Lowering Body Fat % by lifting?

Mild caloric deficit, hitting your macros, heavy lifting program....and that's about it. You can add in cardio for cardiovascular fitness and to help with your deficit.

When you're in a deficit water, fat, and muscle is lost. A heavy lifting program with proper nutrition will help to maintain that muscle mass so that you lose mostly fat and water. This is how you strip the fat from the retained muscle to obtain muscle definition.

I'm guessing you're more at that recomp stage, so it would be a really mild deficit to maintenance calories and making sure you get enough protein with your lifting.

1g per pound of lean body mass is ideal. I typically eat around 30% fats and fill in the rest with carbs.

To gain muscle, ideally a calorie surplus is necessary. If you go slow with a bulk, you'll have better chance at muscle. Fat gain will be inevitable, it's nature of the beast with weight gain.The trick is to start trusting measurements and visual queues over scale. Scale will be good to monitor progress, just remember there's a ton of factors to scale weight that aren't fat

You said you have muscle under your softness, which I assume means you are not "skinny-fat" and you're not starting from nothing. So in my opinion I'd think you want a relatively low calorie deficit, not a surplus because I think you can still build on what you have while cutting away fat. For example if your maintenance caloric intake is 2000, set yourself at 1600-1800 calories and make sure to eat back what you burn.

For your routine, you want to build muscle but you may also want to get lean and athletic so I recommend switching up your routine throughout the week to include heavy lifting and also HIIT/plyometrics. For example, you can do full or half body workouts 4 times a week - 2x a week is heavy lifting and 2x a week is lighter weights/more reps/more cardio/more isolation and plyos.

Or you can divide the week into 4 lifting days by giving each synergistic group of muscles their own day and do the lighter stuff in the beginning, the heavier stuff at the end, and make at least one of your "rest days" for cardio/plyo/core training.

I've done it both ways depending on my school/work schedule and haven't found one way better than the other. However, the former is more convenient time-wise if you have an exceptionally busy schedule, and the latter is a bit easier to keep organized and hit your weekly goals.

As for macros, everyone says something different and I honestly think it depends on the person and requires a little experimentation. I definitely don't believe you need a gram of protein per pound of body weight and many experts have told me that it's not necessary, but then again I've seen great results on people who swear by it. I was at my leanest when I was vegetarian and eating about 65c/20f/15p , I did build muscle but then again there was a limit to how much muscle I was putting on. To get bigger (I started off skinny-fat, no muscle at all) I began eating 50c/30f/20p with a caloric surplus and I put on a lot of muscle but also inevitably put on a lot of fat. Now I'm doing 40c/30f/30p and seeing where it takes me.

I guess my point after all this rambling and talking about myself is that there isn't one answer or one method. I bet you can find 20 people all in excellent shape who will tell you something different. Take in all the advice, throw out what you conclude doesn't make sense to you, and try everything else. See what works, and not only what works physically, but what you can maintain in the long run.

I started weight lifting with the impression that my body will end up looking a certain way as long as I kept at it long enough...bigger butt, thicker legs, keep my arms slim and trim my waist...in the end our bodies will do what they were meant to do. We can change our bodies to an extent, make our small butts a little bigger, arms more toned, trim long-lingering back fat....but there are some things that either a) won't change that much, or b) will change but not necessarily the way we imagined.

My legs got a lot bigger. My butt did not, but it got a lot more muscular and pert. My arms did not stay slim...they grew rounder and stronger. But it didn't matter that my body changed in a way that I didn't plan, because I still looked stronger, healthier, and more fit than before, and it was from my own hard work. When you start lifting, you should recognize that hard work will bear results, but you should also be satisfied with the kinds of results that your body is willing to give you, and love what you have.

You have a beautiful figure now and I'm sure weight lifting will only turn you into a cut and curvy goddess. Probably closer to the first pic than the one of Jessica Alba But if your arms get more cut but not more thin, or your back fat cuts down significantly but still lingers, or even if you gain size in a few unexpected places, you will learn to love it anyway! That's what weightlifting does to us crazy chicks Good luck!