Recomp

[Gw44]

How many calories do you usually consume on a recomp?? Maintenance?

 

[The Solution]

How many calories do you usually consume on a recomp?? Maintenance?

Slightly below
This will vary from person to person depending on what they were doing before (Cutting or bulking)
someone coming off a cut to a recomp may be still able to utilize their rebound and still get leaner while adding calories, but may not apply to someone bulking trying to recomp a bit while dropping kcals.

The total factor is knowing your body and what you may need to do this, but in the end it may lead that individual to spinning their wheels trying to get leaner and try to add mass (that so called thing you can do)

Some good reading....


There are a handful of situations where the combination of muscle gain and fat loss occur relatively readily. The first of those is in overfat beginners. I want to really stress the term overfat in the above sentence. This phenomenon doesn’t happen in lean beginners for reasons I’m going to explain in a second.

A second situation where this phenomenon occurs readily is folks returning from a layoff. Folks who are previously lean and muscular but who get out of shape (whether deliberately or not) often find that they get back into shape much faster than they did initially: they seem to magically replace fat with muscle. In fact, with the advent of before/after transformation pictures for supplements, this has become a growth industry: people who are already in great shape will deliberately get out of great shape so that they can quickly reattain their previous shape in a short period. Apparently there is huge money in selling such before/after pictures to help move supplements.


And, as a generality, this tends to be difficult for reasons that I discussed in some detail in the Ultimate Diet 2.0 and Calorie Partitioning Part 1 and Calorie Partitioning Part 2.
And this brings me back to my comment about overfat beginners as I think this explains some of the physiology involved. Please note that I’ve never really seen this topic studied directly and much of what I’m going to write is based on either observation or other known aspects of physiology that I feel tie into the issue.

So consider an individual who is carrying quite a bit of fat and not very much muscle. Your typical overfat beginner trainee. Let’s look a bit at what’s going on physiologically for this person.

One consequence of the excess body fat is a systemic insulin resistance and this is especially true for fat cells. Basically, when fat cells start to get full, they become more resistant to further caloric storage. That is to say: insulin resistance actually develops as an adaptation to obesity and this is one reason that obesity is often associated with things like hyperglycemia, hypertriglyercidemia and hypercholesterolemia; the fat cells get so full that they stop accepting more calories. So instead of being stored, glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol sit in the bloodstream. In that vein, and quite contrary to popular belief, insulin resistance actually predicts weight loss and insulin sensitivity weight gain but that’s another topic for another day.

So we have a situation in overfat folks where fat cells are sort of trying to ‘push calories away’ from the fat cells. That’s point #1.

The second thing to consider is the untrained state and the fact that when people start training, they always make gains in both strength and muscle mass faster. That is, beginners have the potential to gain muscle at a much faster rate (and more easily in terms of the stimulus needed) than someone trained. As well, keep in mind that regular training (both resistance training and cardio) improve muscular insulin sensitivity and nutrient uptake in that one specific tissue (training is probably the most powerful tool in our arsenal to improve nutrient uptake in that specific a fashion). That’s point #2.

So consider the combination: we have a situation with overfat beginners where fat cells are very insulin resistant and essentially trying to push calories away. Now we throw training on that, not only sending a muscle building stimulus via training but increasing nutrient uptake into skeletal muscle through effects on skeletal muscle nutrient uptake/insulin sensitivity.

And what happens under those circumstances is exactly what you’d expect: the body appears to take calories out of fat cells and use them to build muscle. And this is effectively what is happening due to the combination of the above two factors. But the combination of the two is required. A lean beginner won’t see the above because they don’t have the fat to lose/fat energy to shunt to the muscle. And as they get more advanced, the rate of muscle gain slows way down. Again, it’s the combination of overfat and beginner status that comes together here to let some magic occur.

And even there you’re not going to see the body replacing one pound of fat with one pound of muscle for very long. The rates of the different processes are simply too different. What you might see is an initial shift where muscle ‘replaces’ fat due to the calorie shunting effect but invariably it slows down and either muscle gain or (more frequently) fat loss becomes dominant.

Now, having looked at the specific situation of an overfat beginner, let’s look at what happens as one of two things (or both happen): the person becomes leaner and/or achieves a higher training status.

A known adaptation to fat loss is an improvement in insulin sensitivity especially in fat cells. This is part of why fat loss becomes more difficult as folks get leaner as well as why the risk of weight/fat gain is higher at the end of the diet (you’re MORE insulin sensitive). This means that the fat cells not only have less stored fat to give up but it becomes more difficult to get it out of there.

Cliffs:

But none of those approaches generate a muscle gain to equal the fat loss, at best they generate a small muscle gain in the face of a much larger fat loss (e.g. someone might lose a lot of fat while gaining a pound or two of muscle or what have you). But for the non-beginner/non-returning from a layoff trainee that’s about the best you’re going to get.

Potential rates of muscle gain are never going to approach the potential rate of fat loss once folks are past the beginner stage. Even in the beginner stage, it’s generally always easier to lose fat much faster than you can gain muscle.

Please read....

So the idea of replacing every pound of lost fat with exactly one pound of muscle will be essentially impossible for the intermediate/advanced trainee. There’s simply not enough fat/the fat cells dont want to ‘give up their calories’ and the ability to stimulate rapid muscle gains isn’t there any more.
A followup question might be what about fatter but more advanced trainees. Certainly in that situation, fat cell insulin sensitivity/etc. can approach what is occurring with the overfat beginner but there is still the issue of rate of muscle gain being drastically slowed. It’s probably possible briefly at the start of the diet to get some caloric shunting but it’s never going to approach a 1:1 gain in muscle with fat loss; the potential rate of fat loss (1-2 lbs/week) to rates of muscle gain (0.5 lbs/week if you’re lucky) simply doesn’t exist.

 

[NattyForLife]

Slightly below This will vary from person to person depending on what they were doing before (Cutting or bulking) someone coming off a cut to a recomp may be still able to utilize their rebound and still get leaner while adding calories, but may not apply to someone bulking trying to recomp a bit while dropping kcals. The total factor is knowing your body and what you may need to do this, but in the end it may lead that individual to spinning their wheels trying to get leaner and try to add mass (that so called thing you can do) Some good reading.... There are a handful of situations where the combination of muscle gain and fat loss occur relatively readily. The first of those is in overfat beginners. I want to really stress the term overfat in the above sentence. This phenomenon doesn't happen in lean beginners for reasons I'm going to explain in a second. A second situation where this phenomenon occurs readily is folks returning from a layoff. Folks who are previously lean and muscular but who get out of shape (whether deliberately or not) often find that they get back into shape much faster than they did initially: they seem to magically replace fat with muscle. In fact, with the advent of before/after transformation pictures for supplements, this has become a growth industry: people who are already in great shape will deliberately get out of great shape so that they can quickly reattain their previous shape in a short period. Apparently there is huge money in selling such before/after pictures to help move supplements. And, as a generality, this tends to be difficult for reasons that I discussed in some detail in the Ultimate Diet 2.0 and Calorie Partitioning Part 1 and Calorie Partitioning Part 2. And this brings me back to my comment about overfat beginners as I think this explains some of the physiology involved. Please note that I've never really seen this topic studied directly and much of what I'm going to write is based on either observation or other known aspects of physiology that I feel tie into the issue. So consider an individual who is carrying quite a bit of fat and not very much muscle. Your typical overfat beginner trainee. Let's look a bit at what's going on physiologically for this person. One consequence of the excess body fat is a systemic insulin resistance and this is especially true for fat cells. Basically, when fat cells start to get full, they become more resistant to further caloric storage. That is to say: insulin resistance actually develops as an adaptation to obesity and this is one reason that obesity is often associated with things like hyperglycemia, hypertriglyercidemia and hypercholesterolemia; the fat cells get so full that they stop accepting more calories. So instead of being stored, glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol sit in the bloodstream. In that vein, and quite contrary to popular belief, insulin resistance actually predicts weight loss and insulin sensitivity weight gain but that's another topic for another day. So we have a situation in overfat folks where fat cells are sort of trying to 'push calories away' from the fat cells. That's point #1. The second thing to consider is the untrained state and the fact that when people start training, they always make gains in both strength and muscle mass faster. That is, beginners have the potential to gain muscle at a much faster rate (and more easily in terms of the stimulus needed) than someone trained. As well, keep in mind that regular training (both resistance training and cardio) improve muscular insulin sensitivity and nutrient uptake in that one specific tissue (training is probably the most powerful tool in our arsenal to improve nutrient uptake in that specific a fashion). That's point #2. So consider the combination: we have a situation with overfat beginners where fat cells are very insulin resistant and essentially trying to push calories away. Now we throw training on that, not only sending a muscle building stimulus via training but increasing nutrient uptake into skeletal muscle through effects on skeletal muscle nutrient uptake/insulin sensitivity. And what happens under those circumstances is exactly what you'd expect: the body appears to take calories out of fat cells and use them to build muscle. And this is effectively what is happening due to the combination of the above two factors. But the combination of the two is required. A lean beginner won't see the above because they don't have the fat to lose/fat energy to shunt to the muscle. And as they get more advanced, the rate of muscle gain slows way down. Again, it's the combination of overfat and beginner status that comes together here to let some magic occur. And even there you're not going to see the body replacing one pound of fat with one pound of muscle for very long. The rates of the different processes are simply too different. What you might see is an initial shift where muscle 'replaces' fat due to the calorie shunting effect but invariably it slows down and either muscle gain or (more frequently) fat loss becomes dominant. Now, having looked at the specific situation of an overfat beginner, let's look at what happens as one of two things (or both happen): the person becomes leaner and/or achieves a higher training status. A known adaptation to fat loss is an improvement in insulin sensitivity especially in fat cells. This is part of why fat loss becomes more difficult as folks get leaner as well as why the risk of weight/fat gain is higher at the end of the diet (you're MORE insulin sensitive). This means that the fat cells not only have less stored fat to give up but it becomes more difficult to get it out of there. Cliffs: But none of those approaches generate a muscle gain to equal the fat loss, at best they generate a small muscle gain in the face of a much larger fat loss (e.g. someone might lose a lot of fat while gaining a pound or two of muscle or what have you). But for the non-beginner/non-returning from a layoff trainee that's about the best you're going to get. Potential rates of muscle gain are never going to approach the potential rate of fat loss once folks are past the beginner stage. Even in the beginner stage, it's generally always easier to lose fat much faster than you can gain muscle. Please read.... So the idea of replacing every pound of lost fat with exactly one pound of muscle will be essentially impossible for the intermediate/advanced trainee. There's simply not enough fat/the fat cells dont want to 'give up their calories' and the ability to stimulate rapid muscle gains isn't there any more. A followup question might be what about fatter but more advanced trainees. Certainly in that situation, fat cell insulin sensitivity/etc. can approach what is occurring with the overfat beginner but there is still the issue of rate of muscle gain being drastically slowed. It's probably possible briefly at the start of the diet to get some caloric shunting but it's never going to approach a 1:1 gain in muscle with fat loss; the potential rate of fat loss (1-2 lbs/week) to rates of muscle gain (0.5 lbs/week if you're lucky) simply doesn't exist.

You practically just wrote an article that could be on AM! Good read!

 

[bigbruiser739]

Awesome write up Solution! tried to give you a rep, but I need to spread more love around first haha. so kudos to you! and just to add a small note, recomping has a lot more involved to it then just setting calories. Its more of a manipulation of one's diet and it takes an advanced knowledge of not just nutrition, but a complete understanding of how your individual body works, and proper supplementation in order to properly achieve what is usually considered the unachievable (lose fat/ gain muscle). I will also note, that I have seen some individuals have great success "recomping" by reverse dieting strictly after a strenuous cut.

 

[Mikeyjd]

Slightly below
This will vary from person to person depending on what they were doing before (Cutting or bulking)
someone coming off a cut to a recomp may be still able to utilize their rebound and still get leaner while adding calories, but may not apply to someone bulking trying to recomp a bit while dropping kcals.

The total factor is knowing your body and what you may need to do this, but in the end it may lead that individual to spinning their wheels trying to get leaner and try to add mass (that so called thing you can do)

Some good reading....


There are a handful of situations where the combination of muscle gain and fat loss occur relatively readily. The first of those is in overfat beginners. I want to really stress the term overfat in the above sentence. This phenomenon doesn’t happen in lean beginners for reasons I’m going to explain in a second.

A second situation where this phenomenon occurs readily is folks returning from a layoff. Folks who are previously lean and muscular but who get out of shape (whether deliberately or not) often find that they get back into shape much faster than they did initially: they seem to magically replace fat with muscle. In fact, with the advent of before/after transformation pictures for supplements, this has become a growth industry: people who are already in great shape will deliberately get out of great shape so that they can quickly reattain their previous shape in a short period. Apparently there is huge money in selling such before/after pictures to help move supplements.


And, as a generality, this tends to be difficult for reasons that I discussed in some detail in the Ultimate Diet 2.0 and Calorie Partitioning Part 1 and Calorie Partitioning Part 2.
And this brings me back to my comment about overfat beginners as I think this explains some of the physiology involved. Please note that I’ve never really seen this topic studied directly and much of what I’m going to write is based on either observation or other known aspects of physiology that I feel tie into the issue.

So consider an individual who is carrying quite a bit of fat and not very much muscle. Your typical overfat beginner trainee. Let’s look a bit at what’s going on physiologically for this person.

One consequence of the excess body fat is a systemic insulin resistance and this is especially true for fat cells. Basically, when fat cells start to get full, they become more resistant to further caloric storage. That is to say: insulin resistance actually develops as an adaptation to obesity and this is one reason that obesity is often associated with things like hyperglycemia, hypertriglyercidemia and hypercholesterolemia; the fat cells get so full that they stop accepting more calories. So instead of being stored, glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol sit in the bloodstream. In that vein, and quite contrary to popular belief, insulin resistance actually predicts weight loss and insulin sensitivity weight gain but that’s another topic for another day.

So we have a situation in overfat folks where fat cells are sort of trying to ‘push calories away’ from the fat cells. That’s point #1.

The second thing to consider is the untrained state and the fact that when people start training, they always make gains in both strength and muscle mass faster. That is, beginners have the potential to gain muscle at a much faster rate (and more easily in terms of the stimulus needed) than someone trained. As well, keep in mind that regular training (both resistance training and cardio) improve muscular insulin sensitivity and nutrient uptake in that one specific tissue (training is probably the most powerful tool in our arsenal to improve nutrient uptake in that specific a fashion). That’s point #2.

So consider the combination: we have a situation with overfat beginners where fat cells are very insulin resistant and essentially trying to push calories away. Now we throw training on that, not only sending a muscle building stimulus via training but increasing nutrient uptake into skeletal muscle through effects on skeletal muscle nutrient uptake/insulin sensitivity.

And what happens under those circumstances is exactly what you’d expect: the body appears to take calories out of fat cells and use them to build muscle. And this is effectively what is happening due to the combination of the above two factors. But the combination of the two is required. A lean beginner won’t see the above because they don’t have the fat to lose/fat energy to shunt to the muscle. And as they get more advanced, the rate of muscle gain slows way down. Again, it’s the combination of overfat and beginner status that comes together here to let some magic occur.

And even there you’re not going to see the body replacing one pound of fat with one pound of muscle for very long. The rates of the different processes are simply too different. What you might see is an initial shift where muscle ‘replaces’ fat due to the calorie shunting effect but invariably it slows down and either muscle gain or (more frequently) fat loss becomes dominant.

Now, having looked at the specific situation of an overfat beginner, let’s look at what happens as one of two things (or both happen): the person becomes leaner and/or achieves a higher training status.

A known adaptation to fat loss is an improvement in insulin sensitivity especially in fat cells. This is part of why fat loss becomes more difficult as folks get leaner as well as why the risk of weight/fat gain is higher at the end of the diet (you’re MORE insulin sensitive). This means that the fat cells not only have less stored fat to give up but it becomes more difficult to get it out of there.

Cliffs:

But none of those approaches generate a muscle gain to equal the fat loss, at best they generate a small muscle gain in the face of a much larger fat loss (e.g. someone might lose a lot of fat while gaining a pound or two of muscle or what have you). But for the non-beginner/non-returning from a layoff trainee that’s about the best you’re going to get.

Potential rates of muscle gain are never going to approach the potential rate of fat loss once folks are past the beginner stage. Even in the beginner stage, it’s generally always easier to lose fat much faster than you can gain muscle.

Please read....

So the idea of replacing every pound of lost fat with exactly one pound of muscle will be essentially impossible for the intermediate/advanced trainee. There’s simply not enough fat/the fat cells dont want to ‘give up their calories’ and the ability to stimulate rapid muscle gains isn’t there any more.
A followup question might be what about fatter but more advanced trainees. Certainly in that situation, fat cell insulin sensitivity/etc. can approach what is occurring with the overfat beginner but there is still the issue of rate of muscle gain being drastically slowed. It’s probably possible briefly at the start of the diet to get some caloric shunting but it’s never going to approach a 1:1 gain in muscle with fat loss; the potential rate of fat loss (1-2 lbs/week) to rates of muscle gain (0.5 lbs/week if you’re lucky) simply doesn’t exist.

Thanks Lyle