I don't know what Recomping is.

I never heard of that. Good luck with it!

Yes, I've lost some weight, and I would like to shore up my muscle mass against the aging process.

I had an unexpected schedule complication over the past few weeks that will be resolved next week, so I'll be signing up for the gym again. I'm not sure how much I can do just yet, but I'm starting to do some push ups against a counter, working my way down to the floor. I think I will be stuck with the machines for awhile, but my weight loss is slowing down and I've been kind of anxious, which is usually a sign I need to go to maintenance for a little bit anyway.

MostlyWater, we lose lean muscle mass as part of the aging process, so resistance training to build and protect muscle mass is especially beneficial for women our age. More muscle mass means a better metabolism. There was a study that indicated that resistance training might have as much impact on preventing abdominal fat gain as HRT (I'm on HRT, but resistance training is obviously beneficial in any case). Resistance training is also good for bone health, which is a concern for anyone not getting estrogen.

Recomposition is simply building muscle while reducing fat. The theory is that this can be done with maintenance level calories and resistance training/lifting.

I think she meant "shoring up" in the sense of "protecting."

I think you might be able to recomp on that. The common wisdom is that you can't build muscle in a deficit, except for "newbie gains." I'm not entirely sure how true that is. I feel like here on MFP, there is kind of a canon regarding fitness that has been built up, but I've seen some indications elsewhere that it's possible to recomp with a small deficit. I think that Leangains, for example, has you increase calories on exercise/lift days with a deficit on other days, so perhaps that's something that might work for you.

Lyle McDonald has written a lot of articles about recompositioning. If I remember correctly, I believe that he says it's possible to recomp on a small deficit. Here's his site if you want to poke around: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/

I semi-committed to a 10K in a few months, so I will probably be focusing more on training for that than recomp (and it's easier on my long-term surgery recovery). Unfortunately, the heatwave is preventing the training from getting started. I'm hoping my hiking experience will cover me (it's an elevation gain run). I have an exercise bike so I will probably start using that in the evening (in the AC!).

KetoneKaren wrote: »

Is anyone else interested in recomping after menopause? I want to build muscle while losing fat and wonder if there are like-minded postmenopausal women with a similar interest.

I'm in! If you'd like to add me I'm definitely ready to do this! I workout 5 days a week strength train and cardio together some days and others just weight train only using bodyspace website templates and have noticed getting stronger and a little more definition in upper body but need to heavy up to increase more definition in lower body ( have a weak left knee so have to be careful how much I lift til this gets stonger) but really ready to give this a try