Jonathan Steedman (00:01.101)
Okay, team, we're going to talk about the holy grail. Well, that's what I consider it. And I think quite a few people would agree with me the holy grail of losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time. I've had plenty of people come to me to work on this goal. I just want to drop a bit of body fat and gain a bit of muscle. And there's nothing wrong with that goal. I think, you know, for health reasons and performance reasons and other things, it's what a lot of people need to be doing, losing some body fat and gaining some muscle. That's, that's good.

But doing them at the same time versus breaking them up into separate phases of one phase focused on fat loss and then shifting into a phase focused more on muscle gain. Doing them at the same time requires a few extra bits and pieces. So we're going to go through what those extra bits and pieces are. I'm going to give you my tips for it. Maybe talk to you about who recomposition is for or who could potentially focus on that goal versus

groups of people who maybe shouldn't be trying to focus on that goal. So first and foremost, it is possible. I think there's, I don't think we're there anymore, but there was this big, that used to be this thing of like, can't do them at the same time, which is not true. You can, most people can do them at the same time if you dial in things and go through what I'm about to talk about. So you can, but what's really important to note is it's going to be slower. Both of those goals.

fat loss and muscle gain are going to be at a slower rate than if you were focusing on them individually. So if your primary goal, your main thing that you want to change is fat loss, don't focus, don't try and recomp, don't try and do both at the same time, just focus on fat loss. It will allow you to focus in a bit more, push a little bit harder and go a bit quicker. Okay. And you're not going to suddenly lose all your muscle if you're being sensible, you know, but you are going to maximize your fat loss progress.

compared to if you were trying to lose fat whilst also gaining muscle. You can lose some body fat, but it's going to be at a slower rate. And that's exactly the same for muscle gain. Muscle gain, again, if you want to maximize your rate and your results, focus purely on gaining muscle. And still, you know, that doesn't mean that you're immediately going to gain body fat, but it means you're probably not going lose much of it. And that's totally fine. That's what you need.

Jonathan Steedman (02:24.801)
The other thing as well, I've seen so many people fail to gain muscle because they've tried to just do a recomp phase. So for some people, you really do need to give it a good nudge to gain muscle. And so trying to balance between these two goals can sometimes mean that you achieve none. that, what is it? Chase two rabbits, catch none. That can definitely happen with this approach if you're not careful. Because when you think about it,

Fat loss is what we call a catabolic process, i.e. it's your body breaking something down. And muscle gain is an anabolic process. It's a gaining, it's a building process. so those two things are the opposite of one another, right? It's kind of like saving money and spending money. Yeah, you can kind of do both simultaneously, but it's easier to do one if you're just focused on one of them. And so...

That's why if you do focus on recomposition, you need to accept that things are going to move slower because you're not going to maximize your muscle gain or your fat loss rate. They are going to be slower. And so with a focused fat loss phase, you might feel or notice results in like a week or two, you know, depending on what you're doing. And maybe if you're focused on muscle gain, in that first, like muscle gain is unfortunately always going to be slower, but maybe, maybe like four to six weeks in you, you'll start to feel a little bit of

different look a little bit different. Recomposition can sometimes take closer to 8 to 12 weeks before you actually start to feel and see the difference. So that's another important thing to note. It is going to be slower and for some people that can kind of hamstring their I guess motivation you know if you someone that's motivated by seeing results or feeling results then recomposition might be a bit too slow for you. So that would if that's you I would

encourage you to instead break up your goals into separate phases of fat loss phase and muscle gain phase and you can kind of rinse and repeat as needed. Another group of people that should probably not focus on recomposition is people that have been training for a while. Okay, so there's a concept called training age, which is basically how long you've been exercising and like the older I guess that is the older your training age or the greater your training age, the less likely you're going to be able to achieve

Jonathan Steedman (04:45.514)
composition. Essentially the body just becomes harder and harder to change because it becomes more adapted to what you're doing to it and so you have to focus in more intently on goals. So if you've been training for a few years, recomposition is probably not the best goal for you. That's a really good way to just sort of spin your wheels for months. What's important to note is training age is not just about how long you've been training. It's also how long you've been training properly.

not to be rude. I've had a few people be like, I've gone to the gym for the last 10 years. But for the first six years, they were just kind of going in, doing a workout they saw off YouTube and not tracking it and next week doing something completely different. And like that's good for health. And it's just amazing that people are exercising to begin with. Don't get me wrong. But you know, I would say training age is about years of quality training. So if you've got a few years of quality training under your belt,

you're probably going to struggle to see too much change when it comes to recomposition. You're going to want to focus on fat loss and muscle gain separately. But if you are really wanting to push for recomposition, you feel like, look, my training age probably isn't too great. I'm okay with things going a little bit slower if it means I can simultaneously achieve, or I guess it's concurrently really, isn't it? Concurrently achieve fat loss and muscle gain. Then...

None of the things, so it's all the same stuff of like eating the right amount, eating the right amount of protein, training properly, but you kind of have to be extra dialed in on those things. And so let's start with how much you should be eating. You should be aiming to eat in a slight deficit. So I would say that's like 200 to 300 calories below your maintenance, maybe pushing to 400.

But a slight deficit may be almost up to maintenance, in that little calorie range kind of puts you in a good amount of you'll get some fat loss, but it doesn't Deplete your energy so much that you can't train properly. Okay, because that's the next thing You need to be training Like a crazy person and I don't mean like going lots and doing more and doing more sessions and doing longer sessions I just mean

Jonathan Steedman (07:10.955)
If you feel like you've maybe been phoning your sessions in a little bit and you've been You know, you really could have done ten reps, but you did seven and it was getting a bit hard So you stopped or you really could have put an extra ten kilos on that bar, but you just kind of didn't You really need to push yourself in that gym push the weight sensibly smartly don't safe, you know, don't don't be crazy but Any good recomp periods of time that myself or my clients have had have also gone hand-in-hand with

a season of really good, hard training. So, because again, this recomposition goal requires you to push it a little bit more just in general. So a mild calorie deficit, pushing pretty hard in the gym. Again, just to remind you, I don't mean go to the gym more. I don't mean stay in the gym longer. I just mean when you're doing your training, when you're those exercises, like get after it. And then protein kind of similar.

recommendations that we'd have for anyone, 1.4 to 2 grams per kilogram of body weight. I think nutrient timing becomes a little bit more important when you're shooting for recomposition. So what I mean by that is how you space your meals throughout the day. So you want to make extra sure that you're getting multiple serves of protein a day. So I gave you that 1.4 to 2 gram thing. Let's say that for me, that's about 160 ish grams. I don't want to have one or two meals.

I don't want that protein split across one or two meals. I ideally want that split relatively evenly across three to four meals. Okay. So you want to do that a little bit more. And then you also want to make sure that your training nutrition is, is extra dialed in. So you absolutely want to be having a carb rich snack before you train to really fuel that session. And you want to try and get your post-training meal in as soon as you can. You don't have to go crazy, but within 60 to 90 minutes is ideal. Those little one or two percenters, which

in the scheme of things, if you have a goal of just fat loss, he's not just, you know what I mean? But if focused only on fat loss or focused only on muscle gain, you can be a little bit more relaxed with this stuff. But for recomposition, you do kind of have to dial it in. Another really big thing you got to dial in is your sleep. If you're getting four to five hours a night, then recomposition is just going to be a massive uphill battle. So making sure that we've dialed in sleep and trying to get to that

Jonathan Steedman (09:38.383)
seven to eight hours unbroken as best you can, it's going to be really, really helpful as well. So, mild calorie deficit, decent amount of protein, spaced out multiple times throughout the day, of timed well against your training sessions, and then remembering in these training sessions, they need to be weights training, and you need to be going pretty hard at it. So, it's not that, you know,

F45 or cardio training or Pilates or all those sorts of exercise sessions aren't good for you. They're amazing by all means keep doing them. But if you're not doing resistance training at all, then recomposition is not, should not be your goal because it's not going to happen. yes. Last thing I just wanted to talk about was how to track progress when you're focused on recomposition. Cause you got to do things a little bit differently. I think compared to a

focused fat loss or a focused muscle gain phase because things move a little bit slower. You need to change up how you're tracking things. so scales become a little less helpful because oftentimes a really good recomposition phase results in you not changing weight. You might go up or down by like a kilo, but that's kind of it. So it's not a super helpful metric to have you by all means keep jumping on to keep an eye on things, but

I ideally would get you to add measurements, hip and waist and right arm and right thigh circumference. Sometimes even measurements aren't brilliant when it comes to recomposition. so the two metrics that I think are non-negotiable if your goal is recomposition is tracking your gym performance and taking progress photos. So let's start with the crap one. Progress photos suck. I don't know too many people who enjoy taking them.

But when it comes to recomposition, they are the absolute best way for you to capture that change. Because it's a bit slower, you'll start second guessing yourself. You'll be like, scale's not really moving. I don't even think my measurement's moving. I don't even know if my clothes are fitting. What's going on? Is this working? I give up, I'm stopping. Whereas if you're taking progress photos every kind of two to four weeks, you'll be able to compare and contrast those and you will see the change. You gotta take the photos because you see yourself every day. So you are not gonna be a good...

Jonathan Steedman (12:00.144)
or fair judge, need to take those photos so you can see the change that has occurred in these kind of little blips rather than the day-to-day that you see in the mirror. yeah, progress photos suck. Just side note, always take front, back and sides. Don't just take front. I know that's a bit trickier, but there could be a lot of changes going on behind you that you can't see if you don't take those photos. doing that, natural lighting, ideally lit from the side, not

not down lighting or up lighting. And did I say natural lighting? I hope I did. Natural lighting from the side. If you can take front, back and sides, natural lighting from the side, that is the best way to take progress photos and accepting that yeah, they're uncomfortable and they suck, but they are so, so, so valuable in this. And then the other metric I mentioned was gym performance. So you've got to be tracking your workouts. If you don't know what weight or reps or sets or whatever you did on that movement last week, then like...

how could you possibly know that you are pushing it a bit harder this week? And the reason the track in the performance is important for recomposition as well is that that's one of the best ways for you to capture muscle gain because if you're getting stronger in those movements week to week, there's a really high likelihood that that's due to some muscle gain. Strength is not just about muscle, there's other things going on, sure, but particularly

if you're doing five plus reps of things and you're noticing that each week you're adding more weight or doing a few more reps, we can be pretty confident that that's due to the engine or your muscle getting bigger. And then you can confirm that by using those progress photos that I spoke about before. yeah, recomposition to sum up. Recomposition is a viable goal for some people. It is possible.

but it is harder and it is slower. And so you do need to be mindful of whether it is the right choice for you, even though on paper losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time sounds amazing, right? For a lot of people, breaking those goals up into separate phases is better. But for some people, a recomposition phase can be really, really helpful. you know, making sure that you're eating the right amount, you're eating the right amount of protein, you're training properly, you're training regularly, you're training hard, you're getting some good sleep, and then you've got your...

Jonathan Steedman (14:23.879)
metrics dialed in the progress photos in the gym tracking if you're doing all that stuff you can have a really really successful recomp phase so if you've got more questions about recomp let me know, me message on instagram, the thing otherwise I'll chat to you guys next time