About this Research Topic

Background

Body recomposition is generally thought of as the concomitant process of body fat reduction while maintaining or increasing lean mass – often with no changes in total body mass. This has become popular in the exercise and sports nutrition industry, especially in fitness and bodybuilding. Although body recomposition might be considered as a relatively new word, and maybe even a buzzword, this is not a novel phenomenon reported by the scientific community. Decades ago, researchers have already studied and contributed with strategies to reduce fat mass while preserving muscle mass and resting energy expenditure (e.g., for the prevention and management of obesity) through the implementation of different types of exercise and diet intervention programs.

Nowadays, there is collective awareness among scientists and practitioners on the importance of optimizing fat loss through interventions that avoid generalized loss of muscle mass or physical function such as resistance exercise training or a high-protein diet; indeed, maintaining an adequate skeletal muscle status (quantity, structure, and endocrine function) is crucial for health and disease.

Since body recomposition has been demonstrated to occur in untrained, trained, and highly trained populations of different ages, it is an active line of study that warrants further research for better comprehension of the individual/population adaptive responses to enhance the efficiency of the process. Under the allostasis-interoception model, an external stimulus (e.g., resistance exercise or nutritional intervention) should be administered properly to evoke systemic adaptations in the individual which requires, as in any other biological system, two important factors: energy and time. This highlights the importance of the anticipation of needs (such as the timely provision of dietary energy and adequate recovery conditions) for the functional and structural stability of cells and tissues through adaptive changes. Currently, more data is needed so practitioners can be able to contextualize, anticipate individuals’ needs, and be ready to satisfy them in a timely manner during the body recomposition process.

Thus, this Research Topic aims to assist practitioners with evidence-based practices by publishing the latest research findings with original contributions, case studies, experimental mechanistic studies, epidemiological studies, and systematic reviews with meta-analyses on body recomposition. We welcome submissions related but not limited to the following topics applied to body recomposition:

- Physiological underpinnings that occur during the adaptive processes
- Molecular regulatory mechanisms by genes, proteins, or microRNAs
- Sex-related differences and adaptive responses
- Estimation of total daily energy expenditure
- Assessment of body composition
- Assessment of skeletal muscle status
- Alterations in adipose tissue physiology
- Evaluation of stress-related outcomes including endocrine disruptions (e.g., changes in leptin or ghrelin levels, alterations in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis)
- Sleep-related/fatigue-management interventions
- Periodization of exercise training, nutrition, and sleep
- Effects of nutritional supplements
- The use of performance and image-enhancing drugs
- Self-monitoring and systemic approaches using artificial intelligence

Keywords: Body composition, Exercise recovery, Physiological acute/chronic stress responses, Weight loss, Skeletal muscle, hypertrophy, Exercise nutritional physiological phenomena, Sports nutrition, Performance-enhancing substances, Dietary supplements

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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