Body Recomposition:
Gaining muscle while losing fat

The actual term “body recomposition” – or as I often like to say “body rebalancing”. Is the Holy Grail:
“Gain muscle, lose fat” or “burn fat, gain muscle” – however you want to define it. If you can achieve both of those seem things simultaneously then that’s what most people want.
Let’s start with an understanding of the basic physiology the reason why a lot of people think building muscle and losing fat at the same time is impossible. It has to do with something called protein synthesis. What this means is that as you’re standing around every day you’re muscles are going through maintenance work, so they’re taking damage and degraded cells and they’re eliminating them and new cells are created to take their place, and the term given for that is protein synthesis, it’s also known as protein biosynthesis. In normal dietary circumstances, muscle tissue is pretty stable and that cycle of cellular degradation and cellular regeneration is pretty balanced. So you generally are going to lose or gain muscle at any significant rate – your lean mass is just going to remain pretty level on a day to day basis, but when you train your muscles when you’re doing weight training, you damage the cells and the muscle fibers and that increases the rate of protein synthesis to repair those damaged cells. When that happens, your body doesn’t want to just repair the damage it wants to make you less resistant to further damage in the future and to do that…
What your muscles do to make you more resistance to further damage is they add cells to the muscle fibers - that’s also known as hypertrophy which tends to make a muscle fibers bigger; it tends to make them stronger and so what you tend to think of as muscle growth is basically a rate of protein synthesis in which the protein synthesis rate exceeds the protein breakdown rate. If you take any given 24 hour period, and your body synthesizes more muscle proteins, then it breaks down then you will gain muscle and if you – if you have a lower rate of protein synthesis than protein breakdown, then you lose muscle and if both are equal then it stays the same. If your goal is to gain muscle, you have to have a higher rate of protein synthesis than degradation, and you will gain muscle.
When we look at the other side of the equation - losing fat - most people realize you have to give your body less energy than it burns overtime to lose fat. Yes there are all those books out there like ‘Good Calories, Bad calories’ – there is of course you know, the whole argument that yeah, a snack pack of a hundred calories of Oreos is different than a 100 calories of like spinach and Goji Berries but ultimately you know, when you step back and you look at things from a big picture from like an 80/20 standpoint and we look at, what is long term truly effective for fat loss, at certain point you’ll have to be in a calorie deficit. If you are not in a calorie deficit you aren’t going to lose fat, period.
It’s just not going to happen. Yes, there are other factors that need to be present like an absence of inflammation and proper hormonal balance and all these other things that are affected by the quality and the nutrient density of the food but ultimately what it comes down to is that at some point you understand that a calorie deficit needs to be present. There are a couple things that happen however, when you are at a calorie deficit:
Number one, you get reduced levels of anabolic hormones. When you’re eating fewer calories than you’re burning you get reduced level of anabolic hormones… your growth hormones. You also get impaired protein synthesis. Thus a calorie deficit causes changes in your hormone profile that makes you more catabolic which is a state where muscle breakdown would be higher and it lowers protein synthesis –
That is why it is so hard to build muscle while you are in a calorie deficit because you decrease that rate of protein synthesis, so you’re fighting an uphill battle. However, the interesting thing is that you can actually be responsive to resistance training even when you are at a calorie deficit and there’s something about resistance training, specifically weight training that’s been shown in studies even in people who are at a calorie deficit to maintain or even increase the rate of protein synthesis even in the state of calorie restriction.
For example, there was one study that was done in which they took folks and they split them into two different groups: one group had a daily calorie deficit of 300 calories –okay, 300 calories lower than what they were actually taking in. Another group had a daily calorie deficit of 750 calories – incidentally both groups are getting adequate protein – it’s just that the one group had a deficit of 300 calories; one group had a deficit of 750 calories. Now the group that had the 300 calorie deficit, they lost a little bit of fat, and they lost a little bit of muscle and the group who had the 750 calorie deficit also lost a very, very little bit of muscle but they lost a huge amount of fat and so this mild calorie deficits it turns out did not really work quite as well as like a larger calorie deficit in the presence of resistance training and adequate protein, okay?
So let’s tie all these together – what all these comes down to is that if your goal is to burn fat and build muscle at the same time:
a.) You need to be in a calorie deficit and it looks like that calorie deficit should fall somewhere between 500 and 1,000 calories more than what you’re actually eating. If you find out that your total body’s daily needs are 3,000 calories per day to sustain everything that you’re doing, you’d undercut that and you’ll eat some over between 2,000 and 2500 calories per day. And you would combine that with two things that seems to somehow cause your body even in the state of calorie deficits to increase protein synthesis or to at least maintain protein synthesis – and that is resistance training, (weight training).
b.) Very, very important that you do not want to be at a protein deficiency, and if you want to not be at a protein deficiency, anyone easily do this without risking not being a calorie deficit you would include things like amino acid capsules or amino acid powders which are a low or no calorie sources of protein that can enhance or maintain the rate of protein synthesis without dumping extra calories into your body. This is where Isagenix (IsaleanPro Shake) is critically important. Now, I know that this seems to defy the laws of thermodynamics that you would somehow be able to have a maintain rate of protein synthesis in the absence of adequate calories or in what would seem to be a catabolic state but the fact is that there are multiple studies out there that show that the combination of adequate protein with resistance training and a calorie deficit without a nutrition deficit allows you to indeed burn fat and build muscle simultaneously.
c.) The last recommendation so you don’t risk thyroid issues or like the starvation mode, long term of potential down regulation of your metabolism while doing something like resistance training with the calorie deficit, the science shows it’s recommend have at least one week – a one day per week or potentially depending on your level of physical activity, one meal per day that’s more of a refeed either carbohydrate refeed or a calorie refeed. So let’s say, let’s choose the calorie refeed – that’s going to be the simplest example of how to do this from Monday thru Saturday, you would eat let’s say, 2500 calories if you know that you actually need 3000 calories. You’d get adequate protein meaning you would never want if you want a number, you would never want to undercut protein by more than .55g of protein per lb. You need to get at least 0.55 g of protein per lb. of body working weight. That’s the minimum amount of protein that you need to maintain muscles. Then on a Sunday, you would eat 3500 calories. An ad libitum calorie day to ensure that you don’t down regulate your metabolism because within about 4 weeks of consistent calorie deficits combined with physical activity, you’ll tend to see a down regulation of thyroid hormones.
Now on the Isagenix system I don’t think this is as critical because even though you are undercutting your calories during the 30 day or 9 day system protocols you are still feeding your body maximum nutrients with the 2 Isalean shakes, Ionix, etc. However, if you are following the system as instructed, following your 4th cleanse day, I suggest adding a second 400-600 cal. meal to your daily protocol to keep your metabolism from down regulating.
“Gain muscle, lose fat” or “burn fat, gain muscle” – however you want to define it. If you can achieve both of those seem things simultaneously then that’s what most people want.
Let’s start with an understanding of the basic physiology the reason why a lot of people think building muscle and losing fat at the same time is impossible. It has to do with something called protein synthesis. What this means is that as you’re standing around every day you’re muscles are going through maintenance work, so they’re taking damage and degraded cells and they’re eliminating them and new cells are created to take their place, and the term given for that is protein synthesis, it’s also known as protein biosynthesis. In normal dietary circumstances, muscle tissue is pretty stable and that cycle of cellular degradation and cellular regeneration is pretty balanced. So you generally are going to lose or gain muscle at any significant rate – your lean mass is just going to remain pretty level on a day to day basis, but when you train your muscles when you’re doing weight training, you damage the cells and the muscle fibers and that increases the rate of protein synthesis to repair those damaged cells. When that happens, your body doesn’t want to just repair the damage it wants to make you less resistant to further damage in the future and to do that…
What your muscles do to make you more resistance to further damage is they add cells to the muscle fibers - that’s also known as hypertrophy which tends to make a muscle fibers bigger; it tends to make them stronger and so what you tend to think of as muscle growth is basically a rate of protein synthesis in which the protein synthesis rate exceeds the protein breakdown rate. If you take any given 24 hour period, and your body synthesizes more muscle proteins, then it breaks down then you will gain muscle and if you – if you have a lower rate of protein synthesis than protein breakdown, then you lose muscle and if both are equal then it stays the same. If your goal is to gain muscle, you have to have a higher rate of protein synthesis than degradation, and you will gain muscle.
When we look at the other side of the equation - losing fat - most people realize you have to give your body less energy than it burns overtime to lose fat. Yes there are all those books out there like ‘Good Calories, Bad calories’ – there is of course you know, the whole argument that yeah, a snack pack of a hundred calories of Oreos is different than a 100 calories of like spinach and Goji Berries but ultimately you know, when you step back and you look at things from a big picture from like an 80/20 standpoint and we look at, what is long term truly effective for fat loss, at certain point you’ll have to be in a calorie deficit. If you are not in a calorie deficit you aren’t going to lose fat, period.
It’s just not going to happen. Yes, there are other factors that need to be present like an absence of inflammation and proper hormonal balance and all these other things that are affected by the quality and the nutrient density of the food but ultimately what it comes down to is that at some point you understand that a calorie deficit needs to be present. There are a couple things that happen however, when you are at a calorie deficit:
Number one, you get reduced levels of anabolic hormones. When you’re eating fewer calories than you’re burning you get reduced level of anabolic hormones… your growth hormones. You also get impaired protein synthesis. Thus a calorie deficit causes changes in your hormone profile that makes you more catabolic which is a state where muscle breakdown would be higher and it lowers protein synthesis –
That is why it is so hard to build muscle while you are in a calorie deficit because you decrease that rate of protein synthesis, so you’re fighting an uphill battle. However, the interesting thing is that you can actually be responsive to resistance training even when you are at a calorie deficit and there’s something about resistance training, specifically weight training that’s been shown in studies even in people who are at a calorie deficit to maintain or even increase the rate of protein synthesis even in the state of calorie restriction.
For example, there was one study that was done in which they took folks and they split them into two different groups: one group had a daily calorie deficit of 300 calories –okay, 300 calories lower than what they were actually taking in. Another group had a daily calorie deficit of 750 calories – incidentally both groups are getting adequate protein – it’s just that the one group had a deficit of 300 calories; one group had a deficit of 750 calories. Now the group that had the 300 calorie deficit, they lost a little bit of fat, and they lost a little bit of muscle and the group who had the 750 calorie deficit also lost a very, very little bit of muscle but they lost a huge amount of fat and so this mild calorie deficits it turns out did not really work quite as well as like a larger calorie deficit in the presence of resistance training and adequate protein, okay?
So let’s tie all these together – what all these comes down to is that if your goal is to burn fat and build muscle at the same time:
a.) You need to be in a calorie deficit and it looks like that calorie deficit should fall somewhere between 500 and 1,000 calories more than what you’re actually eating. If you find out that your total body’s daily needs are 3,000 calories per day to sustain everything that you’re doing, you’d undercut that and you’ll eat some over between 2,000 and 2500 calories per day. And you would combine that with two things that seems to somehow cause your body even in the state of calorie deficits to increase protein synthesis or to at least maintain protein synthesis – and that is resistance training, (weight training).
b.) Very, very important that you do not want to be at a protein deficiency, and if you want to not be at a protein deficiency, anyone easily do this without risking not being a calorie deficit you would include things like amino acid capsules or amino acid powders which are a low or no calorie sources of protein that can enhance or maintain the rate of protein synthesis without dumping extra calories into your body. This is where Isagenix (IsaleanPro Shake) is critically important. Now, I know that this seems to defy the laws of thermodynamics that you would somehow be able to have a maintain rate of protein synthesis in the absence of adequate calories or in what would seem to be a catabolic state but the fact is that there are multiple studies out there that show that the combination of adequate protein with resistance training and a calorie deficit without a nutrition deficit allows you to indeed burn fat and build muscle simultaneously.
c.) The last recommendation so you don’t risk thyroid issues or like the starvation mode, long term of potential down regulation of your metabolism while doing something like resistance training with the calorie deficit, the science shows it’s recommend have at least one week – a one day per week or potentially depending on your level of physical activity, one meal per day that’s more of a refeed either carbohydrate refeed or a calorie refeed. So let’s say, let’s choose the calorie refeed – that’s going to be the simplest example of how to do this from Monday thru Saturday, you would eat let’s say, 2500 calories if you know that you actually need 3000 calories. You’d get adequate protein meaning you would never want if you want a number, you would never want to undercut protein by more than .55g of protein per lb. You need to get at least 0.55 g of protein per lb. of body working weight. That’s the minimum amount of protein that you need to maintain muscles. Then on a Sunday, you would eat 3500 calories. An ad libitum calorie day to ensure that you don’t down regulate your metabolism because within about 4 weeks of consistent calorie deficits combined with physical activity, you’ll tend to see a down regulation of thyroid hormones.
Now on the Isagenix system I don’t think this is as critical because even though you are undercutting your calories during the 30 day or 9 day system protocols you are still feeding your body maximum nutrients with the 2 Isalean shakes, Ionix, etc. However, if you are following the system as instructed, following your 4th cleanse day, I suggest adding a second 400-600 cal. meal to your daily protocol to keep your metabolism from down regulating.