How to Body Recomp (Build Muscle While Losing Fat)

For a lot of us out there, we often feel that we have a little more fat than we’d like on our bodies.

We often strive for a slimmer, toned down appearance.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think that the only way to achieve this is through extreme dieting and excessive cardio.

However, the only thing that’s a recipe for is an unhappy life and unsustainable results.

Instead, there’s a much more effective, sustainable way to transform your body.

In this post, I want to talk about the most effective body recomping strategies to build muscle while losing fat.

In This Post You’ll Find:

What is Body Recomposition?

Body recomposition is when strategically train and eat to lose fat and build muscle, at the same time.

Your diet and your training style both play a huge role in successful body recomposition. Since you need to be training correctly and eating correctly to see the right results.

However, don’t let that intimidate you.

The process of body recomposition is a fairly simple process, if you don’t overcomplicate things and stay consistent.

Additionally, there are a few key points you’ll need to know when getting started.

Before you even start body recomping, you’ll want to define your gym goals.

By doing this, you help establish what you want for yourself and can determine if body recomposition is the right approach for you.

If your goals are anything like toning out, slimming down, or building muscle and losing stubborn fat, then body recomposition is the best strategy for your goals!

The Most Effective Strategies to Body Recomp in the Gym

Now that we know what body recomposition is, we can talk about exactly how you can start body recomping today.

1. Know Your Calorie Needs to Successfully Build Muscle and Lose Fat

The first thing you’ll want to do to begin body recomping, is to know your daily calorie needs.

What I mean by this is to know how many calories your body burns in a day.

Doing this will allow you to determine what your maintenance calorie intake is.

Or, how many calories you need to eat to maintain your weight.

Based on this, you can determine how many calories you need to eat to be in a calorie deficit for fat loss or in a calorie surplus to gain weight.

By either adding or subtracting calories from your maintenance level.

If you don’t happen to know your maintenance calories, don’t worry, most people don’t.

However, it’s extremely easy to figure out your everyday calorie needs.

How to learn your basic calorie needs

It’s actually extremely easy to learn your basic calorie needs.

All you need to do is search up a free calorie calculator on Google.

Then, type in your sex, weight, height, and activity level.

After you enter all this information, the calculator will spit out a rough number for you: your maintenance calories.

Keep in mind though that this number is more of an estimate than an exact calculation, since everyone’s needs are a little different.

Although this number’s not exact, it’s certainly a good starting point to get moving in the right direction.

How Many Calories You Should Be Eating to Gain Muscle While Losing Fat

The most effective way to body recomp is to be eating in a slight calorie deficit. Or in some cases, at your maintenance calories.

Even though a calorie deficit is essential to lose fat, by building muscle overtime, you can still lose fat by eating at your maintenance level.

The reason for this is because the more muscle you build, the higher your metabolism becomes.

This means that as your metabolism continues to increase, your old maintenance will eventually become your new deficit.

Meaning the more you lift weights, the more food you’ll need to eat to maintain your weight.

How to determine how many calories you should be eating to body recomp

How many calories you should be eating to successfully body recomp actually depends a lot on you.

It’s best to choose your calorie intake based on your starting point and your final goals.

For example, if you’re starting off as someone who is a healthy weight but you feel you have too much fat on your body, you’ll want to eat either at maintenance or in a slight deficit.

That way your body can slowly loose the little extra fat over time, while still eating enough to simultaneously build muscle.

However, if you’re someone who’s starting off underweight, you would likely want to be eating in a surplus.

That way you wouldn’t be losing any fat and would only primarily be gaining muscle and changing your body composition.

Goal Calorie Intake Summary Chart

Below is a chart to help summary what your goal calorie intake should be based on your starting point and your final goals.

2. Prioritize a Proper Diet for Body Recomposition

Prioritize Your Protein Intake for Maximum Muscle Gain and Fat Loss

With any type of fitness routine you want to follow, it’s important to note that your diet plays a huge role in the results you see in the gym.

Going to the gym is only half the battle, and for most of us, probably the easier part.

Don’t worry though, when I say diet, I don’t mean an actual diet. Instead, I’m more referring to the types and amounts of food you eat.

When you’re body recomping, you don’t need to follow a typical diet. One that would usually require you to cut out or restrict any food groups.

Instead, you’ll be more focused on getting in the foods you should be eating rather than focusing on all the foods you shouldn’t be eating.

Doing this will allow you to get in all the proper nutrients you need for your body composition to successfully change.

Without restricting yourself of any essential nutrients.

The Types and Amounts of Foods You Should Eat to Body Recomp

The two most important parts of your diet you’ll want to focus on will be your calorie intake and your protein intake.

Calorie Intake:

I already touched base on how you can determine your basal metabolic rate.

So once you determine that, the next step is to make sure you’re actually hitting this calorie goal daily.

Doing this will ensure you give your body enough fuel to support itself and your workouts every single day.

Protein Intake:

In a previous post, I talked more about the importance of protein when trying to build muscle.

Because of this, in order to build maximum muscle while also losing fat, you’ll want to focus on eating a high protein diet.

There are two strategies you can go about to increasing the amount of protein in your diet.

First, if you don’t want to track anything, you can just focus on making protein the center of your meals.

For example, instead of having a full pasta dish for dinner, you could have chicken as the main dish with pasta as a side.

Whereas the second option is to set a protein goal and track your protein intake throughout the day.

Much like your calorie goal, you’ll want to make sure that each day you’re hitting your protein goal everyday.

Setting a Protein Goal for a High Protein, Muscle Building Diet

It’s recommended to be eating anywhere from 0.8-1.2 grams of protein per pound of your goal body weight.

Based on this information, you can use that to calculate a rough estimate of a goal protein intake for yourself.

For example, let’s say your goal weight is 150 lbs and you’re shooting for 0.8 grams of protein per pound of your goal body weight.

Doing the math, you’re goal protein intake is 150 x 0.8 = 120 grams of protein per day.

3. Create an Effective Exercise Plan for Body Recomposition

We’ve talked a lot about the role of your diet and your calorie intake in body recomping, but we haven’t talked too much about the exercise side of things.

Practicing the right exercise strategies is crucial for you to successfully build muscle and transform your body.

Lift Heavy to Maximize Muscle Growth

One of the keys to body recomping is to start lifting heavy weights.

Which makes sense, since changing your body recomposition requires you to build msucle.

And body recomping is just one of the benefits of weightlifting for women.

To start implementing strength training into your workout routine, you’ll want to create a weightlifting routine.

Once you design a workout split for yourself, you can start lifting heavy, multiple times a week.

Lifting anywhere from 3 to 6 times a week is an effective way to increase strength and build muscle.

When deciding how many times a week to workout, keep in mind that more doesn’t always mean better.

If you’re training with enough intensity, then strength training only 3-4 times per week is completely fine.

Rest is extremely important for women who weight train and it’s when your muscles grow.

As a result, you’ll also want to make sure you’re incorporating enough rest days for yourself as well.

Consider Incorporating Steady State Cardio for Effective Fat Loss

Incorporating steady-state cardio into your routine is an effective way to speed up fat loss and minimize any additional fat gain.

However, despite these benefits, cardio is not essential for body recomping.

Instead, your main focus should be on lifting heavy, frequently.

Since building muscle is essential to transform your body shape.

Because of this, incorporating cardio is most effective for anyone who 1) wants to speed up the fat loss part of body recomposition, or 2) genuinely enjoys doing cardio.

One of the best parts about body recomping is that you don’t have to do cardio if you don’t want to. It’s completely up to you.

Some research even suggests that doing too much cardio can actually slow down your muscle building progress.

However, if you’re someone who chooses incorporate cardio into your routine, then doing steady state cardio is one effective way to do that, while still maximizing muscle gains.

Something like incline walking for 30 minutes is an effective way to increase your heart rate, but without burning too many calories that might otherwise take away from your muscle gains.

Additionally, if you decide to incorporate cardio but are also prioritizing muscle gains, then you’ll want to do cardio after your lifts.

The reason for this is because cardio fatigues your muscles, making it harder for you to lift heavy.

So if you’re trying to build maximum muscle, you wouldn’t want to fatigue your body right before your lifts.

4. Realize Body Recomposition Takes Time (It’s a Huge Commitment)

Beginning the body recomposition journey is in no way short or easy. You have to realize this is a long term investment, and your results may take a long time.

However, slow results are still results and slow progress doesn’t mean no progress.

And often times, the longer you wait, the better the reward.

One thing I know for sure is you’ll never see the results you want if you end up quitting before you’ve given yourself enough time to see progress.

That’s why it’s so important to learn how to be patient with your gym progress.

Of course, to an extend, the more effort you put into anything, the more you’ll get out and the quicker your results will come.

That’s why it’s so important to start today, stay consistent, and work towards your goals every day.

Yes, it’s going to take time but in the end it’ll be so worth it, I promise.

The Most Common Body Recomping Mistakes That Will Slow Down Your Progress

Not Eating Enough Calories for Significant Muscle Growth

One of the biggest mistakes women make when trying to body recomp is not eating enough calories.

Especially when trying to lose weight, women are typically conditioned to eat as little as possible.

However, this isn’t always healthy, slows down muscle gains, and usually results in unsustainable dieting.

Especially if you combine under-eating with over exercising.

That’s one of the reasons why doing more in the gym isn’t always better.

Instead, if you’re trying to lose weight, it’s much more effective and sustainable to eat in a slight calorie deficit.

However when you’re trying to build muscle, like you are when body recomping, even when you’re in a deficit, you never want to cut your calories too low.

The reason for this is because your muscles need enough calories and nutrients in order to grow back bigger than before.

So keeping your calorie intake at just a slight deficit is the best way to build muscle and lose stubborn fat.

Not only that, but when you’re trying to body recomp, your goal is to lose fat specifically, not just any weight.

If you cut your calories too low, you lose weight quickly. Meaning you’ll lose fat, muscle, and water.

However when you cut your calories only slightly, you’ll primarily only lose fat. While minimizing muscle and water loss.

Not Eating Enough Protein to Support Muscle Growth and Recovery

Not only is how much you eat important, but so is what you eat.

Your diet plays a huge role in the results you see in the gym.

Because of this, you want to eat like a weightlifting women.

You should be eating to support and fuel proper workouts, muscle growth, and recovery.

As a result, you want to focus on eating a nutrient dense diet high in protein and carbs.

Your diet and calorie intake are going to be essential throughout the process to support and facilitate high quality, lean muscle growth.

Incorporating too Much Cardio into Your Workout Routine

Another common mistake women trying to body recomp make is doing excessive amounts of cardio.

Like I mentioned earlier, cardio is not an essential part of the body recomping process.

So if you don’t want to be doing it, then don’t do it!

Additionally, if you’re doing too much cardio, you can actually slow down your muscle growth.

The reason for this is because cardio fatigues your muscles, potentially leads to overtraining, and burns a significant amount of calories.

If you’re doing cardio before your strength training workouts, you risk overly fatiguing your muscles and reducing the strength and power you can generate during your workout.

And therefore making your workout less effective.

Additionally, if you do too much cardio and burn too many calories, you risk not leaving your body enough calories for significant muscle growth.

This is especially an issue if you’re also not eating enough.

Although it’s important not to overdo it on the cardio, it still plays a major role in your cardiovascular health.

Because of this, it can still be a beneficial aspect for you to incorporate moderately into your workout routine.

Begin the Process!

Body recomping is a slow process that requires a lot of patience and consistency.

However, as long as you’re patient with your results and stick to your routine, your results will come.

By strength training, eating enough and eating correctly, you’ll be on your way to building muscle and transforming your body.

If you start showing up for yourself every day of the process, your results will come in no time.

More of my posts on women’s weightlifting and fitness:

10 Key Muscle Groups Women Should Train [A Complete Guide]

6 Essential Muscle Building Habits for Weightlifting Women

How to Increase Your Training Intensity in the Gym