u/Cookiehurricane

In January I asked for advice in this subreddit about whether to recomp or lean bulk and received a lot of great (and conflicting!) information. I just got my 6 month DEXA results and it turns out I kind of did both?

TL;DR: I have gained 5.1lbs of lean mass, and lost 2.2lbs of fat in the first six months of this year! My visceral fat stayed at 0lbs and my bone density was still off the charts (in the right direction).

I guess I don’t know whether I would classify this as a lean bulk or a recomp, but I will classify this as a win. My ‘realistic’ goal for lean mass gain for 2026 was 5lbs because everything I’ve read about perimenopausal women and muscle gain suggested that 5lbs would be the ceiling (I still set myself a stretch goal of 8lbs because I like to be a bit delulu).

Even if the outcome doesn’t show it, my strategy was to lean bulk because all my health markers (blood pressure, heart rate, visceral fat, A1C) are excellent - it’s just my body comp that’s out of whack. And because I was starting at really low lean mass for my height, I knew that it would be harder to gain muscle than lose fat, so I wanted to tackle the harder task first.

In no specific order, this is what my program has been so far, and what I’ll be changing for the back half of the year.

Nutrition: I started at 2400 calories in January and lost weight, and crept up to 2800-2900 by April. Given I’ve only gained 2.8lbs, this is a surplus of ~50 calories per day. I want the scale to continue to trend upwards over the next six months, but I’m happy with the rate of gain so far so probably won’t bump calories by much.

Protein: Because I was made aware of so many headwinds (low estrogen levels, age, potentially lower bioavailability of vegan proteins - although it seems like this is fearmongering and not science) I decided to hit 1g of protein per pound of body weight. My average for these six months turned out to be 162.4g per day, so bullseye! I’m going to stick to this, even if it might be more than I truly need.

Leucine: Some people say this is overthinking, and I can’t a/b test my own body, but basically to hit the leucine threshold with plants you need to hit ~35g+ protein per feeding. Seeing as I’m getting 160g per day anyway, it was easy to break this down into a few meals with over 40g of protein each, to make sure I clear this threshold a few times a day. I cannot say whether it had an impact, but it wasn’t something that was difficult to do, so I did it.

Training: I am doing four 75 minute lifting sessions each week.  Interestingly my results show no muscle gain in my arms, even though my arms have started getting the most compliments! I guess I must have lost more fat from that area, or my shoulders are doing a lot of heavy lifting (pun intended) so I need to rework my program to balance this out. The majority of my gains were in my torso (+2lbs) and legs (+2.8lbs) so that part of my programming must be working.

Sleep and Recovery: This was something I really needed to dial in. I wear a WHOOP and my nightly doomscrolling habit was killing my deep sleep and recovery scores, so I have developed a sleep hygiene routine which has upped my total sleep by almost an hour, and increased my deep sleep by 45 minutes. My phone goes to greyscale at 8:30pm to remind me to put it down. I am in bed at 9:30pm and read a book until I fall asleep. When I was reading my phone I’d often be awake until 11:30pm, but now I’m out like a light by 10:15pm.

Tracking: I built a tracking dashboard which pulls in data from my WHOOP, all my nutrition from MyMacros, workout data, steps, cycle tracking, body measurements etc. This has allowed me to see everything I’m doing in one place, which helped me connect dots I may have not previously seen. I also built in a muscle growth estimate and it suggested I’d hit 4lbs of muscle growth, which I thought was wildly over estimating, but turned out to be 1lb under where I ended up. I have found this genuinely useful and it’s allowed me to generate the following stats:

• I drank 511 cups of soy milk — enough to fill a bathtub (32 gallons)
• I ate a 6'4" tower of tofu (37.5 lbs)
• In total I lifted two international space stations (governed by earth’s gravity at least) (1,910,762 lbs) 
• I leg pressed more than a blue whale (366,531 lbs)
• I walked from LA to Seattle (2,389,608 steps / ~1,130 miles)
• These TVP overnight oats breakfast are my MVP meal

Misc Observations

• For the first time in my life I don't have any food noise. Recently I've been struggling to figure out what to cook for dinner when this has historically never been an issue, and it only just dawned on me that it's probably because I'm literally never hungry anymore.
• It's only been in the last month that people have started to comment on my body changing (these are appropriate comments from appropriate people). The best was a woman who asked for my help in the gym because "you look so strong and obviously know what you're doing".
• I started seeing a physiotherapist because my left trap got really sore and completely hulked up! It turns out it was compensating for a weak levator scapulae, which I'm now strengthening. This is probably what's been holding back my bench press from progressing so I'm looking forward to some strong gains in H2.
• I had a hate/hate relationship with squats for the first 3-4 months until I learned about long femurs.
• I got a powerlifting coach to make sure I'm not ruining myself. I still hate squats, but now less so.

 My biggest takeaway:

I know it’s trite, but really it’s ‘trust the process’. I was a teenager in the 90’s - I have never deliberately tried to gain weight. The first time I jumped on the scales and saw the number go down and I felt disappointment was really disorienting, but in a good way. I feel like I’ve actively rewired my relationship with both food and my body. Getting stronger is dope AF, and working on a long-term goal feels good for my achievement driven brain. 

With a few tweaks I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing through the end of the year, and get another scan. From there I’ll figure out how much body fat I want to cut in the new year. See you in six months!