I’ve Lost 10 Pounds, but I’m Still Not Happy?

Body Composition and Recomposition

As a Certified Fitness Coach, medical professional, and clinical researcher, it is my moral obligation to make sure I am providing my team (and any outside inquirers) with truthful and science-backed information. So, that’s what we’re doing today.

The first thing I tell every new client (and my team who have been around already know this full-well) is that we don’t work JUST for fat loss. We eat and exercise for a purpose beyond “getting skinny” because the truth is if you’re out to get “skinny”, you probably will-but you won’t be happy about it.

So many programs have you focused on “Dropping those 10 pounds!”, but the real issue is that once you have dropped the weight, those magical TEN pounds, your body looks exactly the same-just slightly smaller (if at all). We certainly don’t look like the Instagram fitness model we thought we would, do we? Unfortunately, no. What gives?

The cold, hard truth is that many programs aren’t effective enough in their weightlifting, nutrition, and cardio approaches to move your body beyond what we call “skinny-fat”. It sounds contradictory and seems to be an absolute oxymoron, I know, but bear with me:

Skinny-fat, more or less, is used to describe a physique that looks thin but still exceeds it’s recommended body fat percentage. Not only does being skinny-fat pose some serious health risks, but it’s also discouraging when you can fit into size 4 jeans but hate the way you feel in a two-piece bathing suit. It comes down to not only losing unwanted fat, but developing your musculature, too!

What do we do, then? Well, first, let’s discuss two things: Body Composition and Body Recomposition. The term body composition is used to describe the percentages of fat, muscle, water, and bones in your body. Essentially, the balance of these percentages is what ultimately provides the shape of your physique. Body recomposition is thus the process of reorganizing the percentages of fat and muscle contributing to your physique, i.e., losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time! This kind of fitness approach is, in my opinion, the most ideal for women (and men, and everybody, if we’re being honest).

Programs focused on body recomposition are your best bet to getting the shape you want. There are exercise and nutrition programs specifically designed to deliver muscle gains and fat loss simultaneously, and remove skinny-fat out of the equation. As a matter of fact, it’s what we do here at Body By Brittany. We focus on different styles of weightlifting and some pretty basic nutrition principles (sans deprivation) that challenge both the SAID and GAS principles of fitness to actually re-develop our body shapes. It might not be for everyone, but it certainly works for us.

We have a mantra, here: Fit, not skinny. And we live by it.

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