- So let's talk about how to build muscle
and lose fat at the same time.
How do you accomplish a body recomposition?
And this video's for you if you're currently quote, unquote
skinny fat and maybe you're at your ideal body weight,
but you're looking to lose body fat
because maybe you're at 18 to 22%
or maybe you're someone who's overweight
looking to get leaner,
but you don't wanna end up just being a skinnier version
of yourself and you want to have
that athletic, fit physique at the end of it.
Now, the secret to a body recomposition
is that your body will be able to use that energy
that's liberated through the stored body fat to grow muscle.
And in order to get your body to do this,
we need a combination of a really strong training stimulus,
optimizing your diet, optimizing your recovery,
and much more and all that we will cover in this video,
as I'm gonna give you a step-by-step guide
for how to set up a successful body recomposition.
So let's dive right into it.
Now, the first step you wanna take
in order to build muscle while losing body fat
is making sure you're exposing your body
to a novel and stronger training stimulus.
This is actually the area that most people get wrong.
Either they use a lotta muscle confusion techniques
or they keep doing the same thing
while expecting different results.
And what I recommend here is a very simple method
of increasing your training volume
by modifying your training frequency.
For example, if you're currently doing
a quote, unquote bro split and you're hitting your chest
with 10 sets per week in one single session,
well, then if you move from that bro split
to an upper/lower or a push/pull/legs setup,
then you can train your chest twice per week
and you will be able to do more volume easily.
So you can go up to 12, 14, 16 sets of chest per week.
Of if you're someone who's already doing
an upper/lower split,
you can add another upper in week one
and then a lower in week two to test out
how you respond to higher volumes.
If you're still able to accomplish progressive overload,
well, then you have a good sign
that you are making more gains.
And what I've discovered over the years,
that some of my body parts, like my quads,
can easily tolerate 18, 20 sets per week,
while my hamstrings can only do 10.
And I found that out through experimentation.
So I would highly recommend shifting things around like this
to see where you stand.
And if you're hitting a wall and you need more recovery
because you're sore, everything is achy,
then you can always take a recovery and a deload week
and then proceed with another accumulation from there.
Now that we got the training stimulus,
let's talk about diet.
And this brings me to step two,
where we're setting the right amount of calories.
So for the best results,
for the body recomposition focused on fat loss,
I would recommend setting your caloric deficit
to lose no faster than 0.5% of your body weight per week.
So for example, if you're someone who is at 180 pounds,
which is around 82 kg,
you're losing just slightly under a pound a week
or around 400 grams per week.
So you don't wanna be going very aggressive
if your goal is to build muscle while losing fat.
Even if you're a complete beginner
with lots of newbie gains,
if you cut calories very, very low,
you will be seriously limiting your muscle growth.
So it's important to have the patience with this approach
in order to see the best results.
Now that we got the calories,
let's move on to step three, which are your macronutrients.
And the most important macro is the like button
below this video,
so you wanna make sure to destroy that like button
as hard as possible.
It does mean a ton to see your support and jokes aside,
the most important macronutrient is your protein intake.
My recommendation is to get a minimum of one gram per pound
of your ideal body weight.
So if your ideal body weight is 180 pounds,
that would be 180 grams of protein per day.
I've seen some great results going even higher with myself
and clients up to 1.2 grams per pound
of your ideal body weight.
So if you're 180 pounds ideal body weight,
that would be up to 220 grams of protein per day.
Now, with other macronutrients, your carbs and fats,
I would recommend not going for keto
or low-carb approach and instead opting in
for a more balanced approach where you have plenty
of carbs and fats to go around
in order to maximize your results.
Now with the calories and macros out of the way,
let's talk about step four, which is fasting.
I recommend avoiding excessive fasting protocols
if your goal is to build muscle and lose fat
at the same time.
I know there's a lot of popular weight loss approaches,
such as one meal a day or a four-hour eating window
with two meals a day or alternate day fasting,
and while those are very effective at weight loss,
they're not the most ideal way to build muscle
while you're losing body fat.
So here I would recommend taking
that protein intake from before
and splitting it into four even servings throughout the day
and making sure that your timing of those servings
is also somewhat around training.
So I would avoid fasted workouts in this case
and making sure you're just elevating
that muscle protein synthesis throughout the day
in order to see the absolute best results.
Now step five is optimizing your cardio.
I would highly recommend avoiding excessive amounts
of steady-state cardio,
as well as high-intensity interval training.
Your primary focus as far as training is concerned
should be weight training,
and then on top of that,
what I would recommend adding is walking.
I suggest walking between eight to 10,000 steps per day.
It is a really good activity
to boost your energy expenditure,
allowing you to get into a caloric deficit easier.
It's gonna be great active recovery,
and overall, it's a great tool for your lifestyle.
Now with steady-state cardio,
one or two sessions a week for 20, 30 minutes
won't do much harm,
but if you're really scaling it high,
you wanna be very mindful that it doesn't interfere
with your lower body recovery.
So if you notice that your lower body recovery isn't there,
then you wanna tone down the cardio
because cardio isn't building muscle.
You need resistance training for that,
and that should be your priority number one.
Now, for step six, we need to optimize your recovery
for a body recomposition.
And there are really two main components of doing this.
The first one is your sleep.
I tell this to clients all the time,
that the best pre-workout supplement
is a good night of sleep.
Now, the second best one is getting a nap before a workout.
Sleep is really important,
but it's even more important if you're looking
to build muscle and lose fat at the same time.
Because a caloric deficit is stressful in itself
and then now you're also pushing yourself
to train even harder in that caloric deficit.
And my recommendation here is to get a minimum
of seven hours of sleep a night.
If you can build that up to eight, would be even better.
And then if you can dial that in to be
on a consistent schedule, that would be even better.
And overall, I do see sleep as one of those hidden reasons
why so many people aren't seeing the gains
they should be seeing from how hard they work in the gym
because they can't keep up with the volume,
they can't progress the overload,
because they're constantly under-recovered.
And if you feel like you need coffee to go through the day,
if you feel energy dips,
if you feel like you need to take a nap in the afternoon,
you're most likely not getting enough sleep
and this should be your number one priority.
Now, the second component of optimizing your recovery
is how you manage your daily stressors.
The first thing you wanna do here is making sure
that you're being very wise with planning
your leisure time.
And we do need to spend our free time properly.
For a lot of us, we spend the free time
doing things that are somewhat fun,
but they're also very draining,
which kinda defeats the purpose of rest and relaxation
and then you have to go into another week of work
and training without getting that rest you really needed.
And sometimes, you really need that chill day or two
where you don't do anything.
Maybe it's Netflix, maybe it's going out in nature,
maybe just socializing,
but very lightly without putting much pressure on you
to do much.
And these are very restorative days that we do need
to recharge in order to be able to get back
to that intense routine where we're pushing
and moving toward our goals.
Now, the second thing you can do
to manage your daily stressors better
is improve how you react to them.
So instead of having a fight or flight response,
you have a more relaxed and calming approach
to dealing with things that life throws at you.
And here, I recommend adopting a more stoic philosophy.
For things that are in your control,
you do your absolute best to correct that stressor
so it's no longer there or improve the situation.
But there's gonna be a lotta things in life
that are out of your control,
and they're still causing stress.
And with these things,
with a stoic philosophy, you're able to change your attitude
to accept them for what they are and then simply move on.
And this will overall lower your stress levels,
help you with diet consistency,
because stress eating is a real problem,
also gonna help you improve your training performance
and overall results from training and your recovery
and more enjoyment of the process itself.
And the other thing that's gonna help you enjoy the process,
making sure you hit that subscribe below,
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are in the description below, so check those out.
I'm also gonna leave a video here at the end
that I would highly recommend for you to check out,
so I'm gonna see you right there in that video.