When it comes to long-term health, vitality, body composition and avoiding metabolic disease and obesity, there is one thing that matters above all and is a complete game changer, and it's not weight loss. Find out what it is on today's QuickWits. Welcome to the Whits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, philip Pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Today we are challenging the widespread fitness fallacy that continues to persist, and that is that weight loss is somehow the ultimate indicator of health. Thanks to so many in our industry on the evidence-based side of this equation folks like Dr Gabriel Lyon, who I'm specifically calling out today because of her purpose and mission in highlighting this we are spotlighting the critical but often most overlooked and potentially most useful components of your body that you have control over that will help you with long-term health, vitality and avoiding obesity, and that is muscle mass. Muscle is more than just a contributor to strength and aesthetics, even though those things are important. It is foundational to metabolic health, to longevity and resilience against disease. And if you look at folks like Dr Lyon and her research, that underscores that building and maintaining muscle mass should be at the forefront of our health objectives, above weight loss. It should be the first thing we think about and I've mentioned this many times that I have clients who are overweight by BMI standards, who may have been lifting weights for years and because of that extra muscle mass they are highly protected against some of the metabolic concerns that come with excess weight. Sure, we might go through a fat loss phase and further lean them out for aesthetic reasons and for other, to improve the health even further. But the muscle itself is the thing that we start to lose at a very young age. Starting in our 30s, we lose 1% a year and the only way to get that back and claw that back and then build more is to strength train. Muscle is a metabolic powerhouse of our body. It plays a role in lots of things. It plays a role in glucose regulation, in hormone balance, even in your energy expenditure, and it's protective. It gives you a buffer against aging, against chronic conditions. And yet in our society we are obsessed with the scale and often overshadow muscles importance. I even had a client today get worried because her thigh circumference was getting a little bigger, because she was working out really hard and yet her waist size was going down, and so that was telling me her body composition was improving, but the weight on the scale was going up. And so we're in this mindset constantly with the scale is king of all and it really isn't. So.

Muscle mass should be number one for most people, because most people don't pay attention to it at all and the journey and the process to enhancing muscle mass can be a little bit complicated for people who are not used to doing that. It does absolutely involve number one, lifting weight. It requires training with progressive overload, proximity to failure, all of those things. But it also requires an overall I'll use the word holistic approach to your health where you're eating nutrient density and high protein, you have enough recovery, you have enough sleep, you have a training regimen focused on those principles of progressive overload and it all ties together. And the beautiful thing is that once you start training for muscle, the other aspects of health get even better. It builds the muscle, but it also builds a healthier, more vibrant body and mind overall, and mind is an important part of this. The psychological benefits of muscle building gives you a more positive relationship with food, with exercise. You look at them as tools now to support your strength, rather than to deprive you and to punish you. To support your muscle, to support your growth. And this is also critical before critical for making it a sustainable process and just part of your life.

So true, health is not about losing weight. Let's just get that through our heads. It's about gaining strength and muscle, and then the weight part kind of comes along for the ride. Let's put muscle mass at the center when we talk about health, which is what Dr Gabriel Lyon does. I called her out in this episode and let's redefine what it means to be fit, because it is not about the weight on the scale. I want you to keep learning, I want you to keep lifting, I want you to keep prioritizing muscle and stay strong. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up there with sore weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.