I overheard a question the other day.
“What’s more important, losing weight or adding muscle?”
HMMM…
If I know one thing, it’s that there is a ton of information out there. Some of it good and helpful, but much of it pretty crummy and confusing. This question is an opportunity to hopefully sort some of that out.
Obviously this question is very general, so I’m going to put some parameters on it. We’re going to assume the following:
The person’s overall goal is weight loss for general reasons such as overall health and appearance
The person is generally healthy, meaning no serious injuries or illnesses
The person does not have a long history with intense resistance training
Also, it’s important to understand that when we say adding muscle, we are NOT talking about becoming a huge bodybuilder. We are talking about adding some lean body, and if you want more definition to your body YOU MUST ADD LEAN BODY!! The assumption with someone with these goals is that as you add lean body you are also decreasing body fat, thereby making you smaller. Take a look at this picture if you need a little clarification on that.
Muscle is denser than fat making the same weight much smaller!
OK. Let’s start with this.
Adding muscle and losing fat are done mostly with two different processes. Losing fat is done largely with diet and adding muscle is done largely in the gym. Now this doesn’t mean that the gym and diet aren’t involved with both to varying degrees, but for the most part losing fat is done with diet and adding muscle is done in the gym.
What does that mean? Well, it means that these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. You can do both, to some extent. Note that the person we’re talking about does not have a long history with intense resistance training.
At home you can work on your diet and in the gym you can exercise with purpose and intensity and try hard to get stronger. Both of these things should be done if you’re trying to lose weight.
As to which is more important this is a tougher question. Here’s the thing, when you are trying to lose weight it would still be very helpful to include resistance training in your routine. Although you might not have a goal to build muscle per se, this can be a big help in a couple of different ways:
More muscle means a higher metabolism. This means that instead of our metabolism slowing down as we lose weight (which it will) the muscle allows it to stay as high as possible which makes it easier and more manageable to either continue with weight loss or maintain it.
More muscle gives us better nutrient partitioning. This is the process where your body decides what to do with the food you’re eating. The more muscle you have and the more resistance training you do, the more your body will take that food and use it to maintain and build muscle as opposed to adding fat.
What does this all mean when it comes to the original question?
“What’s more important, losing weight or adding muscle?”
Well, here is my answer:
I think that whatever your goal is, that is what’s most important. If you want to lose weight, then that is most important (by the way, figuring out WHY you want to lose weight is a huge key to this whole thing). Having said that, adding muscle would be a huge advantage to this whole process, especially in the long term.
I hope this gets you thinking a little differently about what you’re doing. Please let me know if you have any questions about how to make this all work for you.
Thanks!
Mitch Rothbardt, CPT, PN Level 2 Lean Eating Coach, FMS Castro Valley Fitness 2861 Grove Way 510-755-9191 Mitch@CastroValleyFitness.com
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