How long does body recomp take? Realistic - starting from mostly fit

echristensen010

I am on week 11 of a body recomp. I can see some changes - slightly leaner, somewhat more defined muscles, a bit stronger.

If I am still not as lean as I want to be at the end of these 3 months, what should the next steps be?

tomcustombuilder

echristensen010 wrote: »

I am on week 11 of a body recomp. I can see some changes - slightly leaner, somewhat more defined muscles, a bit stronger.

If I am still not as lean as I want to be at the end of these 3 months, what should the next steps be?

you’ll need to increase your calorie deficit from lower calories or increased activity or a combo of both. If you have decent muscular development as you lean out you’ll look more muscular due to less fat covering the muscles.

echristensen010

@tomcustombuilder Re: you’ll need to increase your calorie deficit

How low can I go here? I would be concerned that going too low on calories for too long would be counterproductive.

My other question is: What do i do after I am as lean as I want to be? I know that I would need to be in a deficit to lose weight/fat, but at some point I have to come out of the deficit. How do I do that without losing the progress I've made?

tomcustombuilder

echristensen010 wrote: »

@tomcustombuilder Re: you’ll need to increase your calorie deficit

How low can I go here? I would be concerned that going too low on calories for too long would be counterproductive.

My other question is: What do i do after I am as lean as I want to be? I know that I would need to be in a deficit to lose weight/fat, but at some point I have to come out of the deficit. How do I do that without losing the progress I've made?

just take your current calories an either drop 100 a day or increase activity by that amount or a combo of those. Review the results in 3-4 weeks and re adjust if necessary. When you get to your goal go back to your maintenance calories which will be less than when you were heavier. It’s just trial and error but you don’t want to make drastic changes.

Retroguy2000

Recomp works best for noob lifters and those with high body fat. It's a sliding scale wrt how effective it is, with you at the other end of that scale if neither condition applies. You'll also want to be in just a slight deficit, to help preserve/build muscle, and be getting adequate protein (close to 1g per pound lean body mass), and be lifting with progressive overload.

It sounds like you've been making good progress, and that the issue isn't your progress, rather your too high expectations. Keep taking pics and measurements so you have more than just a log of scale readings.

AnnPT77

You can also take a look at the recomp thread, where various people share progress photos and tips. The progress photos usually have dates or durations in the text or on the photo.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10177803/recomposition-maintaining-weight-while-losing-fat/p1

You may have to scroll a bit to see photos. That thread's also been going a long time, possible some photos are lost to the vagaries of the web, but you can always jump forward to more recent pages. There are some in there.

echristensen010 wrote: »

@tomcustombuilder Re: you’ll need to increase your calorie deficit

How low can I go here? I would be concerned that going too low on calories for too long would be counterproductive.

My other question is: What do i do after I am as lean as I want to be? I know that I would need to be in a deficit to lose weight/fat, but at some point I have to come out of the deficit. How do I do that without losing the progress I've made?

Don't confuse going to maintenance calories with gaining weight let alone confuse it with gaining fat.

When you come out of the deficit, and when you find maintenance calories, your weight should stabilize.

If you keep lifting progressively, you'll possibly continue getting leaner, very slowly, maybe even need to gain some weight to keep the look you like. That'll be reasonably easy to figure out when you get there, and "there" is quite a while in the future, so no need to try to figure it out completely now. If you don't want to get any more muscular, you go to a maintenance routine with your lifting, rather than a progressive routine.

You don't necessarily need to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat. You do need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight (ignoring water weight for the moment), and of course fat is what most of us are trying to lose. If a person gains muscle mass at constant weight, they weren't in a calorie deficit, right? They've used some remaining fat as part of their fuel, alongside gaining muscle mass.

That's a slower route to muscle mass gain than cycles of bulking and cutting. (Loosely: Bulking = adding weight, some of it fat, to gain muscle at a faster rate alongside; cutting = losing some of that unwanted fat again while retaining as much of the gained muscle as possible; recomposition = more slowly adding muscle mass while not adding fat mass, using some of the previous fat to fuel all of everything one does, including the workouts, so the person gets smaller/leaner.)