Hi! Couple of questions:


How long have you been strength training for? What routine are you doing?

What has your weight done over the last 8 weeks?

What BF% are you looking to get down to? Just trying to understand how much BF you are looking to lose.

Got it. It's a little hard imagining what weight/BF% you want to be if you have not been there before - had the same issue myself.

Generally, you cannot lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. However, there are a couple of exceptions, one of which is when someone is new to strength training, and is doing a good progressive loading strength training routine (see below for a recommendation).

So, I would suggest that you take advantage of newbie gains while continuing to eat at a small deficit. This will only last a couple of months and will only be a few pounds at most, so after say 2 or 3 months (or earlier if you start getting too lean) then raise your calories to maintenance.

At this time you can either recomp or bulk if you wish to gain muscle.

Under a more direct approach, to gain muscle mass you go through bulk/cut cycles. You eat at a consistent surplus, with doing an appropriate strength training routine to bulk. This will add fat and muscle. You then cut to get rid of the fat and try to maintain the muscle.

For a recomp, you are basically doing the same thing - but with natural daily overs//unders that come with a varying activity and therefore TDEE as well as better nutrient partitioning, rather than eating at a surplus and then a deficit for months. The problem with recomping - it is very inefficient and hit and miss. Your TDEE changes daily, your food is absorbed and utilized at different rates and throughout a relatively long period of time - so what you eat one day will not necessarily to towards a surplus and therefore muscle gains for that day. So this makes it a bit of a crap shoot. Obviously some of the times, it will go towards muscle gains, which is why people do it when they do not want to do a straight bulk/cut cycle.

I used to vary my calories somewhat to have higher calories on lifting days - but that was purely for energy requirements and not body recomp requirements. I do not do well lifting on low (for me) calories. However, there are two schools of thought as to whether a straight static number v a varying intake level is best. At the end of the day, I am of the opinion that both are a crap shoot and so go with whichever one gives you better gym performance and/or better satiety and adherence.

Cut/bulk cycles is a more 'efficient' way of gaining muscle, but you have to be prepared to gain fat. Recomping is slow going, but you do not gain fat so it is preferable to some people.

With regard to your intake, it is too hard to give you a specific recommendation as you do not log weekends. However, I would give the newer intake level a few more weeks to see where that is trending and tweak appropriately. With regard to macros, you should look to get at least 90g protein and 40g fats. The balance of your calories can go to any of the three macros, but carbs should be the majority.