Body Composition Basics

With the new year well underway, ‘tis the season for implementing action plans and realizing resolutions. If improving your body composition—once and for all—is at the top of your 2022 to-do list, your next steps should include more than just “dieting” to lose those extra, unwanted pounds. Although conventional wisdom tells us that the best approach is to move more and eat less, there may be a simpler and more sustainable solution.

What’s weight got to do with it?

Assessing our body weight is one way we can gain a quantitative insight into our general state of health and fitness; it tells us “how much” weight we’re carrying. But the better question to ask is probably, “what kind” of weight is it? Measuring and monitoring our body composition—the relative amount of fat versus fat-free mass we are made of—will ultimately provide us with more useful and insightful qualitative information.

Fat is the substance almost everyone fears because it’s something we don’t want to have too much of.  However, body fat is necessary for the body to function. It provides the body with a mechanism for storing energy; it protects the internal organs and regulates body temperature, among other things.

Fat-free mass includes your skeletal muscle mass, organs, bone, connective tissue, water; essentially anything else that isn’t fat. There are numerous benefits to maintaining a lean (but healthy) ratio of fat to fat-free mass. These include:

 A stronger metabolism.

Lean body mass is associated with your basal metabolic rate (BMR), the number of calories your body requires to maintain its vital functions while at rest.  Muscles, even at rest, require energy in the form of calories; fat cells do not. The greater the amount of lean muscle you carry, the more calories you burn throughout the day which decreases the likelihood of any excess fat accumulation.  

Better blood sugar control.

Carrying more muscle will improve your insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity is a term used to describe people who require lower levels of insulin to process glucose (blood sugar). People with less muscle mass tend to be less insulin sensitive, which means they will need to manufacture more insulin in order to effectively process glucose. High insulin levels can contribute not only to poor body composition and decreased athletic performance, but to early aging and the onset of chronic disease.

Faster, more complete recovery from an illness or injury.

Illness, injury and intense training will all increase the body’s need for protein to heal and adapt. Often, these protein needs are far beyond what we can realistically get from food. The breakdown of muscle occurs to meet this increased protein requirement. So, athletes who carry less muscle mass to begin with will have even more difficulty satisfying the minimum energy demands of the body—let alone making the positive gains that are essential for the increased muscle growth that is directly linked to improved health and fitness.  

Stronger, healthier bones.

It has been shown that greater muscle mass is a consistent predictor of better bone, especially as we age. Not only does muscle contraction create a force on the bone stimulating healthy bone remodeling, research has shown a positive correlation between muscle size, bone density and strength. 

Improving your body composition is a worthwhile endeavor—one that will require some time and patience. Seeing some tangible results will require at least a few months. Implementing these three simple strategies can help speed the process along:

Improve your body’s metabolic flexibility.

Metabolic flexibility is the capacity to match fuel oxidation to fuel availability—or switch between burning carbohydrates and burning fat. Someone with great metabolic flexibility can burn carbs when they eat them. They can burn dietary fat when they eat it (or stored body fat when they don’t eat at all). And they can switch between carbohydrate metabolism and fat metabolism with relative ease, depending on their body’s most immediate needs. If you know someone who can “eat anything she wants,” then she probably has excellent metabolic flexibility. The first step to becoming metabolically flexible is to become fat adapted, gradually transitioning your body’s engine toward burning fat (instead of carbohydrates) as its preferred fuel source. If you’re interested in learning more about this process, reach out to me directly at jackie@prxcoach.com.

Eat fermented foods.

Eating live cultures will restore and balance the levels of healthy bacteria that drive and determine how the body metabolizes and uses the macronutrients—carbohydrates, fats, and proteins—we eat. You can read more about the benefits of eating ferments in a previous article I wrote here.

Sleep.

According to research, one of every three adults gets less than six hours of sleep a night. Unfortunately, in today’s world the notion of getting a full night’s sleep seems to fall somewhere between an unattainable luxury and an unfortunate biological handicap that gets in the way of our ability to get things done. But if you care about your health and you’re working to change your body composition, ignoring your body’s natural need for sleep could be seriously limiting your health, performance, and recovery process by promoting the production of excess cortisol—the “fight or flight” hormone that encourages your body to store fat in order to protect itself from an impending scarcity or threat.

Keep in mind that changing your body composition isn’t a singular goal. It’s two: increasing your lean body mass (by increasing skeletal muscle) and reducing your fat mass (by supporting and encouraging your body’s metabolic engine to burn fat as a primary source of fuel). Both will lead to a positive—and lasting—change in your body composition. And both are affected by sleep, which can increase the amount of anabolic or muscle-building growth hormone your body has available to work with.

Although it might require a 180 degree shift in thinking, consider putting your bathroom scale back in the closet and focus on getting a solid eight hours (or more) of sleep instead. Sleeping more may be the simplest, most sustainable approach to a better body composition.

Step outside the conventional wisdom box and give it a try. You’ve got nothing to lose but a few extra pounds of unwanted body fat!