Body Composition Trade-Offs
I lost count long ago of the number of people who come to our gym wanting to be “toned,” “jacked,” “lean,” or “looking my best.” Almost always, for both men and women, this means visible muscle definition, and trim and flat stomach. It may mean developed shoulders and back, it might mean visible abs, it might even mean big arms. In general, when people are looking for body composition changes, there tends to be an element of gaining muscle mass and an element of losing body fat.
Neither of these goals are very complicated practically. To gain muscle mass, you need to eat a lot of protein and you need to do resistance training. To lose body fat, you need to consume fewer calories than you use. (BIG asterisk here: there is a ton of nuance with this stuff when it comes to psychology, behavior, emotional realities, habit formation, and individual specific needs – but all of that is for another post).
With just a little bit of guidance and consistency with training and nutrition, people nearly always see changes that make them happy in both of these departments. Where it gets complicated is that these changes they experience may not make them look like all the cool, sexy social media influencers, and here’s where we get to the meat of this post.
Most of those cool, sexy influencers are shredded: women like Dani Speegle, Brooke Wells, and Danielle Brandon have abs and quads and glutes and shoulders that turn heads. Men like Mat Fraser and Rich Froning and Marcus Filly have chests and arms and backs like Greek sculptures. And because all those influencers can post pictures like we normal people can post pictures, and because they do movements and workouts that look like movements and workouts that are accessible to us, and because they post things that are fun like we post things that are fun, we think that we can look like they look. And that might be true! But it doesn’t account for several very important things that don’t show up on a social media feed…
- Genetics. This is impossible to ignore. Certain people gain muscle mass more easily, don’t gain body fat easily, and can perform at a high level in a way that’s different than the average person. That’s why everyone doesn’t look like a fitness influencer. It’s rare and there’s a certain amount of luck to how easy or hard the aesthetic you dream of will come.
- Being a professional social media fitness influencer means that being super fit is your job. It’s what you spend 20-40-60 hours per week doing. Some of that time is training, but some of it is eating, some is sleeping, some is recovery. That amount of focus and effort is impossible to replicate with going to the gym for 3-6 hours per week. It’s not to say that it’s unattainable. But it is to say that there’s probably not time in your life to have a career, a family, friends, social outings, and 20-60 hours of optimized fitness per week. You can’t have all of that, which means you have to choose.
- For the vast majority of human beings, 6-pack or 8-pack abs mean saying “no,” to a lot of things. Ultra-shredded women are usually around 14-15% bodyfat, ultra-shredded men are usually around 6-8% bodyfat. It is very unlikely that you can be there and also go out for brunch and mimosas or beer and wings every week. This is a level of leanness that, for many people, means that you have to pass on a lot of opportunities for restaurants, snacks, fried food, pizza, and ice cream. This is not to mention the fact that in some cases, being that lean can actually cause athletic performance to decrease and may even have significant hormonal consequences for both men and women (also another post).
- For the vast majority of human beings, having eye-popping muscles means eating a lot and lifting very close to failure often. This is hard to do. It’s very difficult to find the sweet spot where you are both gaining muscle and losing bodyfat, which is precisely why so many people talk about “bulking” and “cutting” as two distinct strategies. Eating enough to gain serious muscle probably means adding more bodyfat than you may want. And lifting very close to failure means either a) a lot of training sets per week, or b) training sets that are incredibly hard and uncomfortable.
None of this is advice, none of this is to cast judgment about ways that are right and ways that are wrong, and none of it is meant to discourage your dreams or aspirations. People are miraculously capable and there is so much possible and available for us. It’s simply to say that for most of us who are normal people, if you start striving for the outlying edges of what’s possible with body composition, there’s a cost to those choices, which means you have to choose what you’re willing to sacrifice, which means you may find that some sacrifices are worth making for you and some are not.
I’ve been as high as 32% bodyfat and as low as 8%. Both ends of that spectrum are uncomfortable for me and although 8% looks cool, it wasn’t actually that fun, and I wasn’t healthier nor did I perform better than when I’m a little less lean. I almost never have more than two alcoholic drinks in a night and I almost never eat sweets or “junk food” unless I legitimately enjoy it. Those are things I’m willing to sacrifice. I eat pasta and ice cream regularly. Those are things I’m unwilling to sacrifice. The picture above is from when I coached a woman to her first bikini competition (a division in the sport of bodybuilding). She got way lean and did well in competition, but the last few weeks of training involved skipping a lot of experiences with her kids and the rest of her family.
I’ve seen people pack on tons of muscle and slow their mile time by 2-3 minutes. I’ve seen people get ultra lean and start to get dizzy and light-headed in workouts. I personally have messed with all of that stuff and I think it can be fun to experiment with what your body is capable of. But know that ultimately, being healthy and being shredded are not necessarily the same thing.
I’ve used the same few questions to gauge health and fitness for a long time:
- Do you perform the way you want to perform or are you headed in that direction?
- Does your body feel the way you want it to feel or is it headed in that direction?
- Is your doctor happy?
- Are you happy?
If the answer to all four of those is yes, then you’ve found it! Keep going. But if 1-3 are yes and 4 is no, then what’s the point of all those Instagram followers?
Get really clear on what you want, get really clear on what you’re willing to trade to get it, and then go live a long and healthy life.
