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Body recomp

cyanmarten
cyanmarten Posts: 1 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Hello world,

My goal is to reduce my overall bodyweight a bit, to get pretty lean, before I start going after gaining muscle. Also trying to get a handle on eating more protein and less randomly eating 500kcal of pure sugar. I'm 130ish lbs 5ft6 and trying to lose just 5-10lbs by cutting out the random sugar bombs and staying lower calorie.

Replies

  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,607 Member
    Welcome!

    Yes, pure sugar can add up.

    You don't really have much to lose, so take it slowly - no more than about 0.5% of your current weight per week. At 130 pounds, that's about a half pound per week.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,374 Member
    cyanmarten wrote: »
    Hello world,

    My goal is to reduce my overall bodyweight a bit, to get pretty lean, before I start going after gaining muscle. Also trying to get a handle on eating more protein and less randomly eating 500kcal of pure sugar. I'm 130ish lbs 5ft6 and trying to lose just 5-10lbs by cutting out the random sugar bombs and staying lower calorie.

    Pretty much no one ever posts here on MFP wishing that they had waited to start strength training. OTOH, it's fairly common to see people who did "lose weight first, then lift to gain muscle" say that they wish they'd started lifting from day 1 of loss (or earlier!).

    At 5'6" and 130, you don't have lots of weight to lose, so as mtaratoot suggested, the best plan would be to lose weight quite slowly. (I'm a similar size, 5'5" and 132, and would shoot for half a pound a week or less.)

    When losing weight slowly, you can at minimum make strength progress if you start lifting sooner, and if you also pursue excellent nutrition and a good strength program, there's at least a chance of some modest mass gain alongside fat loss. Even if no muscle mass gain until you reach maintenance calories, there's more upside than downside IMO to starting lifting sooner rather than later. At minimum, strength is useful in daily life!

    Since you're talking about recomp, I'll point out the recomposition thread here, in case you haven't already run across it:

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

    There's some good stuff in there.

    Best wishes for success with your goals!

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