Which weighs more - muscle or fat [PIC INSIDE]
A 4-day a week Recomp plan:
https://go.chasingstrength.com/kettlebell-maximorum-e/
A 3-day a week Strength Based Fat Burning plan:
https://go.chasingstrength.com/kettlebell-burn/
Both include specific dietary guidelines to speed up your results, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Before we answer that, a little context.
As you may or may not know, I’ve recently given up discussing “weight loss.”
Why?
It’s a nonsense junk term that causes nothing but confusion, heartache, and wastes lots of money.
WHOA.
“That seems a little like ‘overkill’ there buddy.”
… You may be wondering.
And of course, you’re entitled to your opinion.
But let’s look at the facts:
Obesity is now a health epidemic in BOTH adults AND children - 73.6% of all Americans. (It’s about 50% for the world as a whole.)
Combine that with Big Pharma making billions on “weight loss” drugs that have “side effects” like nausea, puking your guts out, and completely shutting down your digestive system (to name but some)...
And Big Weight loss hit an all-time high of $90 BILLION in 2023…
And yet people are getting fatter by the second.
For a point of reference, one of my customers sent me this pic (first picture)
It wasn’t far off from the last time I was at the beach in Florida.
Now look, I’m not judging nor shaming anyone.
I’m simply pointing out the problem and it’s this:
“WEIGHT LOSS DOESN’T WORK.”
Still don’t believe me?
Let’s answer our original question:
Which weighs more -
Muscle or fat?
Most people will say fat.
But look closely at the second picture.
They both weigh the SAME - 5 Pounds!
Where people get confused is that 5 pounds of muscle takes up about ⅔ less volume than 5 pounds of fat.
And this reflects the pathetic state of the Weight Loss Industry.
When someone wants to lose 20 pounds, all he / she is looking at is the number on the scale.
But 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, 30% body fat looks a heckuva lot different than But 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, 15% body fat.
The first takes up way more space than the second.
So, if you set out to “lose 20 pounds” and “only” lost 10 - but you lost 15 pounds of fat and gained 5 pounds of muscle, would you be a “failure?”
No.
Why not?
Because BODY COMPOSITION is the “thing” we should be discussing.
NOT “weight.”
I have been “banging this drum” since 1996.
And it used to freak people out.
They couldn’t understand why the scale didn’t change as much as they expected, but their measurements did. Smaller waists, bigger arms - that sort of thing.
(Except the ladies - smaller waists, hips, thighs, and arms…)
Focus on building muscle and burning off body fat (by improving your conditioning), NOT “losing weight.”
If you do the first - build muscle, you will almost always “lose weight” IF you don’t use “working out” and building muscle as a license to eat like a condemned man at his last meal.
I call this “Recomping”. (Recomposition training - training to change your body composition.)
HOW do you do that, exactly?
1- Train 3x a week
If you have good recovery, or know how to structure your program, you can train 4x week.
Some even train 5x week.
Train a minimum of 20 minutes per session up to 45 minutes.
2- Use “big” lifts that use big muscles and require your body to burn a lot of energy
Swings, Cleans, Presses, even TGUs come to mind.
Snatches are also awesome.
3- Train for both strength & power. Then conditioning.
When you do that, you’ll build “go” muscle instead of “show” muscle.
Both look good. The first you can use.
4- If you’re going to “diet” -
[a] Prioritize protein
It makes you feel full.
It kills cravings for both fatty and sugary foods.
[b] Clean the junk food out of your pantry and fridge so you’re not tempted to eat it.
Doing both [a] and [b] will radically speed up your results so you burn fat faster and see muscle definition sooner.
5- Sleep more.
Sleep is where you recover MOST.
No sleep. No recovery. No results.
It’s really that simple.
If you need some resources, I’ll leave a link to a 3-day a week and a 4-day a week Recomp Plan in the description below.
Hope you found this helpful.
Stay Strong,
Geoff Neupert.