Build Muscle and Lose Fat: The Recomp Effect Part I

Photo Credit: Helgasms! ……… [Picture goes well with the tagline...]

After many emails, and a few phone calls about this topic, I’ve finally decided to write an article about how to build muscle and lose body fat at the same time.  This is sometimes known as the recomp effect (body recomposition) but most people, other than the fitness-obsessed, have never heard the term.

In short, it means to recompose your body; you’re improving your percentage of lean body mass whilst reducing your fat mass.

If you’re new here and tired of reading the same old crap, only to be disappointed by getting to the end of an article to see a useless product being pimped to the max, please keep reading because that won’t happen here.

The Goal

Just about everyone I know who trains or has an interest in fitness is ultimately after a better body composition.  Bodybuilders are after a bigger, yet leaner physique. Powerlifters, while not always worried about a high(er) percentage of body fat are ultimately interested in becoming stronger and moving more weight for their meets all the while maintaining a certain body weight.  In turn, this requires more muscle to be built and as one gains muscle, something else has to go (water or fat) in order to make their weight classes.

Females are notoriously obsessed with maintaining an acceptable or ideal weight but many want the “toned” or “athletic” shape as opposed to a less-than-stellar skinny-fat look.

Physique models are often in pursuit of more muscle and shape but cannot afford 12 weeks to “bulk” and then 12 weeks to “cut” as a means to build more muscle.  For them, time is money and if they’re not in the condition to do a photo shoot upon short notice(less than 2 weeks), they lose money and possible exposure.

Regardless of the situation, they all require a shift in body composition from less lean mass to more lean mass and thusly, less fat mass in return.  The goal is to build muscle and lose fat effectively and efficiently; but how?

Newbies and Genetic Anomalies

Before I go into such an approach, I want to first make a few points and set some expectations.  If you’re not going to be realistic about muscle gains, go back to reading the magazines.

The recomp effect is a fairly common phenomenon for most newbies.  A newbie is someone who has never trained a day in their life and they’re in either one of three categories.

They are either skinny, skinny-fat or overweight.

The skinny person – I’ve already written about what skinny guys need to do in order to sculpt their physique.  These folk seem to have it easy in some regards as all they have to do is get to the weight room and remember to eat.  They seem to add body weight fairly quickly while their gains seem to be 100% lean body mass.

The skinny-fat person – These people are similar to the skinny person example in that they will usually gain a lot of lean mass.  However, in the process, they seem to lose a bit of body fat as well.  It’s all a part of being a novice to the weight room.  The right stimulus + ample amounts of food completely changes their body in a positive manner.

The overweight person – Something really cool seems to happen to them too..  It seems they can venture on through their first six months to a year losing body fat and building muscle at the same time.  It’s like the old buddy you hung out with in high school who goes away for his first year of college and decides to take up weight lifting to keep him busy.

You see him the following summer and while he’s only lost 10-15lbs, his physique is completely different.  His gut is no longer visible and his shirts appear tighter because his chest and arms have thickened with lean muscle mass, as opposed to adipose tissue.

Then we have the genetic elite who you see in the gym with an extremely low body fat and an absurd amount of muscle for their size and frame.  It seems they can eat McDonalds and greasy cafeteria food all day long, hit the weights 3-4x per week and only manage to get bigger and stronger and leaner.

These are the select few the Greek god’s had favor upon when forging their bodies from stone and fire on the other side.

Every once in a while, I’ll run into a guy or gal who seems to do everything wrong, eat all the crap in the world, yet still carry a lot of lean body mass and maintain a low body fat.  They basically hit the genetic lottery and have no idea, nor do they care.

You generally don’t want to take advice from these people because what works for them won’t work for 99% of the population.  Hell, they can eat some cake while meditating on how they might possibly do some quarter squats later in the day, and still build an incredible pair of quads.

It’s just the way it is and proof that genetic anomalies exist, but most of us are not of the same gene pool.  Thanks mom and dad!

An Approach To Build Muscle and Lose Fat… Slowly

Before I go into the method I use when going about building muscle and losing fat at the same time, I want you to realize that the approach is slow and requires a lifestyle approach rather than a laser-targeted, one-goal-at-a-time, obsessive-compulsive approach.

To put it another way, if you’re an obsessive bodybuilder, competitor or high-strung individual who has a hard time with a relaxed approach, this is likely not for you.  If you need some help developing a more relaxed approach, read my free ebook and learn about how I view this fitness lifestyle.  Or contact me if you would like to chat about it.

Let’s first start with your maintenance intake.  In general, there’s never going to be a static number of kcals one burns every single day.  Our energy expenditure can vary depending on our activity, occupation, NEAT, training schedule, vacationing, etc.; the list is endless.  There is no way possible to know exactly how much one burns every single day.

In lieu of that, we must rely on an average.  Wahoo.  In general, the weekly average is a better way to approach maintenance because it takes into account what you’re burning over a period of time as opposed to hourly or daily expenditure.

For example, we’ll look at a somewhat active male who weight trains 3x per week and has an average occupation in terms of expenditure.  He’s not tied to a desk but he’s not up and about all the time, either.

For number’s sake, let’s say he weighs 180lbs, and is 70 inches tall.

We’ll assume that his maintenance intake is around 16kcal x bodyweight which equals around ~2900kcals burned daily.  Remember this is an average number as his activity is changing daily depending on multiple factors.

So in lieu of him training 3x per week, we’ll assume that he needs a few more kcals on training days but less on his off days.

This all looks good on paper.  It really does.

So, for the next article, I’m going to outline what the diet looks like and how one might train with such an approach when the sole focus is to build muscle and lose fat, albeit slowly, at the same time.

I decided to break this up into two parts because I was closing in on 2000 words for one article(wasn’t nearly done, either) and I know how folks get tired of reading…

Tagged as: Build Muscle, Lose Fat