You have to put on bodyfat to gain muscle. Eat heavily for months and forget about how you look and gain bodyfat so you 'bulk up' and gain weight right?
Similarly, if you want to lose fat and cut up you will lose muscle, Right?
Not exactly, with correct nutrient timing and smart training you can literally bulk and cut at the same time and eliminate all the time wasting and frustration in your training programme.
It is a common misconception that you must gain fat to put on muscle and that you simply need to blindly eat plenty of calories all day every day to gain mass. Your body will only recover from a training session at the rate its capable of and there is little you can do about it besides get new genetics. Eating excess calories than you need to recover will definitely make you gain bodyfat. Ideally you would know exactly how much calories you need to recover from your training but not get fat but that's impossible. Or is it?
Say you trained hard and with a lot of volume Monday and Tuesday and you eat heavily (deservedly), then Wednesday you only perform a light workout, say some cardio or abs. Wouldn't it make sense to reduce calories a little and try and just eat 'adequate' amounts of calories and not eat nonsensical amounts? You could even take it a step further and have a big breakfast Wednesday that would aid recovery from the Tuesday session. Recover but then reduce portion sizes and calorie intake for the rest of the day.
Sounds simple doesn't it? It's surprising how many people do not follow this practice because it simply didn't enter their mind. In reality you are 'Micro-Cutting' and 'Micro Bulking'. Eliminating long 12 and 16 week bulking phases and torturous 12 week cutting phases.
There is an argument that you need to burn 3500 calories in order to burn a pound of fat and you have to be in a caloric deficit. And to gain muscle you need to take in extra calories. True, but it doesn't have to be weeks of surplus calories, only enough to recover from the training session, similarly, you can lose fat today and gain muscle tomorrow. Bulking phases and cutting up do not necessarily have to be these long and stressful periods of time.
Give it a try for a week or two and reap the benefits of this basic principle.