Confused about Losing Fat, but Gaining Muscle

I’m new to weight lifting. I have lost 80 pounds already mostly by running and watching what/how much I eat and am going for another 30 pounds, but have plateaued. I’ve read through some articles on this site for some tips. One being to gain muscle to help burn fat for longer periods of time. Since I’m trying to lose fat that means I must have a caloric deficit. From my understanding about gaining muscle is, please correct me if I am wrong, to gain muscle one must have a caloric surplus. So my question is how do I gain muscle, but be in a caloric deficit at the same time?

The simple answer is “you don’t”, but that said a solid resistance training program will still build up necessary physical qualities that will make fat loss easier.

Try this and just eat clean and you’ll be golden…
https://www.t-nation.com/workouts/3-complexes-for-rapid-female-fat-loss

(also well done on losing 80lbs, thats no joke!)

I was in the same boat as you 1 month ago plateaued at 180. Just keep at it do not go over your daily calorie count you can use a calorie calculator too give you a rough estimate of your daily calorie count to lose weight. Incorporate interval training the best I find is interval sprinting and add weight training to tone. Dont give up it will fall off. After a month I beat my plateau iam now 172 DO NOT GIVE UP.

Dont worry about building muscle your goal is to lose fat focus on one thing especially as a beginner its hard to juggle gaining muscle and losing fat. Focus on fat burning such as cardio/interval training and lift weight to give your body curves and definition. One important thing during a plateau start tricking your body do different workout. An example I was doing 20 minutes running and 10 minutes bike I was doing that for a while then when I hit my plateau instead of running I did interval training for 20 minutes and instead if the bike I skipped for 10 min.