Before we get into today's episode, if you want to actually improve your body composition and are sick of random workouts that just wear you down and burn you out, that's exactly why I built Evlo. Evlo is science-backed strength training designed to help you build muscle, improve body composition, and feel better in your body without beating yourself up or living in the gym. You can try Evlo now for two weeks free if you visit evlofitness.com. Welcome to the Dr. Shannon Cho body recomposition capsule. There's so much fitness advice out there. And quite frankly, much of it isn't true. So in this 10 episode series, we're covering all the science-based tools for body recomposition. You may have heard me cover many of these topics before, and some things will be brand new. I wanted to create one organized capsule of information that will give you all the important concepts for improving your body composition, because we know improving your body composition isn't just external. It has incredible benefits for your health, energy, mood, and longevity. I'm your host, Shannon Ritchie. Welcome to the show. Let's talk about setting a goal for body recomposition and how to track it. So how much muscle should you build and how much fat should you lose? It largely depends on your baseline, but I love the goal of building five pounds of muscle over one year. It's realistic for most women and will make a noticeable impact on the way you look, feel, and function. If you did this process last year with us and you built muscle, you may set a smaller goal this year, maybe three pounds. As far as fat loss, that depends on how much you have to lose. If you are in a small deficit, like we recommend for body recomposition, you may lose between 0.5 to one pound of fat per week. However this will not be continuous throughout the year So you could set a goal of anywhere from a few pounds of fat loss all the way up to 10 or 20 pounds of fat loss Again this is going to be highly individual I don't want to give you a ton of guidance on this. You choose what feels the best for you. I highly, highly, highly recommend focusing more on muscle growth than on fat loss. And this does a few things. Number one, you'll focus on effective muscle stimulating workouts and not burn yourself out with calorie torturing ones. Number two, you'll slow down knowing that muscle growth takes time and patience and consistency. Number three, you'll fuel enough, no under eating, which often causes a swing of overeating. At least that's what happened to me in the past. Number four, you'll prioritize recovery. Number five, you'll implement changes you can actually sustain because you won't be in a rush. And number six, because of all of this, you'll actually see better results. You'll actually see both muscle growth and fat loss because you're consistently focusing on the right things. So I highly recommend placing your focus more on muscle and having the fat loss piece be secondary. My personal goal for 2026 is to build five pounds of muscle. I've talked about this on many of the other episodes. I'll be sharing the process on my Instagram and on TikTok. Again, I am much more focused on muscle growth than I am on fat loss. And this is exactly the mindset that I made the two prior times that I body recompt and it's helped me tremendously. So set a goal for yourself. Maybe it's five pounds of muscle and keeping the weight the same. So maybe that means you're building five pounds of muscle and losing five pounds of fat. That's true body recomposition. I think that's a great goal, but choose whatever feels right and appropriate for you. Next, how do you track and measure your How do you track and measure your fat loss and your muscle gain? So there are a few ways The most reliable way we have is a DEXA scan This measures your fat mass lean mass bone density and can even measure visceral fat mass, which is the fat around your organs. Sometimes you can access these through your doctor's office, or there's a company called BodySpec in several major cities like LA and Austin. Look up to see if there's any companies like that that provide DEXA scans in your area. I was getting a DEXA scan each month, but you certainly do not have to. I was doing this because I was making content about it and sharing my experiences and sharing my learnings. So you don't have to get them every month. You could get them once a quarter or even once or twice a year. If you don't have access to a DEXA scan, the second way you can track your progress is by using a home body scale like Hume. I get asked about these all the time, Hume, H-U-M-E. and I've tried this specific one and I, what I did is I got a DEXA scan and then I came home and I immediately did my Hume body scale and it vastly overestimated my lean mass and underestimated my fat mass. So it was not super reliable, but what matters is the trends, not the absolute value. So you could use this and just track your trends over time. If you don't have access to a DEXA scan, If you aren't someone who gets obsessive with the scale, it could be a good tool for you to use to just make sure that you're on the right track. Again, you're looking for overall trends. Day-to-day measurements will come with a lot of noise. You also want to take these measurements, and this goes for the DEXA scan too. You want to take these measurements at the same time of day and after you've eaten and drank the same. So if you eat or drink a bunch right before you do it, that will register as lean mass and could throw off your reading. So just make sure that you doing it around the same time of day and that you had around the same amount of food and liquids The third way to track if you don want to do either of those and I recommend everyone do this is to just track your weights and reps If you getting stronger and training close to failure, you're likely building muscle. You can compare this with how your clothes fit and or pictures, but getting stronger is an indication that you're building muscle, especially if you're giving it enough time and training close to failure and eating enough protein. The fourth way, super simple. It's just pictures and measurements. This is self-explanatory, but an easy tool to use. So those are the ways that I recommend tracking and measuring. Remember that fluctuations will happen. And when they do, it doesn't mean you need to completely change your track or change your plan. You may also kind of map out your year. And I recommend doing this. Map out your year and plan for some plateaus, maybe in the summer when you're traveling a lot and you'll be out of your routine. We do not expect linear progress throughout the whole year. It did not happen to me. It won't happen to you. So if you go into this process with that expectation, you don't panic when you have periods of plateauing or even regression. What we care about is the macro trend over the year as a whole. And going into this with the expectation that you're literally going to progress throughout the whole year is going to set yourself up for disappointment. So that's how to set a goal and how to track. In the final episode tomorrow, we will be discussing the tools to stay consistent. This is key for you to see sustainable results. These things will change the game for you, not only for this year, but for the rest of your life. So we'll see you tomorrow. Before we get into today's episode, if you want to actually improve your body composition and are sick of random workouts that just wear you down and burn you out, that's exactly why I build evlo evlo is science back strength training designed to help you build muscle improve body composition and feel better in your body without beating yourself up or living in the gym you can try evlo now for two weeks free if you visit evlofitness.com
