A common goal for many women is to lose fat and build muscle, otherwise known as body recomposition. But despite its popularity, many aren’t sure how to approach their training, nutrition and recovery, often implementing behaviours that slow progress or lead to frustration.
PT for women over 40 and founder of training platform Redefining Strength, Cori Lefkowith, learned the most effective methods through trying a variety of approaches herself, some more successful than others. Here, she reveals what she’d do differently if she were starting the body recomposition process today.
7 tips for effective body recomposition1. Value NEAT more than extra workouts
NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis, refers to all the movement you do outside of formal exercise. It can include housework, walking, taking the stairs instead of the lift, carrying the shopping instead of using a trolley, gardening and even fidgeting.
NEAT makes up between 15 and 50% of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), or how many calories you burn throughout the day, says Hannah Baugh, nutritionist and sports performance nutritionist at Hannah Rose Nutrition. By contrast, formal exercise like a workout class or going for a run makes up around 5-10%, although this varies between individuals.
‘I used to keep adding workouts when progress slowed,’ reflects Lefkowith. ‘But I ended up trying to out-exercise my diet and it led to burnout, injury, hormonal issues and metabolic adaptations. I also didn’t look nearly as lean and I was not healthy.
‘Instead, I should have focused on moving more throughout the day. It’s more sustainable, less stressful on the body and far easier to maintain long term. Some of these small levers really have the biggest impact on our results.’
2. Focus on workout performance, not just fat loss
For a long time, Lefkowith says she used workouts to punish what she ate, seeing exercise purely as a tool for fat loss.
‘I was like, “I want to get lean.” So my workouts were all driving towards that,’ she recalled.
Relying on visible fat loss to determine the success of her workouts posed a few problems. ‘The scale may not change fast if you’re going after body recomp, and the mirror isn’t always going to show you progress,’ she noted. Non-uniform fat loss can also affect aesthetic expectations.
‘You may even feel like you look worse initially if you lose it off all the places you don’t care about.’
Having performance-related goals can provide motivation when aesthetic results feel inconsistent.
‘The more we see our training as a time to improve performance in specific areas, such as increasing lifts or getting a faster time, the more ways we give ourselves to measure success and know the habits are paying off,’ she said. ‘So give your workouts another purpose by having performance goals.’
3. Prioritise strength training over cardio
‘Building muscle improves the fat-loss process and improves your metabolic health,’ says Lefkowith.
Resistance training, which builds muscle, is especially important during a calorie deficit because it helps you maintain muscle mass, allowing a larger proportion of weight loss to come from fat.
Too much cardio, on the other hand, can have the opposite effect.
‘The more you turn your strength workouts into cardio, the more you ultimately end up losing muscle and not creating the metabolic health that you want,’ she said.
Sufficient muscle mass is also important once you’ve achieved your fat-loss goal.
‘To maintain your results long term, you’ve got to build that lean muscle because that’s how your body is going to end up handling an inevitable increase in calories,’ she explained. She’s referring to muscle being more metabolically active, meaning it requires more energy to maintain and repair itself, even at rest, compared to fat.
Without muscle, ‘you lose the weight only to feel like it comes back on the first time you go off track,’ she said.
Of course, she also emphasised the importance of progressive overload, or gradually increasing the intensity of your workouts.
‘Pushing harder and that progression builds muscle,’ she said.
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4. Recover properly instead of trying to push through low energy
As Lefkowith learned, recovery is essential for making adaptations to training and seeing progress.
‘Trying to out-caffeinate my low energy and lack of sleep was actually contributing to my exhaustion,’ she reflected. ‘It doesn’t matter how much of a small boost your metabolism gets from caffeine or that energy drink if you’re not sleeping, recovering or doing all the other things that are really important. You can only train as hard as you can recover.’
Recovering strategically may even involve taking a break from intensely pursuing fitness and diet goals.
‘That might mean backing off, taking a deload week or taking a diet break because there are phases to fat loss,’ says Lefkowith. ‘Fat loss is not one long sprint. You may even need to eat in a slight surplus or at maintenance to take that diet break. Sometimes doing less is what our body and mind need to be able to push hard again.’
5. Adapt to the present rather than sticking with what used to work
Different lifestyles and life stages often mean that what produced results previously is no longer applicable.
‘If, for example, you are going through perimenopause or menopause, you may be frustrated that what used to work no longer does. I’ve gone through a lot of similar phases,’ Lefkowith empathised.
However, the fastest way to progress is by clarifying what you need right now.
‘Every time I acknowledge something has shifted, whether it be my schedule, ways to fuel, mental burnout, and I ask what I need right now, I always end up learning something valuable and moving forwards faster,’ she encouraged.
‘So often we are so zoomed in on the situation that if we take a step back, we can recognise that one thing that seemed like a huge deviation or misstep wasn’t actually a failure and led to a whole bunch of really good things.’
6. Look at cravings as feedback rather than a willpower problem
Lefkowith used to berate herself for having cravings, viewing them as a sign that she didn’t have enough discipline.
However, she now argues that cravings are ‘really a data problem’: indications that ‘potentially we’re under-fuelling, that our calorie deficit is too big, that we’ve made too many changes, that our macro ratios are off or that we’re micronutrient deficient’.
Even working out too much could be contributing.
‘When overtraining, you could sleep worse and that can lead to hormonal issues, which can lead to you having more cravings,’ she said.
She now also takes a more balanced approach to her diet and recognises that foods she genuinely enjoys have a place in a healthy lifestyle.
Restrictive behaviours can often ‘end up backfiring because we’ve forced something that just isn’t sustainable’, she added.
7. Focus on protein, not just calories
The desire to lose weight quickly can often lead people to slash calories in an attempt to create a huge deficit. That’s problematic because it can also accelerate muscle loss.
‘Our body is not a simple maths equation, and we end up losing as much muscle as we do fat in the process because muscle is metabolically costly,’ Lefkowith explained.
‘Your body is going to cut back on anything requiring energy that it doesn’t really need. So it’s going to be putting your muscle mass at risk if you’re doing a bigger calorie deficit.’
However, thinking beyond calories and ensuring adequate protein intake can help preserve muscle as calories decrease.
‘You can actually go into a slightly bigger deficit while protecting that lean muscle because you’re making sure you’re getting enough protein to refuel and rebuild, so that you’re not drawing from your largest amino acid reserves to function in everyday life,’ she explained.
One of our most frequently asked questions here at Women’s Health? How to build muscle and burn fat at the same time. So, we asked superstar trainer Oyinda Okunowo exactly how to do it. In this 4-week plan – created exclusively for Women’s Health COLLECTIVE members – you’ll get the workouts and nutrition guidance needed to help you on your way to better body composition. Tap the link below to unlock 14 days of free access to Oyinda’s plan and start training today.
