Oftentimes, when people pursue physical health, the main thing they focus on is weight loss. Unfortunately, the messaging that society sends, whether it’s in the media, in fitness magazines (I’m showing my age here), or from our doctor, revolves around a specific number: your weight. In fact, one of the most common ways our health has historically been measured is by our Body Mass Index (BMI). 

Imperial system: BMI = 703 x Bodyweight (in pounds)/Height² (in inches)

Metric system: Weight (in kilograms)/Height² (in meters)

Looking at this formula to calculate your BMI, you can see that it only takes into consideration your height and your bodyweight. It does not take into consideration how much of that weight is composed of body fat versus muscle mass. Think about that… two people who are 5’5” and 140lbs have the same BMI and are basically given the same bill of health even if one of them is 20% body fat and the other is 35% body fat. 

Why do body fat and muscle mass percentage matter when considering health?

While both body fat and muscle mass play essential roles in our body, it is important that we maintain a balance between the two. Excessive body fat, especially visceral fat (fat surrounding internal organs), is associated with various health risks including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

Having more muscle on our body, on the other hand, is very beneficial for our physical health. Specifically, having more muscle can lead to a higher metabolic rate (aiding in overall weight management), improved balance and stability, stronger bones, and reduced risk of serious health conditions.

When the focus is solely on losing weight, you often see people spending hours on cardio machines while simultaneously restricting their food intake. This is because we’ve been sold the idea that the best way to manage weight is through exercising more and eating less. While this is true, attempting to do it in this way is often neither sustainable nor enjoyable. And if you want your results to last long-term, the process needs to not be completely miserable.

Why this method doesn’t work:

Our bodies are amazing machines capable of adapting to internal and external variables. It is always scanning what’s going on inside and outside our body so it can adjust itself in order to keep us alive. 

When we start doing a lot of cardio in an attempt to lose weight, it works… at first. Not long after starting, though, our body starts to go “Hey, we’re using all these calories pretty regularly over here. We need to start getting stingy so we still have enough to survive.” 

In response to this, your body gets more efficient with the calories it’s using. This means that you start to burn less calories throughout the day AND during that cardio. So in order to keep burning more calories, you have to keep doing more cardio. But the longer you keep doing that cardio, the more your body adapts and slows down your metabolism. Vicious cycle, I know.

On top of that, your body is also adapting to the amount of calories it is receiving from food. So when you drop your calories, you start to lose weight… at first. But just like with cardio, your body adapts to this and realizes it’s not getting enough calories to maintain itself. Once again, your metabolism slows down to try to mitigate that. So you have to keep dropping your calories lower and lower, while your metabolism continues to get slower and slower.

What is the alternative?

Well let’s look at how our body responds when we focus on building muscle and eating MORE to fuel our muscle-building efforts.

When we engage in resistance training regularly, we are signaling to our body that we need to utilize as many calories as possible to build muscle rather than storing them as fat. In addition to that, muscle is a very expensive tissue because it utilizes a lot of calories just to maintain it on our body. This means that just having more muscle on our body increases our metabolism, causing us to burn more calories throughout the day even when we are at rest.

Now let’s talk about what happens when we eat to fuel muscle building instead of eating to lose weight. Just as your body adapts to less and less calories, the opposite is also true… it adapts to receiving more and more calories as well. This doesn’t mean you can suddenly eat 4x as much as you were eating before, but it does mean that you can gradually increase the amount of calories you consume over time and your metabolism will continue to adapt.

Think about it like this: 

Say you are on a tight budget because you don’t have enough money coming in. You would respond by spending less money, right? And when you have an abundance of money coming in, you would be spending a lot more of it.

That is exactly what your body is doing with calories. When it’s not getting enough calories through food, it utilizes less throughout the day. When it’s getting plenty of calories, it will utilize a lot more. 

The bottom line:

With this information, you can see why focusing on building muscle is going to improve your physical health far more than just focusing on losing weight. So put the running shoes aside, and start lifting some weights! 

I’ll be writing a separate blog post that talks about what to do to build muscle and change your body composition, so be on the lookout for that!