Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don't want to hear. Can I burn fat and build muscle? Can I build muscle and burn fat? The answer to both of these questions is yes, but they are different questions being asked. Both are body recomp, but the process and the systems that you need to achieve each are slightly different because we do need a primary focus when we want to see that fat loss and we want to gain lean muscle. And so I want to go over a few questions I've been getting about body recomp to really help you decide how to set up your lifestyle to achieve your goals. So the first thing that you need to really consider is which do I want more? Am I further away from my fat loss goal and need to get a little bit leaner even though I want to build muscle in the process?

(00:49):
Or am I pretty lean already and adding some muscle will help me look leaner. If you're lean already, you're going to want to focus on building muscle As you lose fat, if you have a little bit more weight to lose, I would say 15, 20 pounds or more, you're going to want to focus on losing fat first as you build muscle. But this is where how you design your workouts, how you design your nutritional changes really come into play because it's not simply about calories in versus out, which is one of the first questions I often get asked, should I be in a deficit or should I be in a surplus? How many calories do I need? And the simple answer is, your primary focus or your primary goal dictates which you'll need. If you are looking to lose fat as the primary focus, as you gain muscle, you will want a small deficit.

(01:32):
If you're looking to gain muscle as you lose fat, you're going to need a surplus because you're already pretty lean. Now, you might even find with both of these that you eat closer to maintenance. And when I say a small calorie deficit or small surplus, this might be only a hundred calories, plus or minus your maintenance calories. That small change goes a long way, and it's how you can make sure that you're not losing muscle or even building muscle while not gaining fat or even losing fat. And that's where macros also come into play. But you want to focus your calorie intake based on your primary goal. And again, keep it small, a hundred to 200 calories. I know we often hear 500 calories for a deficit, but that's just to lose weight really fast and that doesn't control for losing muscle. And again, this is where macros come into play.

(02:13):
So you might be thinking, now what macros do I need? And macro ratios will vary based on your activity level, based on your age, but there's one thing we all need to focus on, and that's protein. We want to make sure that we're getting at least 30% of our calories from protein. Now going higher than that can be really beneficial if we're trying to lose fat as we build and retainly muscle while in a deficit. Well, if we're in a surplus, we might not need to go above that 30 to 35% because we're getting enough of everything. And this is where another question I get asked comes into play too. Do I need carbs? Should I cut out all carbs to lose weight, to lose fat? And especially if your primary focus is building muscle, carbs are key carbs. Create that anabolic environment so that you can actually build and retain lean muscle more easily.

(02:55):
They give you the energy to push hard on your training sessions, which is super key to lean muscle. They are that immediate fuel which helps you preserve your lean muscle mass. So they're key even if you are really driving towards fat loss as your primary goal. But that's also why your protein might need to be lower when you're in that surplus and getting enough carbs to really protect that muscle building environment, protect your lean muscle because they are protein sparing. You don't need as much protein as well. So because you're in a deficit, protein has to go up even when you're consuming enough carbs just because you're not really getting enough of anything. But if you are in that surplus, your protein can be a little bit lower, but carbs are key. The more active you are. And if you are slashing your carbs lower and lower because you've heard about keto and all these different things to lose weight and you're super active, you might see thyroid issues popping up, hormonal imbalances popping up.

(03:40):
You might actually see your metabolism slow and stall because of it, because our carbs, while there aren't any essential carbs, like there are essential fats, like their essential amino acids are really essential for our body to function properly and make all the different things that it really needs so that we can have all the chemical processes in our body happen efficiently and effectively. Basically, if we aren't eating enough, if we aren't eating enough carbs, especially when we're super active, we can start to see the lights shut off in our house. And this is an analogy I actually stole from Michelle, but when we think about how we're fueling, the more fuel we're getting, the more we can turn on power, all the different lights in our house all at once, but the less fuel we're getting and the more our body says, Hey, I'm not getting enough.

(04:18):
I need to conserve energy, the more it's going to shut off some of those lights and that's going to happen and it's not a bad thing, but it's also why slashing our calories lower and lower if we want to lose fat as we even build or retainly muscle can be detrimental and it can impact our metabolic health. Now you might be thinking, okay, I'm trying to strive for body recon. I'm making some of these healthy changes and I'm gaining muscle, but I'm not losing fat. And fat loss was my primary focus. I created the calorie deficit. I went higher with my protein. Yes, I'm still eating carbs, but I'm training really hard. Why am I building muscle before I'm losing fat? And this might be because you're not actually in a calorie deficit from what you were consuming prior, and you might have to do a little reversing out.

(04:56):
You might actually have to increase your calories first to increase your maintenance and turn back on some of those light switches because what can happen is previous dieting attempts can turn off some of those lights and make us think that the switch is stuck and won't turn back on. So our body starts to function off of fewer calories. So if you're like, well, I'm eating 900 calories, that should be a deficit. Well, how long have you been eating 900 calories? Has your body adapted to this? And is it now functioning off of less because our body wants to survive? So it's going to downregulate what it needs to downregulate again, turn off those lights, which is where it can in order to make sure that it can still survive off the calories you're giving it. This is why we see our metabolism slow. It's why we might find that even as we're creating that calorie deficit after being at a maintenance period, we're gaining muscle before we're losing the fat because muscle will actually help improve our metabolic health, will help improve our hormone health, will help improve all the systems of our body.

(05:43):
So our body wants to add that muscle first before we lose fat. So even if you want to lose more fat, sometimes you have to go through that process of building muscle first. It kind of sucks when you want to see the opposite of the scale increasing when it is increasing, but you need to go through process. Next question I often get asked is, should I do cardio? And the answer is yes, cardio is key, but we don't want to just turn to cardio to lose weight faster because that can be catabolic, especially steady state cardio to our muscle mass. So this is where we have to be conscious that cardio isn't one thing and it also isn't cardio or strength. There's this continuum we can work along and there can be metabolic strength workouts. So things like 6, 12, 25 compound burner sets. They're not all the way over here in that slow one rep power lifting strength work.

(06:26):
They're more in the middle towards the strength side of the spectrum, but still along that continuum. So we want to be conscious in how we're designing our workouts because the more we do do different types of strength training with less rest, the more we're even steering over towards that cardio side. So adding more cardio on top of it can be detrimental and the less we're actually doing things to build that lean muscle and push that progression in terms of heavier loads, more advanced movements because we're fatiguing from not having the adequate rest. So we want to be conscious of where even our strength workouts are along that continuum. But in terms of cardio, walking is key. I don't care if you're trying to build muscle lose fat. If you're old, young, anything you should be walking. Walking is metabolically magical. It's a de-stressor. It helps your body maintain balance, it helps keeps us functionally cardiovascularly fit until our final day on this planet.

(07:10):
So walking is key. It is truly one of the underutilized tools that we have in our arsenal, especially for body recomp. But also off of that, while you might enjoy your steady state conditioning and do it, especially if you're competing in sports and you like that endurance training, it is not necessarily the best thing for an aesthetic goal, especially if you're trying to build B muscle, you're going to want to cut back on that for a period and focus more on your muscle gains with more strength work. However, different types of hit, different sprint training power work can all be included. The more you're focused on building muscle, the more you want to think sprints and power work only over hit. If you're working more on fat loss, you can include more hit. So hit isn't that full out a hundred percent intensity with the short intervals of work and longer rest, which sprints are power work is specifically very short intervals of work with very long intervals of rest because you need to be explicit for those movements that can be key during a muscle building phase to help with our recovery and also help with our strength and power and my body connection.

(08:05):
Now, sprints are a little different than power work in that you can sometimes do a little bit longer rest than work, but it's still that odd a hundred percent intensity. Again, HIIT is a little bit longer in the effort and output that we're giving, but also a little bit lower intensity than a full out sprint work. But think about the types of cardio you're including and use the diversity to work not only different energy systems and improve your cardiovascular health, but work on your conditioning, work on your metabolic health. Sprints are great for that. Help with your fat loss, but also help with your recovery times and my body connection for your workouts. But don't think cardio just has to be steady state training and it probably shouldn't, especially if muscle building is your primary focus. Now off of this a few more questions. Do I need to lift weights and isolation or compound moves?

(08:47):
No, you don't need to lift weights, but lifting weights does make it easier to build and retain lean muscle because it's a great and easy form of progression. Now you can challenge your muscle in other ways. So if you're just starting out, body weight training might be enough. And then there's also lots of different resistance tools. It doesn't just have to be dumbbells and barbells. As much as we can go heavy with those bands can be magical. We can use cables as well. There are lots of different tools. And then if you have only your own body weight, instead of saying, well, can't gain a muscle, you can, if it challenges you, it will change you. You just need to create that stimulus for muscle growth. And especially the more advanced and experience you are as an exerciser, the more you're going to have to seek out other ways besides just weights because we can't just keep lifting more and more and more.

(09:24):
We have a genetic sort of ceiling there. So you want to think about using tempos, ranges of motion, different types of postures and positions, unilateral versus bilateral. So one-sided versus two-sided moves. You want to use all these different forms of progression and that's where even compound moves and isolation moves can come into play. So I often get asked, which one should I be using? And if you're short on time and looking to lose fat, focus on compound moves. They are the best bang for your buck because they're going to help your burn More calories work more large muscle groups at once, lift more weight. They're usually moves that you can go a little bit harder on. However, if you are really trying to build muscle as you lose fat or you have a specifically stubborn area, isolation moves can come into play. And then there's so many ways you can combine these, and that also leads to us using different rep and set schemes, which can be very valuable.

(10:10):
Diversity is key. There's not one single best thing. Often it's using a lot of different tools and combining them into that system that makes the system best for you. Now the last thing I wanted to touch on, a question I often get asked is concerning the scale. And I will tell you that if you're working on recomp, the scale is not the best indicator that you are seeing progress because you can gain one pound of muscle and lose one pound of fat and not see any change. But you're going to look vastly different in terms of your recomp. So if the scale is not going down, even if you are trying for fat loss, do not get discouraged. Success leaves us clues and we have to measure success in so many different ways. Take body measurements. Take progress photos. Look at how you're sleeping. Look at how much energy you have while actually your lifts in your workouts.

(10:51):
All these are signs that the habits are working, but I can tell you that you can even end up losing fat as you gain muscle if that's your primary focus without the scale going down very quickly. And the more you seek for it to change, especially with that focus very fast, the more you're going to put yourself at risk for losing muscle. And especially if you're trying to gain muscle as your primary focus, you're going to have to embrace the scale might go up for you to ultimately look leaner. And as the scale even increases, you might have to increase your carbs, you might have to increase your calories. You can't just necessarily slash them down, which might be your tendency, especially if you just came off of fat loss phase. You don't want to just go do more cardio to try and burn it off. You have to even eat more as the scale is increasing if that is your focus to gain muscle. So hope these tips help to really help you embrace that body recomp. Remember to set your primary focus first before you then assess all these different factors to create the system right for you. Because if your primary focus is losing fat versus gaining muscle, while you can do both at the same time, you're going to set up your systems differently.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.