Weight Loss, Fat Loss, Muscle Building, Strength Gaining
The number one most common goal we hear is definitely weight loss. Everyone wants to lose weight – or thinks they want to lose weight. Most people think that number on the scale is the be-all and end-all of your overall health. While maintaining a healthy weight is critical to your overall health and well-being, we’re here to tell you why that number you see on the scale isn’t the only number you should be looking at. Most of you want that Hollywood physique – girls may want to look like Alicia Vikander in Tomb Raider or Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow and guys may want to look like Chris Hemsworth or Chris Evans or any of the Marvel SuperHeroes. These people have STRONG, lean physiques. You can weigh the same as them and look nothing like the way you want to look.
We recommend holding these conversations with a FITHAUS rep so that we can pair you with the right personal trainer on our team to help you conquer your fitness goals. Different trainers have different specializations, so it’s important that we’re on the same page with respect to your fitness goals so that we pair you with a trainer on our team with the right tools, education and experience to help you smash your goals. We understand what to look for in a personal trainer and will be sure to pair you with the right one.
This is why we try to tell people not to worry as much about their weight, as much as their body composition. The best measure of body composition is body fat percentage. This is going to be what most impacts how you look. Even then, this doesn’t tell the full story, but for now, if you have aesthetic goals, we’d recommend shifting your focus from weight loss to body composition and body fat. When you are at a good body fat percentage, your overall weight and muscle mass can then come into play again if you have very specific cutting or bulking goals – but in general, if you have a good body fat percentage, you’re going to have a good overall physique. This then gets us into the second most common goal that we’ve experienced and what we believe should be the #1 most common fitness goal – fat loss, otherwise known as cutting.
Fat loss is the process of reducing and cutting your body fat percentage, otherwise known as cutting. To cut, you’ll need to be in a caloric deficit – which means you’ll need to expend more calories than you consume. This means that tracking your macros will be a critical component of your success. This is going to have the biggest impact on your physique and aesthetic. Typically, when you cut fat, you’ll also be losing weight as a byproduct, but you want to ensure you prevent muscle loss as much as possible during a cut. If you lose a lot of muscle during your cut, you could easily end up in what’s known as “skinny fat” – you might be a low weight and look slim, but your body won’t be tight and toned if your muscle mass is low.
The other common goal, more so amongst men, is muscle building, otherwise known as putting on size and mass, or bulking. When bulking, you are going to gain weight – there’s just no way around that. To bulk, you’ll need to be in a caloric surplus, which means you’ll consume more calories than you expend. With that said, gaining that weight can still make you look better and more muscular depending on the shape you’re currently in. Usually when you are bulking, you are going to increase your body fat percentage and look less lean. Similar to fat loss where you’ll want to minimize muscle loss, when bulking, you’re going to want to minimize the amount of fat you gain during the process. This is known as lean bulking, and we’ll have a separate video on how to best do that in the future. You should also figure out whether you should cut or bulk first as it’ll impact your approach to your workout regimen.
So we’ve covered the difference between weight loss, fat loss, and muscle building. The last goal we’re going to talk to you about today is improving strength. Having large muscles and mass doesn’t necessarily mean you are stronger and can lift heavier. Focusing on increasing strength is its own goal, and a very important one at that. Improving and increasing your strength is a foundation of any good fitness regime – you need to build strength and increase the functional ability of your muscles, and once you have that foundation, as you continue to build on that, you’ll see major changes to your physique. Positive changes.
So we’ve now covered the difference between these four common goals at a basic and introductory level – it’s important to keep these in mind when goal setting as your primary goal is going to impact the training and nutritional program you’ll need to follow to see results efficiently and effectively. We’re going to launch another video about how to decide which goal is best for you, and which to focus on first. We HIGHLY recommend you watch that video – picking the right goal and tackling it properly is super important. The mental side of fitness is the most challenging one, and it’s much harder to be successful if you’re not progressing which we’ll talk about in a future post.
If you’d like to chat or set up a complimentary assessment with one of our personal trainers, you can email us at contact@fithaus.io, call us at 1-888-682-0724 or reach out on our website and we’ll be happy to get the process started!
