In the past, I’ve written about ways to recompose our bodies through alternating high and low calorie days. For more reading, check out Part 1, Part 2 or a more recent piece titled Body Recomposition without Counting Calories?
However, it’s something I rarely advise for my personal clients as it’s a slow, arduous process and likely better to focus on one goal at a time. Also, most of us find it troublesome as we deal with analysis paralysis and it’s usually better to limit our choices so as not to screw it all up.
Today is a rather interesting scenario of a client who I initially set up on an intermittent fasting plan to drop some body fat, but ended up recomp-ing in the process, and I’m fairly happy with his results thus far.
When Mike came to me, he was fairly lean already as you can see in his before picture on the left. Truth be told, he tore his ACL late last year and had surgery to repair it in early January 2011. Prior to the injury, he’d been training fairly regularly and been as heavy as 190lbs, body fat unknown.
After the surgery, he of course lost a good bit of weight and had emailed me mid February asking about how to go about getting back in shape – his main concern was learning about setting up his diet and practicing Intermittent Fasting on his way to his previous state, but in a leaner, stronger fashion.
After I learned it’d only been about 6 weeks since his surgery, I suggested he skip the sub-maintenance eating for now and allow the extra calories to fuel his recovery. No sense in inhibiting the healing process eating below maintenance.
Fast forward to June – we begin emailing again. He’d been cleared to lift again and had been in the gym for a while rebuilding his strength.
His starting weight was about 177-178lbs when he got to me. Pre-injury, his strength levels were pretty impressive for his size and age (he’s 20 now) with a previous bench of 335lbs and squat of 365lbs. [Read more...]
