Op-ed: Build Muscle and Strength or Lose Fat?
Which should you focus on?
Author’s note: In this piece, I’m highlighting the issues surrounding diet culture and the issues around our twisted perception of what “losing weight” means. I would also like to note that there’s a flip side to the arguments I make in this piece about obesity and the epidemic North America is currently facing. Both issues are equally as serious but speak to very different audiences. If you feel you are on the spectrum of disordered eating, please consult with a qualified health professional to seek the support you need to build out a plan that works for you. There are many layers to this beast but my hope is to shed some light on a topic that drives so much of our decision-making and the “why” behind what we decide to do. Enjoy.
“I just need to lose these last 10 pounds.”
“All I want is to shed this stubborn fat.”
“If I can shrink my waistline by a few inches, I’ll be happy.”
Most people at some point in time have thought to themselves about weight or fat loss. Thanks to our society’s hyper-fixation with diet culture, it’s hard to avoid the messaging altogether. It’s promoted everywhere from grocery store checkouts to TV commercials. Even if you feel relatively happy with your body, this advertising might strike a chord on a day when you feel a little less yourself. Even the most secure individuals may start to question if they’d be happier in a smaller or leaner body.
The message of being smaller equals living a happier life couldn’t be further from the truth. However, the opposite is also true. Carrying more weight than your frame can handle with an unreasonable amount of body fat will unfortunately plague you with several health issues down the road. There’s always a happy medium to every scale (pun intended). The key is knowing what makes sense for you and your body. Which can understandably be very challenging amidst the unavoidable propaganda we see everywhere nowadays around losing weight and transformation challenges.
When most people say they want to lose weight, most of them really want a better body composition.
Yes, there are outliers of course that perhaps need to lose body fat or gain some health reasons, but generally speaking, if someone loosely declares they want to “lose weight” they’re referring to just looking better. Period. If you achieved your peak body composition but weighed slightly heavier or the same as you do now, chances are you wouldn’t really care what that number says. How much you weigh isn’t the best piece of data to rely on for your progress.
The reality is that individuals with this desire to lose weight or body fat could benefit tremendously from regular strength training tailored to building both strength and muscle.
In my experience, every single human being can benefit from regular strength training. It doesn’t matter what your body composition goals are. The science speaks for itself. The more muscle you have, the more metabolically efficient you become. As you continue to train and build muscular tissue, your body’s energetic demands increase therefore your caloric needs increase. Your tolerance for carbohydrates increases, your ability to efficiently dispose of glucose within your blood increases, and of course, you start to naturally carry a little less body fat as a result of it. It’s important to note that diet plays a huge role in this balance of muscularity and leanness which I dive into in this piece here.
As an advocate for all things strength and muscle, I prefer to lean on science and evidence-based facts/results to inform my decisions as a coach. Don’t get me wrong—building muscle, strength, and losing body fat all can work cohesively in helping these individuals get where they want to be. However, they should be introduced in phases for the results to last.
Deciding whether or not you should build muscle, strength, or lose weight is a question that involves many layers…
Are you physically active? How sedentary are you?
What kind of exercise do you do? Do you weight train at all?
What kind of weight training have you been doing? Strength or hypertrophy or a combination?
What’s the frequency of your training? How many days a week do you train?
And lastly, what is the closest approximation of your body composition? What is the body fat to lean mass ratio for your current height and weight?
After answering these questions, that’s when you’ll gain a better understanding as to where you should start with your training focus.
Why you started isn’t why you’ll stay…
Generally speaking, most people with the desire to achieve a better body composition should begin with a standard strength program designed to build muscle and strength simultaneously. The main reason? It’s possibly the most reliably sustainable way to maintain your physique without messing around with your long-term health.
Crash dieting, chronic cardio, and detox cleanses—they create nothing but short-term results and imbalances within your body’s endocrine, immune, neural, and psychological systems. Beginning a strength training program builds confidence, discipline, and mental fortitude. It also improves tendon and ligament strength, and it promotes better recovery, sleep, and overall physical resilience.
Hitting personal bests is always a sure way to get hooked right away but eventually, you’ll notice the impacts of strength training in your day-to-day life guaranteed to make it a lifelong habit.