, but on any given day girl A can beat me, and once girl B gets her endurance up, she’ll be kicking both our asses. I know weight isn’t everything in erg times but it surely does help. Do you have any advice?

So if I understand you correctly, what you’re aiming for is not so much about gaining weight as it is about building muscle. It’s not the amount of weight that you’re carrying that helps you on the erg, rather it’s the amount of muscle mass you have that allows you to generate increased amounts of power. Not knowing anything about you and the other two girls, my guess is that’s probably where they’ve got you beat right now or at the very least, it’s playing a part.

When you’re trying to burn fat at the same time, what most people tend to do is focus on burning fat first and building muscle second before transitioning to the opposite once they’ve got their body fat where they want it. To do that you’ll need to do a couple basic things.

Determine the number of calories you need

The simplest way to do this is to just use one of the calorie calculator things online. My suggestion though would be to do it three or four times with separate calculators and then take the average since they don’t always use the same formulas, meaning you could see differences of 150-200 calories between them. Make sure the ones you use have a thing that lets you choose your activity level since that plays a pretty big part in how much fuel you need to consume. If burning fat is your priority then you’ll need to eat at a deficit in order to eliminate the excess calories, meaning 300-500ish calories less than what it says you need. This can easily be done though by swapping out certain foods for healthier options and exercising (which shouldn’t be hard considering you’re probably training right now).

Eat smarter

Plain and simple, you lose weight by decreasing the amount of calories going in and increasing what’s going out. The general population would say that all you need to do then is eat less food (2/3 of the general population is also obese so … there’s that) but what would be more beneficial, especially for an athlete, is to just be smarter about the foods you’re eating so that even though you’re ingesting fewer calories, you’re maximizing the nutritional benefits that you’re getting. “Eating less” is a dumb concept because you could easily say “Oh, I’m only going to eat half the box of Thin Mints for lunch today instead of the whole box.” and then change nothing else about your diet. Yea, you’re eating less but if you changed nothing else it’s probably not going to make that much of a difference. You have to consciously think about the foods you eat, think about what you could eliminate and replace with healthier options, and then actually commit to doing it. The hardest part is committing but if you go about it the right away, it shouldn’t be a hard transition to make. For example, make simple switches like swapping out white bread for whole grain, regular yogurt for Chobani, bagels for English muffins, etc. The most important thing is to make sure you’re still getting all the nutrients you need (especially protein!) so that your health and/or training isn’t adversely effected.

Exercise

Obviously, right? Cardio-based workouts (like erging, biking, running, etc. (aka steady state)) will aid in burning fat while strength-based workouts (weight lifting/training) will aid in developing muscle. Since the initial focus is on burning fat, there should be a higher cardio:strength ratio when it comes to your workouts at the beginning but you’ll eventually want to transition that after a couple of weeks so that you’re doing more strength workouts and working towards increasing your muscle mass.

Eventually you’ll hit a plateau both with your diet (it’s not really a diet, per se, but you know what I mean) and workouts, which is completely normal, and you’ll have to readjust everything to match that.