EDIT: It's hilarious that everyone here decided this is bro science. I essentially summarized modern periodization theory for hypertrophy out of Principles and Practice of Resistance Training, and diet out of a couple of sports nutrition textbooks. So I wonder what you think isn't bro science, because this is, literally, the actual fucking science.

TL;DR: Bulk/cut while training hard, and you'll make some progress. Everything else here is to maximize that progress. Read the first paragraph of every section to get what matters the most.

Still TL;DR! Where is the training program? Not here, because I don't know your schedule, skills, equipment, and preferences. If you understand the principles here, you will be able to put together your own program, or take a cookie-cutter program and make it work better for you.

Diet and Training Guide for Getting Jacked and Lean ASAP

Audience

  • This is for relative newbies to muscle gain and fat loss. If you're unsure whether "all calories are the same" (whatever the hell that means), or if squatting 3x5 and drinking a gallon of milk a day is the best advice you have received so far, read on.

Prerequisite

  • Be healthy. If you have an existing medical condition, listen to your doctor first, not general fitness advice, because what is good for healthy persons can kill you. Don't be stupid.

Basics

  • So you want to gain muscle and lose fat. Despite what clickbait ads will tell you, trying to do both at the same time while staying at the same total body weight is glacially slow if at all possible, so you will be doing one at a time.

  • The plan is to alternate between phases of putting on weight (bulking) and losing weight (cutting), while also lifting throughout. Your body puts on muscle and some fat when you gain weight, and it loses fat and some muscle while you lose weight. Without lifting, they cancel out and you get the common yo-yo dieting with no progress. Training the muscles with resistance, however, shifts the muscle-to-fat balance in your favor during both phases, leaving you with more muscle (jacked!) and less fat (lean!) at the end of the cycle.

Diet

Calorie Balance

  • By definition, you must be gaining weight during the bulking phase, and losing weight in the cutting phase, which is physically up to how many calories you are eating vs. burning in a given day – “Calories In vs. Calories Out.”

  • Your body burns a certain amount of calories just by doing nothing, just to stay alive, which is your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). All of your physical activity adds on to that to make up your Today Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). A TDEE calculator will give you a rough estimate based on how active you generally are, though you’ll need to adjust that to yourself with experience, and also for gym days vs. rest days etc.

  • So that’s what you’re burning. What you’re eating, you will have to count, to the best of your efforts. You’ll be reading labels, looking foods up online, and eventually get better at ballparking calories and macronutrients visually.

  • Eat enough total calories to be gaining or losing 1-2 lbs/week. A deficit or surplus of 500 calories/day is about 1 lb/week. Err on the slower side; fast changes will gain more fat and lose more muscle.

  • Remember that both ends of the calorie equation are rough estimates, and what matters is your actual progress. If you are not gaining as planned, you need to eat more. If you are not losing as planned, you simply need to eat less, regardless of how your calorie numbers add up on paper.

  • Also, remember that water weight is a huge confounding factor. Water retention from high sodium and carbohydrates can throw off your body weight for days, even though it has no bearing on muscle or fat. To avoid letting this mess with your head, weigh yourself only 2-3 times a week, at the same time of day. Stay the course, and make gradual changes according to weekly trends, instead of reacting to daily changes.

Macronutrients

  • Eat enough protein every day, year round. Shoot for 0.8-1g per lb. of body weight. Err on the high side while cutting, but more is a waste. Spread out your protein intake evenly over 3-6 meals/day.

  • When your meal doesn’t have enough protein, whey protein powder is your friend. Ideally, have a casein shake before bed so you get slow-digesting protein through the night.

  • Carbohydrates fuel your workouts, so you’ll want some, ideally before/during/after your workouts. On workout days, shoot for 1.5g per lb. of body weight, (±50% depending on how brutal your workout is). You don’t necessarily need any carbs on rest days.

  • Your body also needs some dietary fat for healthy functioning, including mechanisms of muscle gain and fat loss. Get a minimum of 0.1g per lb. of body weight every day to cover your bases.

  • Protein and carbs have 4 Cal/g, and dietary fats have 9 Cal/g. The macronutrient targets above add up to a chunk (sometimes all) of your daily calorie intake budget. If there is room for additional calories, it is mostly a matter of choice whether to fill it from protein, carbs, or fats. That said, excess carb consumption over long periods interferes with insulin sensitivity, making fat gain more likely and risking diabetes, and excess protein (although not found to be harmful in healthy people) is useless, expensive, and not nearly as tasty and satiating as dietary fats. There is no big downside to getting your planned extra calories from fats.

  • The fourth source of calories is alcohol (7 Cal/g), which slows down muscle synthesis, prevents fat loss, and decreases sleep quality, so you should drink as little as possible while bulking or cutting if you want the best results.

Planning Your Diet Phases

  • Bulk or cut for 1-3 month phases at a time. Don't keep bulking once you have too much fat (and don't keep cutting when you're already too lean, though that’s far less common). Fat gain becomes faster as you get too fat. If your abs are completely invisible, you probably have bulked too far.

  • When switching from bulking to cutting in particular, take a month of maintenance and stay at the same weight. Letting the new muscle cells “settle” for a while makes them less likely to be lost during the upcoming cutting phase.

  • If everything goes according to plan, you can expect equal amounts of muscle and fat gain while bulking, and almost no muscle loss while cutting. (Notice how muscle gain is twice as slow as fat loss, even under the best circumstances.)

Training

Volume

  • Training volume (total weight x reps x sets done) is the single biggest driver of muscle synthesis and preservation. Popular strength programs like Starting Strength, StrongLifts 5x5, etc. are good for building a basic strength base and learning the big lifts, but they are inadequate for volume and will leave much physique progress on the table while gaining or losing weight.

  • Train like a bodybuilder (6-12 reps/set, with weights you could do 1-3 reps more with) whether bulking or cutting. Save those heavier strength-building 5-rep sets for the maintenance periods.

  • To maximize volume on any program, do as many sets as you can handle per exercise. Start with 2-3 sets each, add a set every week or two, until lifts in the next workout start to suffer, and then stay just under that. Re-calibrate when changing up diet or training. It will be different for different exercises, too.

  • If you're getting less than 15 sets/week per muscle group (counting compound movement sets also for the smaller muscle groups; e.g. dumbbell bench press for chest and also triceps) as your maximum, you're either very new or not really at your maximum.

  • Less importantly, try to gradually increase the weights over time as well, especially while bulking. If the weight jumps are large (e.g. on dumbbells), use double progression, where you start with 8 reps at a certain weight, add a rep or two every week, and after 12 reps aren’t hard, add weight and go back to 8 reps. Adding a rep is equivalent to adding about 4% weight.

Recovery

  • Training itself is destructive. The recovery period between training sessions is when all the good things happen, where the body builds muscle tissue for repairs, and a little more in anticipation of future damage. To reap the benefits of your training, your recovery game must be on point.

  • The biggest factor affecting recovery is sleep. Strive to get 8-9 hours of sleep every night. If you are not doing this, you are wasting your training, and missing out on your body’s natural growth hormone production.

  • You can’t train balls-to-the-wall all the time. Take a deload week every 4-5 weeks, doing half the weights for half the sets of a normal week, but ONLY IF you actually have been training near your maximum volume (otherwise it's a waste of time). During deload weeks, limit weight gain/loss to no more than 1 lb/week.

  • The week before the deload should be the most brutal, with the highest number of sets, that you wouldn’t be able to do for another week. After the deload, start relatively easy again, and ramp up until the next deload. Over time, this pattern of progressive overreaching will increase the volume you can handle, so you will be able to train harder. And that’s important, because the name of the muscle game is diminishing returns. You will need to train harder, or you will soon stop making progress.

Frequency

  • You should be training at least 3, ideally 4 days/week. Body part split programs where you train each muscle group once a week are not nearly enough for all but very advanced lifters. You should train each muscle group as often as it can recover by its next workout.

  • Most beginner-to-intermediate lifters can train legs 2-3 times, chest/back 3-4 times, shoulders/arms/abs/calves 4+ times per week. Space them out, obviously: twice per week is not Saturday-Sunday.

  • The stronger you get, the heavier the weights, and the longer your muscles will need to recover, so frequency will decrease in the long term.

Exercise Selection

  • Pick 1-2 exercises per muscle group for each training day, and distribute your sets. You can choose different exercises for different days, or repeat the same 2 triceps exercises on every triceps day.

  • If you're doing less than 15 total sets/week per muscle group (counting compound movement sets also for the smaller muscle groups; e.g. dumbbell bench press for chest and also triceps) you're either very new or not really training at your maximum.

  • Compound free-weight exercises (e.g. squat, deadlift, bench press, pull-ups) are better than machines and other muscle isolation exercises, so it pays to learn them in the long run. HOWEVER, heavy barbell movements are dangerous with bad form, and hard to learn without good coaching (less than 1% of gym personal trainers I've met know how to squat properly, let alone how to coach it). Unless you're willing to put in the time and effort to learn, you'll be safer and probably get better results with leg machines and dumbbells. (I'm a competitive powerlifter, I live and breathe the barbell movements, but for a lone newbie looking to put on leg mass ASAP, I'd take a full-range high-rep leg press over a too heavy knock-kneed quarter-squat any day.)

  • To keep things from getting stale, change up your exercises every month or so. Don't do the same movements for six months straight, and don't change them every single week.

Cardio

  • Some cardio is good for your heart health (hence the name), but you don’t need cardio to get jacked or lean.

  • Some light cardio might be useful for increasing calorie expenditure if you’re having trouble staying on track near the end of a deep cut, but you risk muscle loss if you overdo it.

Sample 8-month Plan

You have 14% body fat at 150 lbs (21 fat, 129 lean). You decide to get leaner first, down to 10%.

You start with a cut for 6 weeks at a careful 1.2 lbs the first 5 weeks, and at 1 lb during the 6th deload week, losing 7 lbs total, successfully all from fat, down to 10% at 143 lbs (14 fat, 129 lean).

Your muscles primed for growth, you immediately start on a bulk for 15 weeks (three 5-week cycles at even higher volume, every 5th week a deload), putting on a steady 1.5 lb/week. You’re up 22 lbs. by mid-December, half of it muscle, to 15% body fat at 165 lbs (25 fat, 140 lean).

You maintain for 4 weeks (3 weeks of lower-volume heavier 5-rep training, 4th week deload) at 165 lbs.

Then you start another cut for 10 weeks (two 5-week high-volume cycles, every every 5th week a deload), at an average 1.2 lb/week (gradually slowing from 1.5 to 1 as you get leaner) to minimize the risk of muscle loss. If you did everything right and lost all 12 lbs. from fat and no muscle, you are now a ripped 8.5% body fat at 153 lbs, with 11 lbs more muscle than before -- an excellent result, and very achievable for a dedicated beginner.

Congratulations! You can now maintain for a while (enjoy summer, etc.), or start bulking again right away.