Why You Might Feel Weaker After Body Recomping—And What to Do About It

My name is Cori Ritchey, and I am an exercise physiology nerd turned fitness journalist, and the fitness editor at Women’s Health. When I’m not writing, editing, and researching fitness, I’m teaching it to my personal training and group fitness clients. In my new column, Between Sets, I’m pulling back the curtain on the same advice, tips, and ‘aha!’ moments I share with my clients while they’re catching their breath. Stick around for the strategic, science-backed nuggets that’ll help you move better, train smarter, and actually enjoy the process.

Body recomp (increasing muscle while decreasing fat) is no easy task. In the kitchen, you have to prioritize protein while consuming just few enough calories to maintain a caloric deficit. And in the gym, you need to load your muscles a few times a week to stimulate growth. When doing both at the same time, some people might find that the dumbbells that once felt manageable suddenly feel way heavier. That's because losing strength can be an unexpected side effect of body recomposition.

A loss of strength is one of the less obvious effects of body recomposition that many people don’t anticipate. You may assume gaining muscle automatically means gaining strength, but the two don’t always go hand-in-hand when you’re underfueled.

Even with the slightest calorie deficit, weights that once felt easy may feel heavier than usual. That’s because calories provide us with the fuel our muscles, heart, ligaments, and more need to exercise. When less energy is available, it can be harder to work out at your usual capacity.

I’m sure you’re thinking, “one low energy day in the gym is nothing to worry about.” And you’d be right—but when that feeling of weakness remains consistent, it can become more of a problem than you might realize. That constant feeling of defeat, unable to pick up the same weights you were before, might make you start to resent your routine or lifting in general. I’ve seen it in my clients before, and they tend to be more apt to skip their gym sessions when they’re feeling down on their capabilities in the gym—and that can be the start of a downward spiral that’s tough to break out of while still maintaining a deficit.

Need help with body recomp? Check out our guide.

One of the best ways out of it is to get ahead of it. If you’re noticing a decline in strength while pursuing body recomposition, here are a few ways to minimize it and stay excited about your routine.

How to Prevent a Loss of Strength During Body Recomp

Keep your calorie deficit small.

Maintaining strength during body recomp (and recomping successfully!) means setting up a system that works with you. If your calorie deficit is too large, you run the risk of feeling underfueled during your workouts, which can leave you lethargic and weak.

The good news is you don’t need an extremely large deficit to reach your goals. A deficit of 250 to 500 calories a day is enough to make sustainable progress, Dana White, RD, previously told Women’s Health. Body recomp is a marathon, not a sprint—so treat it like one.

Time your meals to your workouts.

Food fuels your daily life, your workouts, and so much more. Eating a meal or snack a little before exercising can help you power through a workout, especially when you’re in a calorie deficit.

Not sure how to eat for recomp? Check out our macro guide.

Power up with a carb-heavy snack about an hour or so before you hit the gym, like some peanut butter on toast, veggies and hummus, or a bagel. If you are having a whole meal, make sure it’s not so heavy it trips you into a food coma, and try to eat closer to two to three hours before working out. Eating shortly before your workout can help ensure you have energy when you need it most.

Challenge yourself in new ways.

Increasing the amount of weight you lift may be particularly difficult during body recomp. One day it might click, the next it doesn’t. Your muscles need sufficient stimulus to grow, which generally means training close to failure (two to three reps away from it, to be exact!). But increasing your weights is only one way to achieve that. Experiment with other metrics to create challenges instead.

Aim for a higher rep range, play with slower tempos (slow on the “down” portion of the rep), or swap in some more difficult variations of certain exercises. For example, try mastering an archer push-up instead of increasing the weight of your bench press, or trying to get your first pistol squat instead of loading up a back squat.

When you’re body recomping, it’s actually a great time to experiment with your routine. Doing so can help prevent burnout, and allow you to build strength in ways you may not have considered before. That empowerment will make you want to keep going, even if you’re not pushing the weight you used to.

Lower the barrier of entry.

This may seem obvious, but now is not the time to neglect your strength workouts. They might look a little different than they did before, but consistency will be key to maintaining your strength during a deficit. To do that, make your workouts as manageable as possible.

Is your workout taking up too much time? Streamline your program to three or four compound exercises, aiming to finish each set a few reps short of failure. Struggling to make it to the actual gym while juggling work, children’s schedules, and other responsibilities? Do some bodyweight workouts at home. Hate working out alone? Find a workout class you like.

Every workout counts when it comes to body recomposition. Find the routine that feels easy to return to over and over again—that’s the one you’re most likely to stick with, even when you’re feeling weak.