Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I prefer to be honest rather than sell you a dream and have you end up dissapointed.
Well first of all your goal is not realistic.
Losing a significant amount of fat while building a significant amount of muscle tissue a the same time is not possible unless you are a genetic freak, are just starting out, or using lots of drugs (even pro bodybuilders do not really build muscle while dieting down).
Now, assuming that you REALLY are 20% body fat; I find that EVERYBODY underestimate how much fat they really carryā¦ those who think they are 20% normally are closer to 25%ā¦ but for the sake of the argument we will assume that you are indeed 20%.
It means that you have 18kg of fat mass and 72kg of lean mass (NOT muscleā¦ lean mass is everything that isnāt fatā¦ organs, skin, blood, water, glycogen, etc.).
In THEORY you might think that to get down to 10% you would need to lose 9kg. While it IS true that you need to lose 9kg of FAT to have 10% body fat, in reality to lose those 9kg you will in fact have to lose closer to 15-17kg . I find that for every kg of fat you lose, you normally drop 0.5kg from water, glycogen and intramuscular triglyceride. Thatās one of the reasons why people fail at getting super lean: they underestimate how much weight they need to lose to get lean and when they lose the weight they THINK they need to lose and they arenāt lean yet, they get discouraged.
So if you MAINTAIN the muscle mass you have at the moment you would need to drop down to about 74-75kg to be a TRUE 10% body fat.
Now letās look at the other side of the equation. You want to be 100kg at 10% body fat. This means that you would need to add 24-25kg of muscle!!! Letās be generous and say that you will likely store about 4-5kg more of glycogen, water, intramuscular triglycerides, etc. you still need to gain 20kg of muscle!!!
Most serious trainees do not do that in their lifetime (naturally)! Much less while dieting down.
So honestly I canāt give you what you seek because short of telling you to takes tons of anabolics nothing I say will not get you where you want to be.
What I can tell you is this:
STOP THINKING IN TERMS OF NUMBERS. Think in terms of look (since you are look driven, not performance driven). Focus on achieving the look you want, not chasing theoretical numbers.
This is from an article on my website:
UNDERESTIMATING HOW MUCH WEIGHT YOU NEED TO LOSE
āYeah, I have about 15lbs to lose to be near-contest shapeā
No, you donāt.
See, most people grossly underestimate how much fat they need to lose to get in truly excellent shape. There are several reasons for this
1- They guesstimate their body fat level. This is what pretty much everybody does. āIām 200lbs and about 15-16% body fatā. Well unless you have had yourself measured several times you canāt really know what 15, 10, 20 or 5% looks like on you. And letās face it, most of us donāt have an objective view of ourselves anyway. Well let me tell you this: In my 20 years of working as a coach, Iāve rarely seen someone be close to his real bodyfat percentage when they āguesstimateā it. Most are AT LEAST 5% higher than what they think they are.
Heck, few people know what a real 10% looks like (at a true 10% most people will have good abdominal definition for example), so how can they know if they are 12, 15 or 20%? They canāt.
Underestimating how much bodyfat you carry by 5%+ could make a difference of 10-20lbs (Iāll explain why in a moment) in how much weight you really need to lose to get in great shape.
2- They only think in terms of fat mass to lose. Letās say that they do get their bodyfat accurately measured. Iām talking DEXA, not calipers. Most caliper tests also severely underestimate bodyfat percentage (I was once measured at 4.1% and had at least 10-15lbs to lose to be in awesome shape). They will calculate how much fat mass they need to lose to get to their desired degree of leanness.
Letās say that someone is 200lbs at 13% bodyfat. And their goal is to get down to 8%. Simple math would tell them that they need to lose 5% bodyfat, or 10lbs. So, in their mind if they get down to 190 they will be 8% and ripped.
When they get down to 190 they find that they donāt look great at all. Why? Because when you lose weight you lose more than just the fat beneath your skin (the one that is measured). You do lose glycogen and a lot of water (water from fat stores, water from inside the muscles, water held subcutaneously) as well as intramuscular triglyceride (fat marbling your muscles). It is my experience from working with hundreds of people that for each pound of fat you lose, you will lose 0.5lbs of water. And that is not counting the initial 2-3lbs initial drop in weight from the lowered glycogen stores that happens when you start a fat loss diet.
In reality, our 200lbs guy would likely need to lose closer to 18 or even 20lbs to get down to 8%, maybe more.
Now can you imagine if someone does both mistakes? He underestimates his bodyfat percentage by 5% and does not consider the initial glycogen/water drop and the water loss that goes along with the fat loss? Our guy might think that he needs to lose 10lbs to get in great shape whereas he will really need to lose 25 or even 30lbs!
Sounds excessive? Let me give you four examples:
First example: About 12 years ago, a young guy came to me wanting to do his first bodybuilding competition. The guy was around 220lbs and solid, but not lean. The kind of thick physique you see a lot in gyms, a combination of fat and muscle. He told me that he wanted to compete as a heavyweight or at the top of the light heavyweight class (so around 195-205lbs). I looked at him and told him āto be in true contest shape you will need to drop down to around 176lbsā. Of course, he didnāt believe me. Well, a few months later at his contest he was ā¦ 177lbs and he won the overall at the show, beating bigger men. The guy looked okay when he started, you wouldnāt have called him fat. But he still had to lose around 40lbs to look great. In all fairness, had he lost only 25-30lbs he would have had a very good ābeach bodyā (not competition body), and thatās still a lot more than he thought he needed to lose.
Second example: An IFBB pro I worked with is 235-240 in the off-season. At that weight, he has solid abdominals, so he is not out of shape by any means. He last competed at a bodyweight of 205lbs. So even with abs and some vascularity, he still needed to lose 30-35lbs to be ripped, and that 30-35lbs has always been his dieting mark. When he competed in lighter weight classes, he had about the same amount of weight to lose before a contest, despite being in good āgym shapeā. When he competed at 187 he would go up to 220-222lbs, when he competed at 176 he would go up to 210-215lbs.
Third example: When I started my current diet for my photoshoot I was 221lbs. And that wasnāt a sloppy 221. I had decent abdominals, a bit blurry but you could see all of them. I also had good arm vascularity. At the moment Iām writing this article, Iām 196-198lbs and I estimate that I will be 192 for the shoot and it will be my best condition ever. That will represent a weight loss of close to 30lbs to be in great shape. At my last photoshoot (the black and white pics from my website) I was 202lbs. Iām much leaner this time around and have a better upper body.
Fourth example: My friend Stephane Aube, a great coach himself, is also doing the photoshoot with me. Stephane started his diet at 254lbs (he is 6ā2ā) and while it wasnāt his leanest ever he still had arm vascularity and visible abs. Well two weeks out of the shoot he is 229lbs and likely will be 225lbs at the photoshoot. Again, we are talking about a 30lbs weight lossā¦ starting from a decent condition.
In these four examples if we started out thinking āI need to lose 10-15lbs to be in great shapeā there is no way we would have gotten to the degree of leanness we needed to be.
I understand that not everybody wants to be in contest/photoshoot shape. But going from ānot in great shapeā to āwell definedā likely requires the same loss as for us going from āwell definedā to ārippedā.
The moral of the story is that you will have to lose a lot more weight than you think to get to the kind of leanness you are shooting for. Starting with a preconceived weight to reach will likely prevent you from reaching your goal, unless you are a seasoned competitive bodybuilder and know your body.
What happens is that most guys play the numbers game. They can āacceptā going from 205 ābulkyā to 190 āleanā. But when they reach 190 and they arenāt lean and realise that they will need to drop down to 175-180 to be remotely close to being lean they freak out. They donāt want to be āsmallā.
Since you are 20-25% body fat the first order of business is to get lean. And YES that means that you will get āsmallāā¦ not because you will lose muscle but because you carry much less muscle than you think. But if you stop the fat loss process because you feel small, you will NEVER get lean.
Once you get lean, THEN focus on building muscle while staying lean.
BTW you mentioned Paul Carterā¦ well did you know that when he is trying to get really lean Paul consumes less than 2000 calories per day? Do you know that John Meadows (who has more muscle per square inch than anybody I know) diets down at around 2200 calories, which is also about what Marc Dugdale eats to get leanerā¦ why would you (who have a lot less muscle) be able to get really lean at 3000 calories per day?