You want to build muscle and lose fat? Great!
Here are 7 steps to adjust your diet and workouts to focus on body recomposition…
Step 1: Determine your primary goal.
Yes, you can achieve changes in both your muscle mass and fat mass at the same time. And this ideally should be where your focus is if you want to look and feel your best.
But this is a slow process.
So stop searching for a fad diet or quick fix.
However, as much as we can do both at the same time, we need a singular primary focus.
Do you want to lose fat while retaining and building muscle? Or do you want to build muscle while not putting on fat or even losing it?
Distinguishing between the two is key to help you see the best results and strategically outline your calorie intake and macros.
To determine which is right for you…
If you are basically at your desired weight and near the leanness level you want? Then you want to focus on building muscle while losing fat.
However, if you have more weight to lose and want to look lean and defined while adding muscle to stay functionally fit as you get older, you may start with focusing on fat loss while building muscle.
The difference seems small but determining your primary focus will impact your calorie intake, the macros you use, and even how you include cardio in your routine.
But before you can make changes, you need to understand where you’re starting from to adjust off of.
Step 2: Start tracking.
If you’re already tracking, YAY!
You can jump to step 4 and 5 to adjust your protein and calories off of your current intake, although circle back to step 3 for your workouts.
If you aren’t yet tracking, you need to spend 7-14 days logging your current intake.
Not only is this eye opening as to the other changes we can make that will pay off but it also helps us get used to the habit of tracking.
Logging our food is a new habit for many of us and one we may even mentally be resistant to. It’s not exactly the most fun task ever.
But what gets measured gets managed.
We can also start to see the act of tracking not as restriction or judgement but just DATA off of which we can adjust.
The more we know our current lifestyle, the more we can evolve it vs trying to fit ourselves into a diet and exercise mold.
Because if we want recomp, we need to create habits we can be truly consistent with. And macros are going to matter.
But we need changes based off of what we are doing currently.
So just track. Get your average calories for a week or two. Look at your average protein, carbs and fats.
Understand the make up of your food and even how you feel with your current meals schedule and diet!
Step 3: Don’t go through the motions with your strength training.
Diet is key for fat loss, but your workouts are essential for building muscle.
No matter your primary focus, strength work should be your priority.
Too often we prioritize cardio or even turn our strength workouts into cardio sessions when we want to lean down.
While these can make us feel worked or burn more calories on our fitness trackers so that we feel like we’re working hard toward our goals, they can actually hinder our progress.
Stop cutting out rest between sets and instead focus on really maximizing and pushing with each rep you do.
Too little rest doesn’t allow you to truly challenge yourself with progression in moves and you’ll find your 100% intensity dips over the rounds.
Instead you want to feel ready to push the discomfort each round to the point you would have liked to stop a couple of reps before you did or used the weight right below what you used.
You need the rest you planned in not necessarily because you’re out of breath but because you’ve pushed your muscles and want to go just as heavy the next round or even heavier.
And if you’re always hitting the top of the rep range you’ve outlined, go heavier.
The more advanced you are, the longer you’ve been training, the harder it is to build muscle.
You’ve simply adapted to more.
So you need to push progression in different ways. Don’t get into a rut doing the same moves over and over and over again or only progress exercises in one way.
Use different training techniques and workout designs, vary postures and positions. Combine tools and change up tempos.
Combine compound and isolation moves in your routine.
Use isolation moves specifically for those stubborn areas to work muscles closer to failure and create more volume leading to better gains!
Step 4: Center your meals on protein.
After tracking your baseline, you now want to start by adjusting your protein.
If you want to lose fat as you gain muscle, your goal will be 40%-45% of your calories coming from protein.
Not only can this start to create that deficit because of the energy expended to digest protein, but it will also help protect your lean muscle as you do potentially create more of a deficit to lose fat as you progress.
And the more of a deficit we are in, the greater our protein demands become to protect our lean muscle mass.
Especially as we get older and are less able to utilize protein as efficiently and struggle more to build and retain lean muscle mass because our hormone levels aren’t as optimal, high protein is key!
But more protein isn’t always the answer as much as I’m a huge protein advocate.
If you want to build muscle as you lose fat, your protein will be lower than when you’re in a deficit.
It may be in that 30-40% range.
You may start toward the top of that range and drop it as you increase your calories from your current maintenance.
In that surplus 30-35% of our calories coming from protein can be more than enough.
As much as protein is key so are carbs.
Carbs provide immediate fuel for our workouts to push harder and create that progression for growth and are also protein sparring.
Carbs help us utilize protein more efficiently and create that anabolic environment for growth.
Because we aren’t depleted and are getting more than enough calories to support all bodily functions and tissue repair, our protein requirements are lower than when we are in a deficit.
But no matter your primary focus, first adjust your protein intake. Then if muscle building is your primary focus, pay attention to those carbs, keeping them above 30% of your calories.
Step 5: Set your calories.
Take a couple of weeks to settle in with your new protein intake.
If you’re maintaining your weight at this calorie intake and seeing inches either increase in areas you want to build muscle or be lost in areas you want to lose fat, don’t change your calories just yet.
The macros alone have had an impact.
But then create that small deficit or surplus.
Too often we cut our calories super low which backfires in muscle being lost or we add a huge increase and ultimately just gain more fat.
If you want to lose fat while gaining muscle, drop your calories by 100 to start. While you can go as big as 500 calories into a deficit, that 500 calorie drop is EXTREME.
If you do that, do that strategically as a mini cut for a very short time or you are going to fight against your body recomp goals.
If you want to build muscle while losing fat, add 100 calories, although if you are super active, 300-400 can be more aggressive.
The more you make small changes and allow your body to adjust, the better your results will be.
Make the 100 calorie change then maintain that for a few weeks before adjusting further.
This checkpoint or end date every 2-3 weeks can help you trust the process but also adjust as your body’s needs will shift or even you adjust workouts.
As you build muscle, you may find you need to eat more to continue progressing and what once was a small deficit has even become “too big,” but more on this in Step 7.
Step 6: Adjust your cardio.
Plain and simple, strength workouts are the priority.
Focus on building strength and muscle in your training and you’ll see results.
But that doesn’t mean cardio isn’t valuable for your health and can’t be used strategically to help expedite results.
It also doesn’t mean you can’t include it if you love your long rides or runs BUT you need to know the cost of everything to even adjust your nutrition to match.
Too often we turn to cardio to burn more calories which fights against our body composition goals. So if you don’t enjoy the cardio but think you need to do it to lose fat, you don’t.
When it comes to optimizing your cardio for body recomp, walking should be your main form of cardio.
It isn’t catabolic, allows you to recover for future sessions to lift heavy and build muscle, helps you keep your metabolic rate higher and can actually be a stress reliever to maintain better hormonal balance.
If you do it post workout, it can even help you better utilize the mobilized fatty acids from the areas around what you worked.
So if you have a stubborn area, like belly fat you really fighting, you may include your walks on workouts where you worked your core more intensively. While we can’t spot reduce an area with a bazillion crunches, we do mobilize more fatty acids from areas around the muscles we worked.
Walking just helps you then utilize them!
But focus your cardio on walking for that aerobic base and body recomp.
Very short sprint sessions can also be included to help with recovery and even promote optimal conditioning. Be conscious though that you aren’t creating too great a calorie deficit while including these or use them strategically when building muscle as your main focus.
And if you’re focused on building muscle, consider sprints that are short with 3-5 times the rest especially over more 20 on, 10 off type interval training protocols you may use when fat loss is the main focus.
Step 7: Ditch the scale.
Body recomp means often not seeing the scale change quickly or even seeing the opposite of what we think should be happening happen.
If you’ve used the scale in the past as your only measure of progress, it has probably prevented you from implementing these habits in the way that you needed.
Because the scale may not change and recomp can be happening.
The scale may increase, and you may be seeing true fat loss and muscle gains. And then you may even need to be eating more.
But if you were only judging based on the scale, when seeing “no progress” or “backward progress,” you may cut calories lower, even doing the opposite of what you actually need.
So if you’re serious about recomp, while you can still track on the scale, focus on measurements and progress photos. Those will tell you far more. And for 5 signs you’re burning fat not muscle, I’ve linked to another video in the video description!
Because how we track progress is key to us maintaining the habits we need long enough to truly see results snowball.
Remember body recomp is a slow process. Focus on your consistency in those habit change and give results time to build!
Ready to build your leanest, strongest body ever with a custom program and clear mentorship in what you need?
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