Need help with body recomposition plzz

CryInGym wrote: »

Hi i tried to look for that i could not find it. Thx for trying to help me. I also tried to join this thing https://physiqonomics.com/ that i found in a discussion regarding body recomposition.

Seems like it was a scam and now my credit card is in there and i dont have access to an account.. Might as well just find me a personal trainer with diet plan.. Thought id get answers on this app. Good thing it had a trial lol.

But really appreciate you answering and trying to help me!

@CryInGym, the recomposition thread is here:

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

It's in the "Most Helpful Posts" section of the "Goal: Maintaining Weight" part of the Community, because recomp is a thing usually done while maintaining weight, or close to that (small deficit/small surplus).

Read the first few posts, then skip to near the end and watch the video on page 125.

I agree with sijomial about how to estimate the calories: Your MFP goal number is to maintain weight, assuming you set up per instructions (using non-exercise activity level for that setting). You're supposed to log and add exercise on top of that, eat those calories, too. Don't pick "sedentary" if your daily life activity is more than roughly 3500-5000 steps (or equivalent movement) daily.

If you follow the MFP method, adding exercise calories when you exercise, that will give you a different calorie level day to day, unless you exercise the same amount daily.

If you'd rather have a single calorie goal that's the same every day, use a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calculator to estimate - that will average in your planned exercise across the week, give you the same goal daily. Then, put that into MFP manually as your goal, rather than letting MFP do the estimate.

MFP and Sailrabbit are using sensible, research-based methods to estimate your calorie needs, taking into account the personal characteristics you enter. Basically, they're telling you the average number of calories needed by people similar to you. Most people are close to average. A few people are a bit high or low of average (on the slopes of the bell curve, not the peak, essentially). A very rare few are fairly far off, high or low.

What you do is follow your calculator estimate for 4-6 weeks, and see what the average result is on your body weight. If you set a maintenance calorie goal, and your weight meanders up and down around the same level for that 4-6 weeks, you're average and the estimate is reasonable for you. If you turn out to be non-average, you just adjust calories based on scale results. It's easy math, just assume 3500 calories is roughly a pound, so if you lost or gained a pound per week on average over the 4-6 weeks, you adjust your daily calorie goal by 500 calories.

That "X times body weight" thing is just a rough rule of thumb. Think about it: Is a 165-pound 5'8" bricklayer's apprentice who carries hods of bricks all day, then trains for triathlons and remodels his fixer-upper house in his free time going to burn the same number of calories daily as a same-sized sedentary computer programmer who lives in a studio apartment and watches Netflix as a hobby? Of course not.

I admit, 1800 (even 1800 plus exercise) sounds low, for your stats. Double check the values in your profile, especially making sure you picked maintaining weight as your goal. I don't know how old you are, but if I assume age 30, Sailrabbit thinks maintenance for you would be around 2000 when sedentary. MFP would maybe tend to estimate a little lower than that, because of how it does the math for daily life activity in context of its assumption that exercise is separate.

Well, at my age (almost 60, very active, and I lift ) my maintenance is about 2700 per day, although I may be increasing after adding in some new workouts this month.

But anecdotal comparisons won’t really help you. You need to do you.

It’s pretty simple really. Calculate what MFP figures as maintenance and start out eating that plus half your exercise calories. If you still lose weight, add some calories back. If you gain, you know it’s too many.

Maintenance takes a minute to get the hang of, and even when you do, it’s plus or minus several pounds. It’s more a range than a fixed number.

You’re not gonna figure it out in a week or two. It took me several months to really settle in to maintenance.

I’ve personally found that leaning in on protein has helped me gain and retain muscle, and helped with satiation. YMMV. Sometimes on days I lift, I’m crazy ravenous, other times not. What’s helped settle things down for me is lunch or breakfast before a session and “second lunch” or breakfast afterwards.

Another bit of a shocker is that I’ve had to add weight a couple of times since I reached my lowest weight. Muscle is heavier, and I’ve found as I lift in maintenance, I have a tendency to continue to lose size, which then, for me personally, has the irritating adverse effect of losing muscle. So I’ve had to increase calories several times as well as put on a few pounds just to tread water size and “gainz” wise, if that makes sense.


You might find this thread interesting:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/977538/halp-heavy-lifting-made-me-supah-bulky/p1

springlering62 wrote: »

Another good thread, recently bumped:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10842208/moment-of-realness/p1

@Springlering62, while those are both good threads, I'd observe that OP, @CryInGym, has a profile that says he's male.