What's First; Weight loss or Muscle Building? An Opinion Piece

 Appetizer

Contrary to what I usually like to do, this entry will be more opinion based than anything.  What I write will be based in research, however, there will always be exceptions to a rule and people will always have “their way”.  The point of the entry is to get you thinking and exercise properly from the beginning instead of burning yourself out and stopping before you get started.  Don’t worry this will be short and sweet.

Main Course

So it’s your first week getting in the gym.  You want to “tone” up a bit, but notice there is a little bit of extra body fat that you want to get rid of before you start lifting.  Sounds like a fair argument and there is some solid research that states when body fat percentage is high then glucose utilization in the cell is impaired.  Basically what this means is that if the cell cannot use glucose (carbohydrates) then the remaining calories will be stored as fat, among other possible outcomes.  But how does this affect you and your exercise programming? Well, for most people they will get on the treadmill and sit on there for steady state exercise and not stimulate their body properly (check out past blog entries for some background to why this may be bad).  Besides the treadmill people will also join a fitness class or do lots of reps with less weight because that is how you “lean” out.  And what does this do? Does it burn calories? Sure, it does.  Will it impact your health such as hypertension, lipid profiles, etc? Yes, it will but technically speaking any movement will decrease these characteristics leading one to believe that any movement will help with health and that’s great.  But you want to look better on top of getting healthier.  So what these activities do is burn extra calories.  Burning calories sounds great, but it doesn’t build muscle.  Ironically it may not burn fat according to some recent research compared to other activities such as weight lifting and sprints (this will be out later this month).  In order to “look better” you must build muscle.  You will not be bulky.  You will not get “too big” because if that was the case then everyone would do one set of ten repetitions and wouldn’t be able to walk through the door the day after.  The body doesn’t work like that.  So get to lifting!

Dessert

“So, Matt what do I do?”  I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going with this if you’ve read any of my blogs… LIFT!  Use your time wisely and do what gets the most bang for you buck.  You need cardiovascular fitness and it’s very important, however, don’t ignore one in favor of the other.  Learn how to do both simultaneously and get the best workout possible for your goals.  I’ll update the next blog on ways to do this.