Fat Loss WITHOUT a Calorie Deficit? (Body Recomp Explained) | Ep 362
Join the 90-Day Body Recomp Workshop tomorrow (Tuesday, August 19) at 12 PM Eastern for only $27 (replay included). Get Philip's complete system for simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain, plus a custom nutrition plan. Register at live.witsandweights.com
--
Think you need a calorie deficit to lose fat? Or months of bulking followed by months of cutting to reshape your physique?
Think again.
Body recomp (the simultaneous loss of fat and gain of muscle) isn't just possible... it's achievable for most people under the right conditions.
Your body can become remarkably efficient at energy partitioning, directing nutrients toward muscle growth while mobilizing stored fat for fuel.
This episode breaks down exactly how this works: how your body can simultaneously burn fat and build muscle, often without scale changes.
Learn who can achieve this "impossible" feat and how to do it.
Main Takeaways:
Body recomp is simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain, possible even at maintenance calories
Your body actively partitions energy based on training stimulus and protein intake
Beginners, detrained individuals, and overweight people have the highest recomp potential
Scale weight becomes virtually useless - track strength, measurements, and photos too
Episode Resources:
90-Day Body Recomp Workshop - Tuesday, August 19, 12 PM Eastern ($27)
Chef's Foundry P600 Non-Toxic Ceramic Cookware - 50% off at witsandweights.com/chefsfoundry
Timestamps:
0:01 - The scale weight paradox
3:45 - Body recomposition
5:06 - Why THIS is non-negotiable for recomp
6:48 - Energy partitioning and insulin sensitivity
9:30 - Who can achieve body recomp (spoiler: more people than you think)
12:27 - Detrained individuals
13:45 - Overweight or obese
15:09 - Older adults and advanced lifters
18:34 - What is required for body recomp & how to track
22:37 - Patience + realistic expectations
26:02 - Metabolic health improvements
28:39 - Sustainable physique development
How to Lose Fat and Build Muscle at the Same Time
If you have been told that you must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat, you are not alone. Most people believe the scale is the ultimate measure of progress. But what if you could lose fat and build muscle at the same time without the scale moving much at all? This process, called body recomposition, is possible for more people than you think when certain conditions are met.
Body recomp means simultaneously gaining lean muscle mass and reducing fat mass, resulting in an improved physique and better metabolic health. It can happen at maintenance calories, in a small deficit, or even in a slight surplus depending on your training status and approach.
Why Body Recomp Works
The first driver of recomp is resistance training. When you lift weights, you send a signal to your body that muscle tissue is valuable and should be preserved or built. If you are consuming adequate protein, your body will direct nutrients toward muscle repair and growth. If you are not in a large calorie surplus, it will use stored fat to provide the remaining energy needed.
The second driver is improved insulin sensitivity from training. Better insulin sensitivity means your body is more likely to direct carbohydrates into muscle glycogen storage instead of fat storage. Over time, you are partitioning more of your calories toward building muscle and away from accumulating fat.
Who Can Benefit Most from Recomp
Almost anyone can experience some level of recomp, but certain groups see the biggest changes:
Beginners – New lifters adapt quickly, building strength and muscle while using fat stores for energy.
Detrained lifters – Those returning to training after time off regain muscle faster due to muscle memory.
Overweight or obese individuals – Large energy reserves from stored fat make it easier to fuel muscle growth without overeating.
Older adults – Progress can be slower, but with smart programming and higher protein intake, body composition can still improve.
Advanced lifters – Gains are harder to achieve, but recomp is still possible with precise training, nutrition, and patience.
Key Conditions for Recomp Success
Progressive strength training – Focus on compound lifts with progressive overload to continually challenge your muscles.
Adequate protein intake – Aim for roughly 0.8 to 1 gram per pound of body weight daily.
Controlled calorie intake – Stay in a range from a small deficit to a slight surplus, depending on your goals and experience level.
Quality recovery – Sleep and stress management are non-negotiable for muscle growth and fat loss.
Tracking Progress Without Obsessing Over the Scale
The scale alone is not enough to measure recomp. A better approach combines:
Circumference measurements (waist, arms, chest, hips, thighs)
Progress photos
Strength increases in the gym
How your clothes fit
These indicators together provide a clear picture of fat loss and muscle gain, even if body weight stays the same.
Realistic Expectations
Recomp is slower than dedicated bulking or cutting. You might see noticeable changes in six to eight weeks and major results in three to six months. A good outcome could be losing a quarter pound of fat per week while gaining 0.3 to 0.4 pounds of muscle, creating a leaner, more defined body over time without drastic diet swings.
Why Recomp Improves Health as Well as Appearance
Beyond looking leaner and stronger, recomp improves metabolic health. More muscle mass supports better insulin sensitivity, blood sugar regulation, and functional capacity. Lower body fat reduces risk factors for chronic disease. This is why body recomposition is not just a cosmetic goal—it is a long-term investment in your health.
The Bottom Line
Body recomp is not magic and it is not reserved for beginners. It is the result of consistent resistance training, strategic nutrition, and patience. When you set up the right conditions, your body can indeed burn fat and build muscle at the same time. The scale might not reflect your progress, but your strength, measurements, and the mirror will.
Have you followed the podcast?
Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.
Then hit “Follow” and you’re good to go!
Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
Picture this scenario you step on the scale for weeks at a time and it really hasn't changed. But your clothes are getting looser, your muscle definition is starting to show, you're hitting PRs in the gym and according to conventional wisdom, this really shouldn't be possible. You have to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat, right, but what if I told you you can burn fat and build muscle at the same time in a process called body recomposition? Today, you're going to discover the specific mechanisms that allow your body to mobilize stored fat for fuel while building lean tissue. Who can achieve this seemingly impossible feat? And it's more people than you think and why your weight might be the worst indicator of your.
Philip Pape: 0:50
Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host certified nutrition coach, philip Pape, and today we're talking about one of the most misunderstood concepts in fitness, and that is body recomposition. Body recomp is the process of losing fat and gaining muscle simultaneously, often, but not always, without seeing changes on the scale, and this concept usually challenges what a lot of people believe about energy balance calories in versus calories out. Can you do it? Can you not do it? Is it going to take forever? Is it only for beginners? But when you peel back the onion, the science seems to be pretty clear, and understanding how this works can change how you approach physique development. If you're the type of person who doesn't always want to or doesn't feel you need to use bulking and cutting which are deliberate and more assertive or aggressive muscle building and fat loss phases, so you might be frustrated by the scale. Getting a little bit obsessed with it, you might be afraid of gaining fat when you gain weight, you might not want to go into a big calorie deficit. All of those things are perfectly normal and okay, and you might be curious about how to optimize your body composition while just hanging out right Without these traditional cutting and bulking phases. Either way, this episode is going to give you the knowledge to make that happen.
Philip Pape: 2:17
Now, before we get into those mechanisms which I think are really important to understand, or else you can't take the right approach, I want to let you know about something special happening tomorrow that is relevant to this topic. I'm hosting a 90-day body recomp workshop where I'll walk through my system, my approach for transforming your physique without worrying about cutting or bulking. We're going to cover the nutrition setup to optimize this energy partitioning. We'll discuss today training protocols or principles that maximize simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain, as well as a specific training program. I actually recommend following and the tracking methods and principles to show you that it's working, even when your scale weight doesn't change, or it could be that your scale weight is changing a little bit, and we're going to talk about how to demystify all of that. I'm going to share some of the mistakes that prevent body recomp from working and how to avoid them Again. The workshop is tomorrow, tuesday, at 12 Eastern in physique university. It is only $27 to get all of that, to get your free nutrition plan, to get the replay. If you can't make it, go to livewitsandweightscom or click the link in the show notes to register Again. Even just for the workshop itself, 27 bucks is an amazing value. So check that out, livewitsandweightscom, or click the link in the show notes, and you're going to get a 90-day body recomp plan, three phases, all laid out for you for how to do this the right way.
Philip Pape: 3:45
All right, let me start by defining what we are talking about when we say body recomp, because it sounds obvious, but I think it gets misapplied and misdefined a lot. Body recomp is the simultaneous loss of fat mass and the gain of muscle mass, resulting in improved body composition, even when total body weight remains unchanged, or it could change. That's kind of the caveat that I wanted to add, because body recomp a lot of people think of it as just maintaining your weight and getting the result. Not necessarily, and we're gonna get into those nuances, and so this often flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that you have to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat. Most people think of energy balance. You know, kind of like a bank account, calories in calories out, end of story. But your body has a lot that's going on inside. Okay, about the distribution of tissue inside your body, not just your body mass and not just the energy, the overall energy, right? So then we get into biochemical mechanisms, right? Biochemistry is what I meant to say about reallocating energy in ways that, at the surface, seem to break the math. But it's not breaking the math, it's just we're using the wrong math premise or we're looking at the wrong type of math when we talk about it. So let me explain how this happens.
Philip Pape: 5:06
At the physiological level, your body doesn't just dump the incoming calories into a single pool and randomly allocate them right. It is actively deciding where your energy goes, based on some key signals, some key inputs, and the most important of these by far is the training stimulus from resistance exercise, from strength training. And if you're not doing that or don't want to do that, I'm sorry. You are not going to achieve body recomp. You're also not going to achieve fat loss If you're taking GLP-1 drugs. You're not going to get fat loss. You're going to lose a bunch of weight and lose a bunch of muscle. All those scenarios require training from resistance exercise.
Philip Pape: 5:46
So when you lift weights, you create a demand signal for muscle protein synthesis. You're telling your body muscle and protein are important to have. Your body prioritizes sending amino acids and energy toward repairing and building your muscle tissue. At the same time, if you're eating adequate protein but you're not in a large calorie surplus, your body still needs some energy to meet its overall needs and it's going to. At the same time, it's devoting some of that protein toward muscle. It's going to mobilize stored fat to meet the energy needs. So this is what I mean by energy partitioning. I want you to think of it as like your body's resource allocation system becoming more efficient. So, instead of defaulting to just storing fat which is the vast majority of the population because you're resistance training and eating protein, you're going to preferentially fuel muscle growth and you're going to use fat stores for energy. Again, it's going to depend on the overall energy balance as well, but this is just the basic explanation.
Philip Pape: 6:48
The second mechanism here is improved insulin sensitivity. Resistance training dramatically improves how well your muscle tissue responds to insulin, and that means the carbs that you eat are much more likely to go toward refilling your muscle glycogen rather than being converted to fat, because your muscles are this metabolic, this glucose sink, as you've heard, and it's pulling those nutrients away from fat storage. It's a beautiful thing. So when you're in a true body recomp state, you're running two different processes at the same time. Right Now, your body's running these things all the time anyway, but you're trying to balance them out, just so. Muscle protein synthesis is happening at an accelerated rate because you're training, because you're eating enough protein and you're not in much of a deficit. And I say it that way because you could be in a tiny deficit, you could not be in a deficit at all, or you could be even in a modest deficit which, for a newer lifter, could still allow you to build muscle. At the same time, your body is mobilizing fat stores, using what's called lipolysis to provide energy for the process.
Philip Pape: 7:52
Again, if you're in that window, right, if you're in that window like, you don't like. If we think of the other direction, if you're in too much of a surplus, you just don't need. What am I trying to say? You are intaking so much food that, no matter what your body does, even though it's burning fat, it's not going to burn all the fat and therefore you're going to gain fat, right. So we have to be in this window, this kind of slight deficit to slight surplus plus window, which is why I mean you don't necessarily have to be at true maintenance for this to happen.
Philip Pape: 8:25
Now, muscle tissue requires relatively few net calories to build right. We're talking like 200 to 300 calories a day for active muscle growth, because it can't build that quickly. Even if you're new. It's going to be faster than if you're a more advanced trainee, but it's still not anywhere near as fast as the rate that you could lose fat. So if you're eating at maintenance, your body can easily draw energy from stored fat. For that slight bit of calories it needs to build muscle. So it's kind of taking from one and give it to the other. It's like the Robin Hood that you want in your body right, robbing from the fat, the rich fat stores, to give it to the poor muscle stores. You build a muscle right, and guess what? This gets even easier if you have a little extra fat to begin with. So I always say, like, the positive framing on being someone who has extra weight to lose is that that extra body fat on your body is an energy source when you start lifting weights. It's kind of a cool thing. So this is why the scale can stay exactly the same or it could even go up slightly while you're losing fat and gaining muscle. It could even go down slightly.
Philip Pape: 9:30
I've spoken about these different forms of body recomp in the past and I tend to be biased more toward maintaining or building rather than losing. But you can definitely achieve it in all of those scenarios and you're essentially trading the dense fat tissue for denser muscle tissue as you do that, and that's why the math gets a little wonky. So you might be thinking, okay, so who could actually do this? Because that is the big question that gets asked and often answered by fitness influencers in a very simplified way. So not everyone can achieve what I'll say is dramatic body recomp, but everybody can achieve some body recomp. So if we understand the buckets of people here and criteria, then you can set realistic expectations.
Philip Pape: 10:14
So let's start with beginners, newbies, people who are highly detrained I kind of put them all together but we'll separate them. For now. We'll start with beginners. You never lifted before. If you're a beginner, you have among, if not the highest potential for body recomp, because if you're new to resistance training, your body has this huge adaptive capacity. The neuromuscular adaptations alone can drive these huge strength gains right. You can double, triple, quadruple your strength very quickly in just a few months, while your muscles then also start to grow to support that increasing strength. And your body hasn't adapted to the training stress yet because you have a lot of potential. So it responds aggressively to whatever calories you give it right, and we're going to come back to that. This is why I'm not a huge fan of being in a deficit for recomp or even just at maintenance. I like it to be a little bit more aggressive than that. But anyway, hey, this is Philip and before we continue.
Philip Pape: 11:09
I want to talk about cookware. We all love to make our own food. I love nonstick pans. The problem is I've avoided them for years because when they get scratched, when they get heated, they can release. The problem is I've avoided them for years because when they get scratched, when they get heated, they can release microplastics, pfas small particles that can accumulate over time in the body and some studies have shown them to be linked to health issues. If you're optimizing your nutrition and making lots of food for you and your family at home, it doesn't make sense to compromise that with questionable cookware. So that's why I was interested when Chef's Foundry who is sponsoring this episode showed me their ceramic cookware. It's called the P600 and uses Swiss-engineered ceramic coating which has no Teflon, no PFAS, no plastic components. It is nonstick, it works on all stovetops, it goes straight into the oven All the things you need if you're trying to cook a lot of your meals at home. Right now you can get the P600 at 50% off by going to witsandweightscom slash chefsfoundry. You'll also get a bunch of accessories with that. There's a whole page that explains what you'll get for that discounted 50% off. Go to witsandweightscom slash chefsfoundry or click the link in the show notes. All right, let's get back to the show.
Philip Pape: 12:27
The second subcategory of this first category is detrained individuals. They also probably almost as good as beginners, if not a slight advantage because of how the body springs back has a sense of muscle memory because of how you've trained in the past. So if you used to lift weights and then took a decent amount of time off, this I'll just call it muscle memory. It's kind of a colloquial term but effectively your, your muscle fibers are going to regain the size that they've previously been programmed to be capable of. Right, it's just going to, they're going to balloon right back to that size very quickly while your body again is needing that energy. So it's going to burn through fat that that you have on your body.
Philip Pape: 13:00
And if I've had clients who the ideal person for this was somebody who had extra fat. So let's say a guy who would normally walk around at 190, slightly muscular, he detrained and he gained a bunch of fat and he's weighing 230, now 240. That guy can eat a bunch of food, start training and walking and everybody around him is going to be jealous because he's going to start losing that fat and gaining that muscle at the same time, while losing weight on the scale at a good clip and his metabolism going up. So, honestly, a detrained person is rife for this. Now, what about people who are overweight or of an obese weight? Right, I would say that those people also have a huge advantage that I've already alluded to. They're gonna see excellent body comp results because you have significant fat stores. So look at that as a positive.
Philip Pape: 13:45
What can I say? Yes, your health is at risk. Yes, you need to bring that fat down, but you can also take advantage of that situation because your body has plenty of stored energy to draw from, to the point where your body perceives this as not even a deficit when you go into one, as long as it's not too big, right. And that's the example where actually losing weight slowly can work, but it tends to happen over time even so, because of the amount of fat to lose. So when we talk about our 90-day plan tomorrow in the workshop, it's going to apply to anybody, but the amount that you achieve in 90 days is going to depend on your starting point, and your starting point is also going to inform how aggressive you want that to be. We're going to talk about that and give you all those scenarios so you can customize it. But the larger your fat stores to begin with, the more readily your body can mobilize that fat for fuel, because it's there.
Philip Pape: 14:37
Why not? Let's talk about older adults, because that's a massive part of the population listening to this show and in Physique University. And that's what I consider myself. I guess I'm 44, but I feel like I'm getting younger every year. That's the point. But older adults can absolutely achieve body recomp as well. It's typically a little slower, like everything else. Recovery is a little bit less. There's a little bit more anabolic resistance, where your muscles don't respond as readily to the protein. You should probably be eating more protein, but it doesn't mean you train more. That's the only thing. You can't change much because that could actually backfire.
Philip Pape: 15:09
If you have the right programming, if you have high protein intake, you know, and you're managing your fatigue and your recovery, then yes, again, body recomp is totally possible. And a lot of these categories overlap, right? People are overweight, people are detrained, people are older, these can all overlap. And then we have finally the advanced lifters intermediate, late intermediate to advanced lifters. I would say they have the lowest potential for body recomp. But again, it's not impossible. It's just a matter of degrees. If you've been training consistently for years, your body's already adapted to training more than a newer lifter and you're probably going to benefit from being more aggressive. And the extreme of being aggressive, of course, is cutting and bulking. But since we're talking about body recomp, it just means pushing the needle a little bit more in one direction, in my opinion, toward the higher building and gaining direction, to be honest. But there is a case to be made for the other direction as well.
Philip Pape: 16:02
So achieving body recomp, you know it's like, it's not automatic. That's one of the things I want you to take away here, in that we're going to talk about how it happens. But you can't just stay at maintenance and it happens, right. You have to have these, you have to have specific conditions that are met, and those conditions are the things we're going to cover tomorrow in the workshop, because there are it's like if, then statements, it's like, if this do this, if this do that, right, and it's a lot. It's a lot to cover in one episode and I honestly want to give it to you know, the clients who are really going to implement the information, and I want you to implement it. I don't want you to just binge this show out for a walk and you're done and you move on. I want you to implement it, so I'm going to show you.
Philip Pape: 16:41
Okay, how should we train? Should we go toward building or toward losing, to stay in that window? What do macros look like? What does timing look like? What do we track Specifically? What and how often do we track, and how do we do it in a simple, achievable way, in addition to scale weight and food, because you're going to track those anyway, but the scale weight's going to become less important. So what should we pay attention to? And then, what kind of mistakes are people making? So this is tomorrow, tuesday, noon Eastern, only $27. You get the replay. You get the custom nutrition plan for free that I put together for you and, by the way, that nutrition plan could be a fat loss plan that you want to use later and then, in the short term, you can do the body recomp that we're going to talk about. Go to livewitsandweightscom or click the link in the show notes. Again, that's livewitsandweightscom. Sign up for the workshop. If you're already in Physique U, you get it included. Hope to see you at noon Eastern.
Philip Pape: 17:42
Continuing on here, though, as far as conditions, we've mentioned the biggest one of all, and that is a strong muscle building stimulus, and that means progressive overload with a foundational set of movements like compound movements, with some extra volume in there, depending on your training age and your goals. Okay, we're going to talk again in the workshop, we'll get into details on that, and I'm going to give you an exact training template that I recommend. That's going to give you massive growth, surprising level of growth. You'll see, we're going to talk about it in there. Okay, but you need enough volume, you need enough recovery. The nice thing about body recomp is, if you listen to what I'm suggesting and bias toward growth rather than toward a deficit, you're going to be in a better position to make all that progress and not be frustrated and really challenge yourself and get that, those adaptations but then also not worry about gaining fat, which I know a lot of you are scared of, scared of right.
Philip Pape: 18:34
And then we have our protein intake. You know we're not going to get into macros here, that's actually pretty simple. I talk about it a lot, but we're going to talk about that. And, of course, your calorie intake. This is where it gets a little tricky because are you? Are you aiming for maintenance? Are you aiming to push your maintenance? Are you aiming to be in a deficit? And then, when you do one of those three things, what is your body going to do in response? And how do you keep up with that, knowing that the amount of change is so small? It's it. You've got to be very precise in seeing how that tracks right and how you do that. So my point is here you just have to be on top of things, and that's why body recomp isn't just something that happens just because you stay at maintenance, because the last thing you want to do is be toggling between a surplus and a deficit and never quite being in one spot. And then, of course, sleep and stress management all of that that are always important that always supports your hormones are going to just be just as important, of course, when you're going for body recomp.
Philip Pape: 19:32
So let's talk about the tracking side of this, okay, because this is where people get frustrated and give up. They're using the wrong metrics, or they're not patient enough, or they're changing too many things at once, or all the above, all right. Let's start with scale weight. So scale weight is both virtually useless for tracking body recomp, and also completely essential, and I'll tell you what I mean From the useless side. Okay, seeing the scale stay the same or go up or go down is not going to tell you whether recomp is working. It's just going to tell you that you've kept your energy balance in a certain range to keep you at that scale weight. That's the useless side, right, because if you're gaining this dense muscle tissue and losing the less dense fat tissue, you could gain, stay the same or lose and not quite be sure what happened, unless you're tracking other things to show you what happened. So that's the useless. Where it's essential, though, is you still want to know what your body weight is doing, because that's going to allow you then back into the body fat and muscle distribution. It is one of several metrics that go together as a system. So that's scale weight.
Philip Pape: 20:48
Body fat is the next one, and this one's big right, and you've probably heard me say that there is no way to measure body fat accurately, and that is true, but there is a very good way to measure the change in body fat over time, and you don't have to use DEXA, you don't even have to use an in-body. We could do it very simply with simple circumference measurements, correlated with things like photos, how your clothes fit and such. And even then you still have to individualize. You have to understand well for you what should we expect to change? Because you may carry fat in a different spot than someone else. You know, a menopausal woman might be carrying a lot more in her belly and it doesn't come off as fast from there but it comes off in other places. Maybe waist size isn't the most reliable. There are ratios that we can use that will make it a little bit more reliable, correlated with the other stuff.
Philip Pape: 21:37
The other stuff like photos, okay, and strength progression and how your clothes fit. So I'll say circumference measurements do tell a pretty honest story. You know waist, arm, chest, neck, thigh measurements when we're looking at body recomp, but it's, how do you interpret those? Then we have strength progression, another huge variable, another huge condition. Of course you should be training consistently, and this is again why I like to be in a slight surplus for body recomp and slight I mean very, very slight, okay, just because you want to be fully resourced for that strength and for that muscle building. If you are progressing, that is a great sign. No matter what it's a great sign. The more of a deficit you're in, the more under fueled you are, the harder it is to progress. So the more you're able to easily progress and feel energized and less sore and recovered and and more recovered, the more you know, just from that alone, that you're on the right track. You're getting stronger, you're maintaining or improving your body composition as expressed in the gym.
Philip Pape: 22:37
And then I mentioned things like clothes. I mean, it's such a simple thing but honestly, it's the biggest mind shift that people have, where the scale doesn't move or it even goes up a little, but their clothes are looser and they're like this is just so weird, right, but it's an important indicator that this thing is working. So you've got all that. And then the other thing I mentioned is patience and expectations, because body recomp is, by definition, going to be slower than a focused cutting or bulking phase. Now, I say by definition, what I mean is the end result. So if you want to reduce your body fat percentage and increase your lean mass, almost always it's going to be more efficient to do separate cutting and bulking phases. But for those who don't want to do them, don't want to recomp over a long period, they want to do kind of a short-term result, without dealing with extra fat gain or going on a deficit and all of the challenges that come along with those.
Philip Pape: 23:38
Body recomp is a great middle ground. It really is. It's a great compromise, it's a good tradeoff. So in a cut you might lose, let's say, a pound a week or even two pounds a week, depending on where you're starting from. But of course you have to be in a deficit and you have to be doing all those things right. You have to do the dieting piece of it and body recomp. However, you might lose, let's say, a quarter pound a week of fat, but be gaining, let's say 0.1 or 0.2 pounds of muscle, right, or something like that. In other words, it's going to be a similar ratio, I would say as being in a surplus, but it's going to be on the top end of that ratio, biased toward muscle.
Philip Pape: 24:19
So I just told you the wrong numbers. I should have flipped it around. I should have said like 0.3, 0.4 pounds of muscle versus like 0.1 pounds of fat, 0.2 pounds of fat, in other words, more than two to one ratio of muscle to fat. But their numbers are small, right, and in this case the scale might drift or might stay the same, and I say it that way because it depends on how precise you are and how responsive your body is to the different changes in tissue. Okay, that's why we can't completely rely on the scale, but we definitely know if the scale is going up too fast or going down too fast, then that's an overcorrection and that gives us information as well.
Philip Pape: 24:59
So over several months, over the three-month period we're talking about in the workshop tomorrow, you're going to get a good physique improvement. If you do this right In realistic expectation terms, you are Versus a good physique improvement. If you do this right In realistic expectation terms, you are Versus people who do crash diets. They lose a bunch of muscle, they get really gaunt and weak. Then they binge it all back. They're back where they started with more body fat. To me that's not body recomp right. So most people are going to visually see noticeable changes at about the six to eight week part mark, if they're consistent with their training and nutrition. And then by three months the momentum really starts to build and by that point my goal when I give you a 90 day plan is to say, hey, by then you're going to be so excited about this. The sky's the limit. You can continue recomping for six to 12 months and really get a fantastic transformation. Or you could say, hey, I'm gonna go with. I now have the confidence and the courage that I know how to do this. I can go step on the gas pedal and go build muscle or go lose fat in a more aggressive way. And that's what I like about all of this it's teaching you about yourself and how this stuff works.
Philip Pape: 26:02
I would say a lot of influencers out there really oversimplify things. They oversimplify energy balance and they also oversimplify body recomp itself and your body is very sophisticated. But if you understand the inputs and outputs and then what's happening inside bio mechanical or biochemically, you can definitely gain the system a bit to make it work for you. Energy partitioning, creating the right conditions, reprogramming how your body responds to food and training at the cellular levels what we are trying to do. Your muscles will become more insulin sensitive. Your body's going to more preferentially burn energy I'll say fat. But then we can get into the whole energy system argument and I don't want to misrepresent this. It's not that you burn more fat, it's that you are shuttling more nutrients toward muscle growth and your body has, no, no choice but to find the energy somewhere else, and it's going to find that in your fat, right. So you are actually burning net fat, not just oxidizing fat in general. I hope that makes sense.
Philip Pape: 27:05
I did a whole episode about like burning versus losing fat, but I don't want to go down the rabbit hole right. And as much as everybody listening here is like, oh, I want to do this, I'm going to look great, I'm going to improve my physique, that's just a nice side effect. Like physique development is a side effect you are actually becoming metabolically healthier, even in a proper body recomp phase. Better insulin sensitivity means better blood sugar control. More muscle mass means better functional capacity. Improved body comp means reduced risk for all the chronic diseases, and so, yes, you can improve your health this way too. And body recomp is the intersection of optimal health and optimal physique development. For those who don't want to really push it, with my goal being that you're going to learn that you might want to eventually push it. But this is a nice, very productive baby step there, really more than a baby step.
Philip Pape: 27:52
I don't mean to belittle it in any way. In fact, that's why I'm doing a workshop tomorrow on it because it's one of the most commonly asked things, and I'm not going to come in tomorrow and say so. The secret is you can't do it. No, of course not. No-transcript. We want to work with your natural system to achieve something that, for a lot of people, seems impossible but is completely doable getting leaner and stronger at the same time. So it's not magic, guys.
Philip Pape: 28:39
Body recomp's not magic. It's not too good to be true. It's not only for beginners. It's a legitimate physiological process that happens when you create this window of conditions through consistent resistance, training, adequate protein intake and patience. Patience is the biggest success factor of all. Well, the other big success factor, I'm gonna say, is accountability and support. We hardly talk about that, but we should talk about it more, because that is the number one reason people are most successful reaching their goals is they have support. Again, another thing we have with the workshop tomorrow and with Physique U.
Philip Pape: 29:16
The biggest mindset shift, though, is moving away from okay, this is maintenance. Right, that's my measure of success. That's kind of boring and it's not going to get you very far, but if you start tracking what matters your strength progression, your measurements, how you feel, your biofeedback, all of that then body recomp becomes kind of an enjoyable gamified engineering system to go after. It's actually kind of fun, and when you figure that out, when you do that well, you can then shift the levers in one direction or another if you want to go there Because your body wants to be strong and lean and you've got to fuel it so we can do body recomp while fueling and not gaining too much fat. That's kind of that sweet spot. I want to get you in right, because the goal isn't to lose weight. It really isn't. I hope you know that by now, or at least listening to this show, and if you haven't, I'm glad you found us, because the goal is definitely not to lose weight. The goal is to get a strong, capable, healthy body that feels and looks good, has muscle definition, is lean, but you don't necessarily have to lose weight to do it. So body recomp is often the most sustainable path to achieving that goal, and a lot it's mentally sustainable for a lot of people as well. So if you want to stop being frustrated with whatever you've tried in the past for recomp or cutting or bulking or dieting, or maybe you just weren't sure what to do and you want complete clarity, a plan for body recomp.
Philip Pape: 30:41
Join me tomorrow for the 90-Day Body Recomp Workshop. Tuesday, august 19, 12 Eastern. There will be a replay with all the stuff. If you can't make it, you're still going to get everything. I'm going to show you my approach for achieving simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain setting up your nutrition, training, tracking the mistakes, troubleshooting what to do for your scenario, and we're going to have time for Q&A as well. So it's literally a workshop where you're going to be thinking, hmm, how do I put this in plan in place for me? Okay, philip is walking me through and now let me ask him my specific questions. For my scenario, we're going to answer those in the workshop and if we can't get to everyone's questions, we're going to answer them after the workshop in the community.
Philip Pape: 31:23
So so it's tomorrow, tuesday, 12 Eastern. It is 27 bucks. Go to livewitsandweightscom or click the link in the show notes. One of the best values you're ever going to find to get you clarity and result with your physique and health that you'll ever find $27, livewitsandweightscom or click the link in the show notes. I really hope to see you guys there. It's going to be a lot of fun. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember when your body comp is improving. The scale is irrelevant. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.
