Recomp
The two levers of body recomposition and why tracking only one leaves you half-blind. Cited, plain answers.
General training information, not medical advice. If you have pain, injury, or a medical condition, talk to a qualified professional.
For body recomposition, the two levers are your training and your energy balance, and they work together. Progressive resistance training provides the muscle-building stimulus; getting enough protein and being near maintenance calories (or a modest deficit if you are leaning out) lets your body act on that stimulus. Tracking only one leg of this — just food, or just lifts — leaves you half-blind to whether you are on track. Most apps cover one side: calorie trackers ignore your lifting, lift trackers ignore your nutrition. StrengthSync unifies both into one question — "am I on track to my body goal?" — so your eating and your training are read against the same outcome instead of living in two separate apps.
Yes — and it is most achievable if you are newer to lifting, returning after a layoff, or carrying more body fat, because your body can pull energy from fat stores to build muscle even in a modest calorie deficit. It is harder (slower, not impossible) for lean, advanced lifters, whose two goals pull against each other more directly. The conditions are consistent: enough protein, a resistance-training stimulus that keeps progressing, and a small-to-moderate deficit rather than a crash diet. The reason most people fail at recomp is not the concept — it is tracking only one side of it. StrengthSync reads your training and your energy balance against the same question, "am I on track to my body goal," instead of leaving your lifting in one app and your food in another.
More than you need at maintenance, but it is a range, not a magic number. In a meta-analysis of resistance-trained adults eating at maintenance, muscle gains plateaued around 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day, with a wide confidence interval (roughly 1.0 to 2.2). When you are in a calorie deficit, the evidence supports going somewhat higher to protect muscle while you lose fat — reviews of lean dieting athletes point toward the upper end of that range. A practical read: treat about 1.6 g/kg/day as a floor and lean higher during an aggressive cut, paired with progressive lifting so your body has a reason to keep the muscle. StrengthSync tracks your protein and your training together, so "am I eating enough to keep my gains" is something you can see instead of guess.
StrengthSync adapts your training session to session from your own data and explains each change in one plain line. More answers · See what it does.