Its hugely advertised, whether it be amongst fitness influencers, a youtube video you watch or a general conversation with a friend in passing: You should have a Cutting (fat loss) and Bulking (muscle building) phase of training. Then there is this idea, which is ABSOLUTLEY obtainable, where you can do both at the same time…its called [body] RECOMPOSITION.
If you’ve heard of this term before, but don’t quite know what it is or you don’t really know how to do it. Keep Reading because this is going to save you so much time and help you tackle this “Crazy” idea of body recomposition and outline several important differentiations…
CUTTING
Each of these terms typically have different connotations. When you’re cutting, you are essentially is a state of consistent fat loss–you’ll often here the term “calorie deficit” which means you are consuming less calories that you metabolically burn each day. This deficit can come from really anything you do that increases your baseline level of required calories each day. For example if you need 2000 calories a day to keep your consistent weight, then its recommended that going down to 1700 or 1800 well help you lose fat (see what we did there, we made a deficit of 200-300 calories!). How you CHOOSE to create this deficit varies person to person; you could: eat a little less, walk it off or you COULD aim to increase your baseline calories required each day…but, we’ll get into that later.
BULKING
Off the bat, I just want to say that: ladies, bulking is a scarier word then it really is, all it means is your building muscle. That’s it. Don’t overthink it. I honestly don’t like it either, but I digress. Typically when you are bulking, people are more “leanient” (haha, VERY lenient) with their diet and even adopting the “dirty bulk” approach—which at some point we’re all guilty of. However the main goal of bulking is to give your body the surplus of calories so that it can conduct adequate recovery and protein synthesis has its best resources to build your muscles (also known as Hypertrophy). Naturally, you’re body fat WILL tend to increase here but that is the whole point of a cycling between bulking and cutting.
**Recomposition enters the chat**
Recomposition brings the benefits of cutting and bulking together but also its own unique set of cons, which we’ll get too…when you are doing RECOMP, you are working to lose fat and GAIN muscle SIMULTANEOUSLY! Yeah, this sounds awesome right? I imagine your next question being: “Well then why doesn’t everyone just skip the cycle and just do that? Work smarter, not harder, am I right?” and if you asked me that I’d honestly agree with you…BUT…it depends…
Can you “comp”romise with re”comp”osition?
Although you could potentially combine the goals of cutting and bulking together and do a recomposition, and generally speaking do this for an extreme length of time—that’s exactly how long it will take you. A LONG TIME. You have to understand that you are essentially asking your body produce opposing results at the same time. For instance, you’ll have to be in a deficit, but, you also want to make sure you WORK yourself into a deficit because you have to have a surplus to gain weight (muscle weight). See the science here. I would say that the tradeoff, although, is that it is not so aggressive of a phase as cutting and bulking. If you are okay with achieveing your goals of lifting a certain weight or obtaining a certain weight/fat % down the line, I would 100% recommend recomp. If you have a show coming up or competition and your goals must be obtained quicker for whatever reason (or you just like the cycle of cutting and bulking) then that may be better for you. It really depends what you want and are looking for. if you’re patient, don’t want to sacrifice too much food and you don’t quite have such aggressive goals such as squatting a baby elephant, then give recomp a shot!
Start Recomp with these easy guidelines
First, you’ll have to find some sort of baseline for calories—I know most hate it but you’re going to have to count calories. Everyones body is different and although you can find basic calculators online, no one person has the same day to day as you so figure out you and work off that! So find a few basal metabolic rate (BMR) calculators online, put in your information and take an average of those three numbers and you’ll have a good starting point .
Second, come up with a workout that supports your muscle building goal! You want to aim to increase hypertrophy of the muscles so naturally you want to be in the set and rep range of 3-4 sets and 6-12 reps is the sweet spot. Tempo is a big thing here, what I mean is the time under tension you but your muscles through. Time under tension is going to tear the muscle fibers (in a good way!) so that your body repairs the damage, making the muscle slightly larger each and every time. Look at your exercises too! Are you doing a lot of single muscle exercises (isolation exercises) or doing compound lifts? What is important to you? What are your goals? GOALS. GOALS. Goals are so important here!!!
Thirdly, dieting is going to be HUGE here. When you’re in recomp, you don’t have to eat to a T, but you can’t exactly be a food trash can either. Don’t be like me…or do but prepare to walk HOURS to work if off, if you’re lucky. I’d say if you’re thinking about macros here. Feel it out. Increasing your protein is going to aid in fat loss and muscle building, however, if you don’t eat to many carbohydrates, you may feel lethargic. Keep a log of what you eat and how you are feeling day to day. What ever you do. STAY CONSISTENT. I cannot stress that enough—if you change anything, make sure to change only one thing at a time and give it time to show you a result. For example, if eating 100 carbs make you feel super tired, bump it up to 150, sit there, see how you feel and go from there.
Recomposition can be such an intricate process but it can be fun learning you’re body and sticking to a plan! Continue to challenge yourself to see what you’re capable of. Remember that when you know the why, you have confidence and you’ll enjoy the journey that much more.