Sometimes getting fit differs from slimming down. Skinny fat people know this better than anybody.

These people appear thin, however, they hold onto visceral fat. While their weight may be fine, their body composition is decidedly unhealthy.

People with a high fat to muscle ratio (FMR) face a greater risk for future cardiovascular disease. If this sounds like you, then you’re in the right place! Read on to learn more about body recomposition.

What Is Body Recomposition?

Your body composition constitutes all of the mass that makes up your human body. This includes tissue, fat, muscle, bone, and water.

In skinny fat people, the FMR goes out of whack. Losing weight will not make them healthier. However, experts recommend body recomposition as a possible solution. 

Body recomposition refers to an altered way of living that helps to improve the FMR. Through changes in nutritional habits and exercise regimen, it melts away fat and replaces the mass with muscle. This creates a lower body fat percentage while increasing lean body mass.

Regular diet and exercise programs will simply lower the number you see on the scale. But, body recomposition will keep that number fairly steady or even increase it as muscle weighs more than fat.

Stop looking at the scale to measure your wellness. Start looking at how you pack your fat.

Who Uses this Technique

Many athletes and bodybuilders use recomposition to improve their health and athletic performance. But, this can help literally anybody in this weight loss community who needs to improve their FMR.

How to Lose Fat but Maintain Muscle

To understand how this works at the simplest level, let’s start with some basics:

• To burn fat, you must create a caloric deficit and increase your labor
• To gain muscle, you must create a caloric surplus and increase your labor

Yes, you read this correctly. So, let’s clear up the confusion.

You can in fact do both. But, you need to do each at separate times to achieve body recomposition. Read on to see in detail how you can achieve each and then connect the two.

How to Burn Fat

Before you build muscle, make room for it. For the first 10-20 weeks of your process, focus on fat burning.

Here you want to eat fewer calories than what your body uses. Burning fat can get tricky.

The less you eat, the less energetic you feel, and then hunger tempts you to eat more. So, how do you make this work?

Eat more low-calorie foods. Your stomach will fill up on fewer calories.

When your stomach fills, the contents press against the walls. This triggers baroreceptors to tell the brain you’re full, even with fewer calories.

Also, eat more protein. Protein makes you feel fuller than the other nutrients.

This occurs as protein increases YY peptide and hinders the hunger hormone, ghrelin. These two reactions not only make you feel full faster, but they also keep you feeling full for longer.

Feeling satisfied and energized will help you find the motivation to increase your caloric expenditure. Get ready for cardio-mania!

Do not force yourself to do exercises you absolutely hate. Instead, choose some of your favorites and rotate them:

• Power Vinyasa yoga
• Bicycling
• Jogging
• Zumba
• Swilling
• Pilates
• Boxing

Shoot for 20-60 minute sessions about 3 times per week. During that time, switch up the intensity with high bursts for 2 minutes and cooldowns for 3, as this optimizes the fat burning.

Pick two other days to focus on strength training. This will keep you from going from skinny-fat to skinny-thin prior to your muscle-building stage. 

You need to lift low weights at high repetitions to build up lean strength. Weight-free strength-building exercises, like crunches, planks, pull-ups, and pushups, will also help to lean you out.

How to Build Muscle

Now you want to eat more calories than what your body uses. You already increased your protein intake, so keep it where it is, but also increase your fat and carbohydrate intake for extra calories.

Protein actually makes up your muscle fibers. Keeping your intake at about 35% of your total diet will feed your hungry new muscle cells.

Eating fat will not counteract all the work you did over the previous 20 weeks to replace it. Adipose tissue that clings to the body is not the same as nutritional fat that provides you with energy and essential fatty acids.

Also, do not fear an increase in your calories. Muscle mass uses more energy than fat, which means you burn more calories as you beef up.

At the gym, you now want to skip the cardio, aside from a 5-10 minute warmup. At this stage, you really want to focus on building up your muscle to replace all that fat you burned.

For these weight lifting exercises, lift increasingly heavier weights with shorter repetitions. Doing so recruits more muscle units at once and will build more mass.

Other Ways to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle

Taking proper care of yourself will help your body maintain the proper composition. Little behaviors can make big differences.

Sleep Enough

Sleep at least 7-10 hours in a 24 hour period. How does this help with body recomposition?

When you do not sleep enough, your body will produce more of the stress hormone cortisol. One effect this hormone has on the body is it makes you store fat centrally around your organs.

Scheduling your workouts too close to bedtime can affect your ability to sleep, as it will increase your energy for a bit. Try to work out at least 2 hours before you plan to rest.

Manage Your Stress

Find effective ways to manage your stress. Like a lack of sleep, stress makes your body produce high levels of cortisol.

Some good stress management tools include:

• Mindfulness meditation
• Yoga
• Breathing exercises
• Gentle hikes
• Listening to music

Implementing these changes to reduce your stress will also help you to avoid stress eating, which usually involves junk food.

Ready for Recomposition?

Are you ready to start making healthy changes in your life? Focusing on body recomposition will help you in multiple aspects of wellness.

We want to help you reach your health goals! Check out the nutrition section on our web site for tips on eating right.