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Build Muscle, Lose Fat with the Women’s Health Body Recomp Guide
3 min readTwo of the most common health and fitness ambitions? To build muscle and lose weight. But most plans out there make you choose one or the other, which can leave you stuck cycling between restrictive dieting phases and confusing training blocks. If you’ve ever felt caught in that loop, this guide offers a much simpler—and more empowering—path forward.
With Build Muscle, Lose Fat: The Body Recomp Guide from Women’s Health, you’ll learn how to move the needle on your strength and muscle and reduce your body fat percentage the strategic way—by building lean muscle while losing fat simultaneously. Meet your sustainable roadmap designed specifically for women who want physical and mental results that last.
What You Get When You Download the Guide
- Step-by-step body recomp roadmap that covers nutrition, strength training, recovery, and progression—so you can build muscle and reduce fat at the same time without any guesswork.
- Protein and calorie guidance so you know how to determine your ideal intake and macros, and distribute protein throughout the day to support muscle growth and fat loss.
- Clear strength training blueprint including training frequency, how to lift close to failure safely, and how to apply progressive overload correctly.
- Three progressive strength training workout plans to choose from that let you choose the modality that speaks to and motivates you (dumbbells, barbell, and kettlebells).
- Plateau and troubleshooting guide with advice on how to manage hunger, reduce soreness, and reignite change during a stalled training period.
- Weekly success checklist to track simple performance and habit markers so you always know if you’re on track.
What Makes This Plan Different—and Worth It
1. It teaches you how to build your body up, not just “lose weight.”
This isn’t about chasing a smaller number on the scale. It’s about adding strength, adding lean muscle, adding confidence, and boosting how your body performs. (Notice how the focus is on more, bigger, better?! Heck yes!) By focusing on body composition, you’ll learn how to fuel your workouts effectively, train with purpose, and recover in a way that helps you grow stronger week after week. The result? A body that looks more defined, feels more powerful, and delivers results you can actually maintain.
2. It’s practical, structured, and designed for real life.
As a busy, go-getter woman, you probably don’t have the time or energy for hours-long gym sessions and complicated macro-tracking apps. Instead, the guide breaks everything down into manageable training principles with flexibility and personalization, simple nutrition targets to make meal time less overwhelming, and simple weekly habits that fit into even the most hectic schedules.
3. It removes the guesswork from every phase of your transformation.
You never have to wonder if you’re eating enough, lifting heavy enough, or progressing fast enough. This guide connects the dots between nutrition, training, and recovery so everything works together. With clear benchmarks, a checklist to help you monitor your progress, and guidance on how to adjust as you go, you’ll know exactly what to do next—and why it actually works.
Women’s Health+ is a premium membership program that’s designed to help you look, feel, and perform at your best. It gives you access to expert-backed fitness programs, nutrition guidance, wellness plans, and exclusive digital content created specifically for women’s bodies and goals. From strength training and fat loss to recovery, mindset, and long-term health, WH+ delivers practical tools and trusted advice to support every stage of your wellness journey.
When you sign up (for as little as $5/month), you get access to *all* WH+ membership benefits, which includes 450+ streaming workouts, exclusive training plans, healthy eating guides, and so much more.
Jacqueline Andriakos, CPT, is the executive health and fitness director at Women’s Health, where she oversees all health and fitness content across WomensHealthMag.com and the print magazine. She has more than a decade of experience covering the wellness space and has edited ASME-nominated health features, spearheaded brand packages such as Fitness Awards, and represented the brand on the TODAY show, podcasts, and more. Before Women’s Health, Jacqueline was the deputy health features editor at Self.com, and previously worked as the senior editor at Health magazine. As a writer-reporter, she has contributed to print and online publications including TIME, Real Simple, and People, among others. A dancer throughout her youth, Jacqueline went on to study journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and stoked her passion for health and fitness during her college years, ultimately inspiring her to make women’s health content the focus of her media career. She is constantly researching the latest health and wellness trends, trying a buzzy new workout class, hiking and snowboarding, or browsing athleisure. Her friends would describe her as the confidant to turn to for fitness and wellness advice, not to mention answers to any weird body questions. Jacqueline is also a former group exercise instructor and is a certified personal trainer via the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM).
