Eat at maintenance to slight deficit (-200 to -300 kcal/day from TDEE). Hit 1.6-2.2g protein per kg bodyweight daily. Train each muscle 2× per week with 10-20 working sets, progressively overloaded. Sleep 7-9 hours. Track 7-day trend weight, not the daily number. Expect visible change in 8-16 weeks, meaningful body-composition shift over 6-12 months. Recomp is slower than cutting or bulking individually, but produces both outcomes simultaneously.
What body recomposition actually is
Body recomposition (or recomp) is the simultaneous loss of body fat and gain of lean muscle mass, typically while staying at roughly maintenance calories. The scale barely moves. Your body composition shifts significantly — shirts fit differently, the mirror changes, lifts go up — while the number on the scale stays flat or drifts down slowly.
It contrasts with two other phases serious lifters cycle between:
- Cutting: Calorie deficit, fast fat loss, accept some lean mass loss along the way. Usually 4-12 weeks.
- Bulking: Calorie surplus, fast muscle gain, accept some fat gain along the way. Usually 12-24 weeks.
- Recomp: Roughly maintenance, both happen simultaneously and slowly. Ongoing.
If you've ever finished a cut leaner but smaller, or finished a bulk bigger but softer, you've felt why recomp appeals to people. It tries to keep both directions live at the same time.
Who can recomp (and who probably shouldn't)
Recomp works best when one or more of these is true:
- You're new to lifting (first 6-12 months). Newbie gains plus body-fat-burning happen together easily because everything is responsive.
- You're a returning lifter reclaiming previously held muscle. Muscle memory makes regaining faster than building from scratch.
- You carry significant body fat to lose. More body fat = more fuel available to power both training and recovery while in a small deficit.
- You're an intermediate lifter willing to accept slower fat-loss for protected muscle, or vice versa.
Recomp works worse when:
- You're advanced (4+ years training) and already lean (under ~12% body fat for men, ~20% for women). At this level, the body's energy buffer is too small to do both — pick a phase.
- You have a time-bound goal (wedding, holiday, competition). Cutting is faster.
- You're chronically under-recovered, stressed, or sleeping poorly. Recomp asks more of your recovery than either dedicated phase.
How to set calories for body recomp
The first thing most people get wrong is treating recomp like a soft cut. It's not. The deficit is small enough that the body's fuel buffer can still grow muscle on training days.
The starting point
Calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) — your maintenance calories. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation is the standard:
| Sex | Formula |
|---|---|
| Male | BMR = 10 × kg + 6.25 × cm − 5 × age + 5 |
| Female | BMR = 10 × kg + 6.25 × cm − 5 × age − 161 |
Then multiply BMR by an activity factor (1.4-1.5 for sedentary-to-light, 1.55-1.65 for typical lifter, 1.7-1.85 for high-volume training plus active job).
The deficit
For recomp, sit at maintenance to -300 kcal/day. That's it. Anything deeper turns it into a cut.
A useful refinement: split calories by training day vs rest day.
| Day type | Calorie offset |
|---|---|
| Heavy training day | Maintenance, or slight surplus (+100 kcal) |
| Medium training day | Maintenance |
| Rest day | −200 to −300 kcal |
Net weekly deficit lands around 1000-1500 kcal — enough for slow fat loss without compromising muscle-building energy on training days.
How to set macros for body recomp
Macros matter more during recomp than during pure bulking, because protein protects lean mass when calories are tight.
Protein
1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (roughly 0.7-1g per pound). This is the upper end of the range cited by the ISSN protein position stand (Jäger et al. 2017) and tracks with what the bodybuilding and powerlifting research community converges on.
Distribute it across 3-5 meals. A common split for an 80kg lifter targeting 160g protein/day:
- Breakfast: 35-40g (eggs + Greek yogurt, or protein oats)
- Lunch: 40-50g (chicken, beef, or fish + carbs + vegetables)
- Pre-/post-workout: 30-40g (whey shake, or another meal)
- Dinner: 40-50g (similar to lunch)
Carbs
Carbs fuel training, full stop. Cutting them aggressively makes lifts feel terrible and undermines the whole recomp premise. Aim for 3-5g per kg bodyweight on training days, 2-3g/kg on rest days. Time most of them around training sessions.
Fat
Whatever's left after protein + carbs hit their targets. Don't go under 0.5g/kg/day (hormones suffer below that). On rest days when carbs drop, fat naturally rises a bit — fine.
Fibre
Not a macro per se, but worth pinning. Aim for 30-40g/day for satiety, gut health, and stable blood sugar. Most lifters underhit this; tracking fibre alongside macros catches it.
Training for body recomp
Training during recomp is essentially the same as training during a lean bulk — what changes is the recovery context, not the structure.
Volume
10-20 working sets per muscle group per week is the productive range for most intermediate lifters. Beginners can recomp on the low end (8-12). Advanced lifters who can recover from more can sit at the top of the range or beyond.
Frequency
Each muscle group hit 2 times per week minimum. This usually means a 4-day upper/lower split, a push/pull/legs run twice over 6 days, or an "anti-glycogen" full-body 3x/week setup. Twice-per-week frequency dramatically beats once-per-week for hypertrophy in the recomp context, where every gram of stimulus matters.
Intensity
Stay in the productive rep ranges: 5-8 reps for strength-focused lifts, 6-12 reps for hypertrophy, 12-20 for higher-volume accessory work. Most working sets should land within 1-3 reps in reserve (RIR) — close to failure but not grinding every rep.
Progressive overload
The single most important variable. You should be adding load or reps to most lifts most weeks. If progression stalls for 2-3 sessions in a row, that's the signal to deload (see below) — not to grind harder.
Deload
Every 4-8 weeks, drop volume by 30-50% for a week. This is mandatory during recomp because the small calorie deficit gives you less recovery buffer than during a bulk. Skipping deloads is one of the most common reasons recomp stalls.
Recovery during body recomp
Recovery does more work during recomp than people expect, because the deficit cuts your recovery budget.
- Sleep 7-9 hours. Non-negotiable. Sleep debt during a deficit blunts muscle protein synthesis, increases cortisol, and amplifies hunger. The mirror suffers.
- Manage stress. Chronic stress raises cortisol, which competes with the anabolic environment recomp needs. Work crunches, life stress, and recomp don't mix well — pause the deficit if stress spikes.
- Track readiness signals. Apple Watch sleep, HRV, and morning heart rate are imperfect but useful. A bad-readiness week is a signal to either deload or push calories back to maintenance.
- Take rest seriously on rest days. Don't pile cardio onto rest days "to burn extra calories." It undermines recovery for the next training day.
How to measure body recomp progress
The single biggest mistake: trusting daily scale weight. The scale during a recomp is the wrong instrument because the changes are happening in body composition, not bodyweight.
Better instruments, in order of usefulness:
- 7-day trend weight (the daily scale weight averaged over the last 7 days). Smooths out water, food volume, and sodium swings. Coachly does this natively; most static-target apps don't.
- Progress photos every 4 weeks. Same lighting, same time of day, same poses (front relaxed, front flexed, side, back). The mirror lies day-to-day; photos don't lie month-to-month.
- Tape measurements every 4 weeks. Waist, chest, arm, thigh, hip. Take three readings per site and average.
- Strength on key lifts. Squat, deadlift, bench, overhead press. Estimated 1RM trending up = muscle is going up.
- DEXA/InBody scan every 3-6 months if you have access. Measurement variance is real; track trends not absolute numbers.
How long does body recomp take?
Honest answer: longer than bulking or cutting individually, but you get both outcomes. Rough timeline:
| Window | What changes |
|---|---|
| Weeks 1-4 | Water-weight settles, energy normalises to the new intake, training feels normal again |
| Weeks 5-12 | First visible body-composition shift — usually clothes fitting differently before the mirror shows it |
| Weeks 12-24 | Mirror starts agreeing with the tape. Lifts go up. Roughly 1-2kg of muscle, 2-4kg of fat lost |
| 6-12 months | Meaningful, durable composition change. Most lifters look noticeably different to people who haven't seen them |
Common body recomp mistakes
- Protein too low. Under 1.6g/kg = recomp becomes a slow cut. Protein is the lever, not the optional macro.
- Cutting calories too aggressively. If your weekly trend weight is dropping more than 0.3-0.5% of bodyweight per week, you're cutting, not recomping. Add 100-200 kcal back.
- Trusting the daily scale. One bad day of sodium or low-fibre tanks the number. Use the 7-day trend or photos.
- Skipping deloads. The small deficit gives you less recovery buffer. Deload every 4-8 weeks or progress will stall.
- Undersleeping. A 5-hour-sleep recomp barely beats maintenance with normal sleep. Sleep is the multiplier.
- Static calorie target across the week. A flat number doesn't reflect that Monday's heavy session needs more fuel than Wednesday's rest day. Adjust by training day.
- Quitting too early. Recomp is a 6-12 month operation, not a 6-12 week one. The first 4 weeks always look slower than expected.
- Tracking protein in grams but eyeballing calories. If you're going to track one, calories matters most. Hit both.
When to switch out of recomp
Recomp isn't a forever phase. Reasons to change:
- Switch to a structured cut if you're above ~20% body fat (men) / ~28% (women) and want faster visible fat loss. The recomp deficit is too gentle at higher body-fat percentages — fat loss happens faster in a real cut.
- Switch to a lean bulk if you're below ~12% body fat (men) / ~20% (women) and lifts are stalling with no fat to lose. The energy buffer is too small for further muscle gain at maintenance.
- Switch to maintenance if life stress, poor sleep, or other non-training factors are dragging recovery. Don't pile a calorie deficit on top of an already-strained recovery system.
How Coachly handles recomp specifically
Coachly was built for body-recomp lifters as a first-class goal — not as a tweak to cutting or bulking. The specific mechanics:
- Recomp is a goal selection at onboarding, not an off-label use of a "weight loss" preset. Your calorie target lands at maintenance-to-slight-deficit by default.
- Macros shift with training volume across the week. Heavy week = target moves up. Deload = target tightens. The two-app stack (workout tracker + macro tracker) can't do this because the apps don't share state.
- Programme deloads when sleep tanks. Apple Watch sleep + HRV + recent training load feed into the next week's intensity. Recomp's recovery margin is small; this automatic backoff matters.
- Trend weight, not daily noise. The Progress tab shows the 7-day trend, not yesterday's number.
- Estimated 1RM tracking on every main lift so you can see strength going up even when bodyweight is flat.
- Weekly AI coach check-in reads your training, macros, sleep, and weight together and tells you whether to push, hold, or deload.
Quick references
Sources cited in this guide:
- Mifflin-St Jeor BMR equation: Mifflin et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990 (PubMed 2305711)
- Frankenfield activity-factor research: Frankenfield et al., Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 2005 (PubMed 15883556)
- ISSN protein position stand: Jäger et al., Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017 (1.6-2.2g/kg/day for hypertrophy)
- NHS UK safe weight-loss guidance (0.5-1kg/week target as the upper bound for healthy fat loss)
This is general nutrition and training guidance, not medical advice. If you have underlying health conditions, are pregnant or postpartum, or have a history of disordered eating, work with a qualified clinician before starting any calorie deficit.