Having owned a gym for the past 10 years, I can tell you that “weight loss” is a really common goal. No, it’s not the only goal and no, not everyone should be concerned with weight loss. Even those that are concerned primarily with weight loss should care about building strength, muscle, and cardiovascular health.

At Brentwood Barbell, we focus on the Start Simple philosophy, which emphasizes the basic habits that lead to awesome outcomes. The habits look like this:

Habit 1: Set a Goal
Habit 2: Move (this includes lifting and aerobic exercise)
Habit 3: Fuel
Habit 4: Take Recovery Seriously
Habit 5: Keep Score

There is nothing new here to talk about, however, using a habit-based strategy is often a very effective approach when it comes to behavior change (insert any change you’d like to make). This requires that person to develop a deeper understanding of their WHY and ultimately come to terms with why something should or shouldn’t be prioritized. You might say this is the development of a connection with one’s self. Once the deeper WHY is established, behaviors become more intentional.

Along the way, some new learning is often required. For example, most of the folks that join our gym aren’t already lifting. In fact, they often come to us specifically for help with lifting safely and effectively.

This list of things to learn is quite long but today, I’ll focus on body composition. The term itself is foreign to many folks that aren’t somehow in the fitness industry.

Let’s use a simple definition: your body composition is the proportions of (1) muscle, (2) fat, (3) bone, and (4) water that comprise your body. Understanding the body consists of these various materials is useful in helping folks better understand their weight loss (or gain) journey.

Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss

It is common to use the terms interchangeably, but they are different:

Weight Loss: represents a decrease in your overall body weight, which can include the loss of water, muscle, and bone density.
Fat Loss: specifically refers to reducing adipose tissue (body fat) while maintaining or increasing the other components (muscle for example).

The goal of a healthy transformation should always prioritize fat loss vs total weight loss. Reducing body fat improves heart and lung function and helps maintain a healthy weight over the long term.

The Case for Muscle Mass

Muscle is your body’s most active tissue. Maintaining it is vital because:

Metabolic Rate: more muscle = higher overall metabolism, and that means enjoying more food while maintaining a healthy or ideal weight.
Physical Function: current strength training recommendations are for folks to hit at least 2 (full body) training sessions per week, performing 2-3 sets of 8-12 repetitions for most major muscle groups. Folks who fail to strength train regularly often have poorer health outcomes and decreased function compared to their stronger peers.
Body Definition: What most people describe as a “toned” look is actually the result of maintaining muscle while decreasing fat.

How do we Measure Body Composition?

If the scale isn’t the best tool, what other (better) methods are available?

Skinfold Calipers: A manual test that measures the thickness of subcutaneous fat at specific points on the body. This method requires a practitioner or coach to take the measurements and can produce some anxiety in those being assessed. Additionally, at heavier absolute weights, this method may become impractical. Lastly, this method is highly subject to operator error.
Hydrostatic Weighing: Also known as underwater weighing, measures body density by comparing your land weight to your underwater weight. Not only does this method require a tank or pool, it’s also fairly difficult for the participant to fully exhale his/her breath, making this assessment method less practical.
DEXA Scan: Widely considered the “gold standard,” this dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scan provides a highly accurate breakdown of bone density, muscle, and fat mass. While DEXA is fantastic in terms of reliability and accuracy, it’s often very challenging to find a location that has one and these assessments are often overly expensive.
Bioelectrical Impedance (BIA): Uses a small electric current to estimate body fat based on how the current flows through different tissues. These days, most folks that have a scale in their bathroom have a BIA scale. Typically, the scale connects to a free downloadable app on your phone, and you can more closely examine your (1) total weight, (2) fat mass, and (3) fat free mass including muscle, bone, and water.

For 99.9% of folks that are interested in more closely looking at their composition, a BIA scale is the way to go. There are some limitations with the accuracy of course. I’ve seen estimates that range from 2-5% error. Ultimately, it would be less important to know the precise value of someone’s body fat (18%, let’s say) and more important to see the trend related to the intervention (exercise and nutrition plan). I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone hyper fixed on the absolute number here; it’s always a general area. BIA scales offer us the opportunity for little money.

A Rookie Mistake

One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is under-eating to see the scale move faster. This is relatively easy to do in the beginning when motivation is extremely high. Long term under-eating and lack of proper fuel can lead to:

Muscle Loss: Your body may break down muscle tissue for energy if it isn’t getting enough protein or calories.
Increased Hunger: Extreme calorie deficits trigger hormonal responses that significantly increase hunger, making the plan unsustainable.
Impaired Recovery: Without adequate nutrients, your body cannot recover from the “Move” (lift and walk) habits essential for health we discussed earlier.

Generally, we focus on Habit 3: Fuel at the gym by aiming for 3-4 structured meals per day with 1-2 palm-sized servings of lean protein. This ensures you are fueling fat loss while protecting the hard-earned muscle that keeps you healthy. An additional resource here would be to check out https://www.myplate.gov/myplate-plan, there you can learn more about plate building.

Long Term Issue(s) with Prioritizing only Weight Loss

One of the harder conversations to have is when an athlete has worked very hard to lose weight, only to have gained it back. Not only is the really emotionally defeating for the athlete, in many cases they are in worse physical health after having gone through this process.

How? When a person prioritizes weight loss at the expense of lean mass, they often loose a significant amount of lean mass in the process. For example, let’s say an athlete lost 40lbs of total weight, if they didn’t prioritize lean mass maintenance through dietary protein intake and regular strength training, they likely a lot more lean mass than they would have liked to.

Under the best conditions, you can expect about 1/4 of the total weight lost to be undesirable tissue loss. Going back to our 40lbs weight loss example, a loss of 30lbs of fat tissue and 10lbs of lean tissue would be the best outcome. I can assure you that if the athlete isn’t focused on muscle maintenance, the actual results would include a lot less fat loss and a lot more muscle loss.

But, we aren’t done there. When the athlete begins gaining weight back, he/she will also be more likely to gain a disproportionate amount of fat relative to muscle on the way back up. Again, the best case would be 30lbs of lean mass gained and only 10lbs of fat mass gained but that isn’t what’s going to happen without really paying attention.

Ultimately, in this example you might have something like this:

Before Loss (250lbs @ 35% bodyfat)
After Loss (210lbs @ 25% bodyfat)
250lbs @ 40% bodyfat)

It’s important to aim for small, intentional changes that result in more desirable outcomes in the long run. Resist the temptation to lose as much total weight as possible as quickly as possible.

Want help putting your plan together? Book a Meeting today with one of our coaches and we’ll get you going.

Hope this helps,

James