Body Recomposition Tips
THE REAL SECRET TO LOSING WEIGHT AND GAINING MUSCLE
- What You Need To Know
- Body recomposition is based primarily on diet.
- The key is to take in more calories some days than others.
- Calorie formulas should only be used as a starting point. Make changes.
"It is possible to achieve recomposition, but it's mostly a matter of diet."
When I’m not being a smart ass, I ask the client to hone in on the question a little bit more. In order to tell you what or how much you should eat, you need to figure out the goal: fat loss or muscle gain?
That brings us to problem number two: most people want both.
More to the point, most people don’t want to deal with the ramifications of selecting one over the other. If they go on a traditional “bulking” diet for gaining muscle, they’ll put on fat.
That’s not fun for anyone. Conversely, if they try to diet down to get lean, they run the risk of losing hard-earned muscle.
In either instance, it’s a losing proposition.
Which brings us to problem number three: Most people want to lose fat while gaining muscle, but experience has shown them that it’s impossible -- because they’ve been going about it all wrong.
You see, body recomposition (the term we use for simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain) isn’t impossible; it’s just tricky. The reason most people screw it up is because they approach the goal primarily through training, which isn’t the best way. Attempting to train for muscle gain a few days a week and then do cardio for fat loss a few days per week won’t work -- unless you adjust your diet for that.
The truth is, it is possible to achieve recomposition, but it’s mostly a matter of diet.
But how?
In order to allow for muscle gain, you need to eat above your energy needs. On the opposite side of that coin, losing fat requires that you eat less than your caloric needs.
So, how do we reconcile these things when they seem to be diametrically opposed?
It’s simple: We look at caloric needs in terms of individual days, rather than as a more universal measurement.
Put another way, on some days you take in more calories, and in some less -- all determined by your activity level. That activity, of course, is weight training.
To use fitness parlance, we’re talking about something called cycling. In this case, we’re talking about carb cycling and calorie cycling, which means that on days you train with weights, you take in more calories and carbs, and on “off” days, you take in less. “Off” days are days where you do cardio (but no weights) or don’t train at all.
Of course, in order to make use of that, you first have to know how to determine your calorie needs, for both training and non-training days.
And when it comes to determining caloric needs, we look at calorie formulas.
First, we need to establish one very important fact: all calorie formulas -- no matter who gives them to you, or how great they look on paper -- are ultimately a crapshoot. That is, certainly such formulas will be generally applicable, but anyone who tries to tell you they know exactly how many calories you need to eat at any time, ever, is either lying or simply doesn’t realize how ridiculous they are. Of course, some formulas are better than others, but even the best ones should mainly serve as a jumping off point from which you can make changes.Got it?
Great.
Now that we’ve established that, let’s go further and acknowledge that calorie formulas come in all shapes and sizes. And, like anything else, some are better than others.
The most basic formulas simply ask you to take your weight and multiply it by an integer between 12 and 16. According to these formulas, that gives you the amount of calories you should be eating. Subtract a few for weight loss, add a few for muscle. The problem with such a calculation is that it allows for no differentiation between fat and muscle.
The obvious problem there is that someone who weights 200 pounds at 10% body fat will have vastly different energy needs than someone who weighs 200 pounds at 30% body fat. The first person has 180 pounds of lean body mass (LBM) and 20 pounds of fat, whereas the second has 140 pounds of LBM and 60 pounds of fat. In order to reach their respective goals, they’ll need to eat differently.
So, it’s pretty obvious that simple formulas like that aren’t really very beneficial in the long run.
More advanced formulas base calculations on lean body mass, rather than just on weight. Figure out the clients’ LBM, and multiply it by a number, usually 16.
This is a lot better, obviously. Using the example from above, the calorie needs of those 200-pound clients would be different, perhaps vastly.
It’s better, but it’s not perfect. And that’s because such formulas are only using one part of a person’s body composition to determine their energy needs: their lean body mass. But not their fat.
This is a huge oversight. People of similar LBM might have very different calorie needs, based on their levels of leanness.
For example, a 200-pound client at 10% body fat has 180 pounds of lean mass. Now let’s look at a 275-pound client with 35% body fat. He’s got 178.75 pounds of lean mass
Great.
Now that we’ve established that, let’s go further and acknowledge that calorie formulas come in all shapes and sizes. And, like anything else, some are better than others.
The most basic formulas simply ask you to take your weight and multiply it by an integer between 12 and 16. According to these formulas, that gives you the amount of calories you should be eating. Subtract a few for weight loss, add a few for muscle. The problem with such a calculation is that it allows for no differentiation between fat and muscle.
The obvious problem there is that someone who weights 200 pounds at 10% body fat will have vastly different energy needs than someone who weighs 200 pounds at 30% body fat. The first person has 180 pounds of lean body mass (LBM) and 20 pounds of fat, whereas the second has 140 pounds of LBM and 60 pounds of fat. In order to reach their respective goals, they’ll need to eat differently.
So, it’s pretty obvious that simple formulas like that aren’t really very beneficial in the long run.
More advanced formulas base calculations on lean body mass, rather than just on weight. Figure out the clients’ LBM, and multiply it by a number, usually 16.
This is a lot better, obviously. Using the example from above, the calorie needs of those 200-pound clients would be different, perhaps vastly.
It’s better, but it’s not perfect. And that’s because such formulas are only using one part of a person’s body composition to determine their energy needs: their lean body mass. But not their fat.
This is a huge oversight. People of similar LBM might have very different calorie needs, based on their levels of leanness.
For example, a 200-pound client at 10% body fat has 180 pounds of lean mass. Now let’s look at a 275-pound client with 35% body fat. He’s got 178.75 pounds of lean mass
For Fat people just need to eat less.
In terms of LBM, these clients are identical; in terms of overall weight, they're vastly different. And that is why they have different caloric needs. After all, it’s only logical -- and somewhat obvious -- that someone with 20 pounds of fat isn’t going to be eating the same as someone with 96 pounds of fat, right?
Well, as obvious as that fact sounds, it seems to have escaped the makers of most calorie formulas.
So, I spent five years developing and perfecting my own, testing them on hundreds of clients. And now we have a simple formula that will help determine how much you should be eating for body recomposition. (Again, it’s a jumping-off point.)
First we need to figure out your maintenance calories. I use some formulas that I’ve found to be effective as starting points, making some adjustments for body fat levels:
| Energy Needs | |
| Current Body Fat % | Caloric Intake |
| 6%-12% | 17 Calories per pound of LBM |
| 12.1%-15% | 16 Calories per pound of LBM |
| 15.1%-19% | 15 Calories per pound of LBM |
| 19.1%-22% | 14 Calories per pound of LBM |
| 22.1% or above | 13 Calories per pound of LBM |
The obvious reason for the structure is rate of fat loss. The more fat you have on your body, the faster you can lose it -- and the more of it you can lose without sacrificing LBM, all in that shortened time frame. Therefore, you can consume fewer calories and still have a pretty decent rate of fat loss without really affecting the metabolic processes responsible for fat loss and even muscle gain.
Fat people just need to eat less. Or, put somewhat more politically,the more fat you have, the less you can get away with eating.(Groundbreaking science, I know.)
For the sake of ease, let's create an imaginary client that we can work with. We’ll call him Pythagoras, for no reason other than it makes me giggle. Our man Pythagoras is a 2,580-year-old male who weighs in at a soft 194.5 and 18% body fat, which isn’t bad for a guy his age.
At 194.5 pounds, P-Thag (as the kids call him) has 35 pounds of fat (194.5 x .18 = 35.01), and 159.5 pounds (194.5 - 35) of LBM.
Now, before we go any further, we need to cover the most basic principle of body recomposition: In order to successfully gain muscle while losing fat, it’s vital to vary your diet based on your activity -- and this is important for both overall calories and specific macronutrients like protein.
By ingesting higher calories on training days, we ensure adequate recovery and enough protein to fuel growth. Conversely, calories and carbs are kept quite a bit lower on non-training days, which keeps the client losing fat via a number of mechanisms, and not just caloric restriction. Structuring diet this way also helps to keep insulin sensitivity high, which means accelerated fat loss.
Using my above guidelines, Pythagoras maintains at about 2,400 calories. For body recomp, he’ll be eating about 500 belowmaintenance (1,900 calories) on non-workout days and 100 abovemaintenance on workout days (2,500).
One important thing I stress with all of my clients: For body recomposition, it is most effective to eat for your desired body.
During the course of a well-designed 8-12 week training cycle, our client can hope to gain about 3-5 pounds of muscle. So, for the purposes of demonstrating the formula, let's shoot for the stars and use five as a jumping off point. That means we want to structure his protein intake around having 164 pounds of LBM -- five pounds more than he currently has.
My recommendation for body recomposition is 1.35 grams of protein per pound of goal lean body mass on non-workout days, and .5 grams of carbohydrates per pounds of current lean mass. The difference comes from fat.
That would put our client’s protein intake at 222.5 g per day. To make math easy, let’s jump that up to 225 g, which gives us an even 900 calories per day coming from protein. We simply divide the current LBM by 2 and arrive at 80, and so Pythagoras will eat that many grams of carbs per day, for about 320 calories. The other 680 calories will be coming from fat -- about 75 grams.
All told, the diet looks like this:
| Non-Workout Days | ||
| Macronutrient | Amount (Grams) | Calories |
| Protein | 225 | 900 |
| Carbs | 82 | 330 |
| Fat | 75 | 675 |
| Total Calories | 1905 |
On workout days, I recommend about 1.5-1.6 grams of protein per pound of desired LBM (165 x 1.6 = 264, and 1 g carbs per pound of current LBM (159), with the difference coming from fat.
Here’s what that would look like for our example:
| Workout Days | ||
| Macronutrient | Amount (Grams) | Calories |
| Protein | 265 | 1060 |
| Carbs | 160 | 640 |
| Fat | 100 | 900 |
| Total Calories | 2600 |
Going back to what I had said earlier, no matter how you look at it, all calorie formulas are sort of educated guesswork. But they provide us with a starting point from which we can really adjust and redirect our efforts. In the vast majority of cases, the above numbers/breakdowns are the best possible starting point for any short-term program for body recomposition.
Provided you’re on a good exercise program and you train hard, the above formula will ensure that you know how to eat to lose fat and gain muscle -- at the same time.
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