Anybody used a workout plan that both helps lose weight and gain muscle? I'm trying to join the Marines but I can't until I lose about 10 lbs but I also want to be building up muscle because the training is physically grueling and I want to be as prepared as possible. I'm trying to be ready as soon as possible and have already lost about 20 lbs but have since hit a slump and I'm stuck at my current weight. Any advice would be appreciated.
Usually gaining muscle and losing weight don't happen simultaneously, no. Unless you are really overweight, of course, in which case I guess it would be possible. How about not gaining muscle, but keeping whatever you already have right now? Losing 10 lbs will probably help you physically as well, as that will be less weight for your body to carry, so if you already have a fair amount of muscle, you should probably be fine.
?? ? Losing weight, maybe, but losing bodyfat while simultaneously gaining muscle isn't that hard. Just eat less than your daily energy expenditure while also doing resistance exercise and getting sufficient protein intake. It is easier to do one or the other in isolation, but it's certainly not impossible to do both.
The reason that you are having more trouble losing weight is that you get diminishing returns. The more weight you lose, the less your maintaince caloric intake has to be, and therefore, the greater the caloric deficit you must have to lose weight. That's why very overweight people can lose like 50-100 pounds with dietary changes and moderate activity, but a person near her ideal weight must work very hard to lose, say 10 pounds. If you are on a diet, you will lose muscle mass unless you do tension weight training. If you're trying to lose weight and gain mass at the same time, those are two partially conflicting goals. Tension tends to abuse the muscles, and you have to spend time to recover--more time if you're dieting, because the reduced caloric intake will increase your recovery time. You can go for cardiovascular training and metabolic strength training for weight-loss. But the bottom line is, if you want to avoid losing muscle (or even gain it) on a diet, you will have to maintain high intensity weight training (though not necessarily volume). Also, I think it's really cool that you have the spirit of a warrior. I wish you well in basic.
Losing bodyfat and gaining muscle is pretty easy, yeah. But OP wanted to lose weight because she has to for the marine. Muscle weighs more than fat, so gaining muscle and losing weight is quite a hard thing to accomplish. I don't think I said anything weird?
You can reasonably look to gain about 4kg-5kg of muscle mass in a year, or about ~80g a week, but you can lose about 500g of bodyfat a week without too much difficulty. That still gives a drop of over 400g a week while still gaining muscle and improving strength. Nothing you said was wrong, just in combination could perhaps give the wrong idea.
Ah, ok. ^ Yeah, that's pretty much correct, I guess. That's why I also mentioned being overweight; if you're overweight you can easily lose a lot of weight worth of bodyfat a week. However, if you're already of a healthy weight, it goes significantly slower than the rates you mention. So to the OP, if you don't get fast results, don't think you're doing anything wrong. You're actually doing it right.
The goal in a fitness regime is not to lose weight. The goal is to trade weight from fat for weight from muscle. So, you would see muscle gains in your arms (which adds weight) but loss of fat deposits from your legs and waist (which lowers weight). If you're interested in getting fit for the military, there are intensive exercise classes available at the better gyms that will put you through a full-body cardio workout (similar to P90X or Insanity). It's the closest approximation to what boot camp is like.