Body Recomposition Planner — Lose Fat & Build Muscle

Body recomposition — recomp — means losing fat and gaining muscle simultaneously. For decades, conventional wisdom said this was impossible: you had to bulk (eat in surplus to gain muscle, accepting fat) or cut (eat in deficit to lose fat, accepting some muscle loss). The data has since debunked this for several specific populations.

Four groups can recomp effectively: complete beginners (newbie gains), people returning after a long break (muscle memory), overweight individuals with lots of stored energy to mobilise, and lifters who haven't been training optimally. For everyone else — lean, experienced lifters — recomp is technically possible but extremely slow, and you're better served by alternating cuts and bulks. The Body Recomposition Planner identifies which group you're in and sets realistic expectations.

Recomp requires two things every single day: enough protein (1.8–2.4g/kg of body weight) and a hard, progressive resistance-training stimulus. Without both, the body either burns muscle alongside fat (low protein) or has no signal to build muscle (no training).

Protein is the harder one for most people. A 70kg person needs 130–170g per day — that's roughly 600g of chicken, or 5 eggs + 200g cottage cheese + 200g yogurt + a protein shake. Spread it across 3–4 meals (not all at once) for maximum muscle-protein synthesis. The Body Recomposition Planner calculates your specific target and shows realistic ways to hit it from real food.

If you're losing 0.3kg of fat and gaining 0.3kg of muscle per week, the scale shows zero change — but your body is transforming. This is why recomp is psychologically hard: traditional metrics fail. Use these instead: monthly progress photos in the same lighting and pose, waist circumference at navel level (a fat-loss proxy), strength in your main lifts (a muscle-gain proxy), and how your clothes fit.

Weigh yourself daily and average the past 7 days to smooth out water fluctuations. If the 7-day average is steady but your waist is shrinking and your lifts are climbing, recomp is working. The Planner builds these check-in points into the timeline so you can verify progress without obsessing over the scale.

Recomp is genuinely slow. A beginner may see 4–8kg of body composition change (e.g., -4kg fat / +2kg muscle, net -2kg) in 6 months. An intermediate lifter doing recomp at maintenance might see 2–4kg of net change in the same time. Anyone promising 'lose 10kg of fat and gain 5kg of muscle in 12 weeks' is selling fantasy.

The upside: recomp results are durable. Slow, sustainable changes built on real habits don't bounce back. The Body Recomposition Planner sets a 6-month timeline with monthly milestones, accounts for adaptive metabolism, and includes 'reset' weeks at maintenance to prevent burnout. Trust the process, take photos monthly, and check in at 12 weeks before deciding if it's working.