A Scientific Approach to Body Recomposition

Properties2

Type	Practice
Note created	Jan 11, 2026

Based mostly on Jeff Nippard’s video, to tune in a body recomposition:

1. Training must be the driving force, training hard with progressive overload and appropriate effort. A good rule of thumb is to aim for 10-20 sets per body part per week.
2. You must decide on a primary goal: to gain muscle or lose fat. A good rule of thumb is to prioritise building muscle on the 8-12% body fat and to lose fat on the 15-20% body fat (for males).
3. Center around maintenance calories and choose a target:
   • to build muscle, enter a slight caloric surplus of 5-25% of your maintenance intake (bias towards higher ends only if you are leaner or genetically lucky).
   • to lose fat, enter a caloric deficit of -10% to -20% of your caloric intake (based on how much fat you have to lose).
4. Choose your macros:
   1. Start with protein: if you are leaner, try to aim for 1.6g/lb of LBM per day; if not aim for something closer to 1.2g/lb of LBM for higher percentages of body fat.
   2. Choose the fat intake afterwards: whatever suits your lifestyle and is above 20% of the daily calories (going below is actually dangerous, fats are good for you).
   3. Whatever is left gets assigned to carbs. Don’t be too strict trying to get the ratio of fats/carbs every day; focusing on getting the total calories and the proteins is generally fine.
5. Another points to optimise that can be helpful but are generally not super impactful:
   • Sleep more when possible.
   • Try to improve your preworkouts meals.
   • Try different well tested supplements like creatine, protein supplements or caffeine to help you train more efficiently.