The Skinny Fat Trap: Focus on Building Muscle, Not Losing Weight

Why weight loss alone keeps men stuck in a skinny fat trap

Don’t get stuck in a weight loss mindset. Focusing on weight loss, instead of building muscle, could be the one thing keeping you from the body you desire.

If you want to avoid being skinny fat, soft, or rocking a dad bod, your focus needs to involve adding muscle, not just losing weight.

Too many men spin their wheels trying to lose weight, hoping to finally get ripped or see their abs, but never gain real traction on what it’s needed to transform their body.

Why a weight loss mindset kept me stuck for over a decade

I know hyper focusing on weight loss doesn’t work for men, because I was one of them.

I was always overweight growing up. At a young age I learned how to diet, which I later realized caused a lot of problems for me physically and psychologically.

Thankfully I found myself to be pretty good at football, and because of that I quickly fell in love with the weight room.

I added a significant amount of muscle in my teens through my college football years, but because I was a bit undersized for my position, there was always a pressure to gain weight.

Between being an overweight kid, and always feeling like I needed to maintain or add weight to my frame, I still had a deep desire to get lean following college football.

I wanted to see my abs, but I didn’t really understand what was needed to get there.

Right idea, wrong approach

The problem wasn’t my goal, the problem was my execution.

Any time you focus on the number on the scale alone, you’re setting yourself up for failure from the start.

The scale is a great tool for tracking average weight, but it’s just one of several data points I track with clients.

Because it doesn’t tell the whole picture, and can actually cause you to get off track if you’re not careful.

In my head I thought getting to 190 lbs would be the transformation I needed. And if I got down to 185 lbs, I would be movie star ripped.

There are plenty of things I wish I would have known sooner, but the number one thing would have been the importance of adding lean muscle (and not just losing weight).

Because I didn’t understand the importance of more muscle when it comes to body transformation, I stopped lifting heavy (and even stopped lifting altogether at times), I was usually focused on eating less and exercising more, and I found myself following unsustainable workouts or diets that kept me stuck.

Weight loss without muscle = frustration

Less muscle will make your body transformation goals even more elusive. I see this mistake happen across the board:

Weight gain without muscle = overweight
Weight maintenance without muscle = soft or dad bod
Weight loss without muscle = skinny fat

The key to your desired body composition involves more muscle. Not just weight loss.

The more muscle principle is the number one lesson within the Body [re]Building Playbook, and the cornerstone of my approach with coaching clients.

Muscle is important for two reasons:

1. More muscle actually makes losing weight (and more importantly, losing fat) even easier. This is because more lean muscle is the number one thing within your control to improve your resting metabolism.

2. If you lose a lot of weight, but don’t add muscle in the process (or you don’t already have a lot of muscle on your body), you’re going to be disappointed with the way you look.

If your goal is simply being skinny or light, then weight loss is fine. Medium shirts that fit loose in the arms and tight in the stomach is not winning in my book.

If your goal is to be lean, jacked, and athletic then weight loss is not enough. You need more muscle.

The problems with focusing on losing weight (and what to do instead):

A weight loss mindset is not a strong mindset

If you’re serious about cutting weight and dropping fat, there is a certain mindset you need to have. If you have achieved a lean physique, or gotten to single digit body fat, you know that this is a physical and mental grind.

This is not where most men find themselves. Most men are just trying to lose 10-20 lbs and get rid of their gut. Which if done properly, shouldn’t take any longer than a few months…max. If you’ve been trying to lose the same 10-20 lbs for the past year (or longer), something is way off in your approach or your execution.

A cutting mindset, with the goal of single digit body fat, is much different than a general weight loss mindset.

When you’re focused on losing weight, even when getting very lean, you’re sacrificing strength and performance.

When you focus on a number on the scale alone, you become a slave to that number.

If you’re doing whatever you can to see that number go down, you might be eating too little/exercising too much, become fearful of adding muscle, or pursuing an aggressive weight loss rate that is unhealthy.

Calorie deficits and chronic dieting cause problems

If your goal is maximizing your level of leanness, you understand that there is going to be some potential compromises in your overall health to get there.

Most men don’t realize that they are making those same compromises when they diet for too long…just without the results to show for it.

Spending too much time dieting can cause:

A poor environment for muscle building
Decreased physical performance
Decreased energy, mood, or cognitive performance
Decreased sex drive
A negative impact on cortisol, testosterone, and other hormones

If you spend too much time dieting or focused on weight loss, you’ll sacrifice performance in the short-term and health in the long-term. This is sometimes a necessary tradeoff to getting very lean, but most men are suffering the same consequences while still being overweight.

This gets even worse when it’s coupled with the next problem.

Restrict – binge – restrict cycles

Focusing on weight loss, without following the proper playbook to transform your body, sets many men up for restrict – binge – restrict cycles.

You want to lose weight, so you get extra strict on limiting calories or certain foods
You find it’s not sustainable. When life gets busy, you get stressed, or your willpower is depleted you give into cravings. This often comes with a ‘screw it’ mentality that leads to binging out on the foods you were restricting for so long
You feel guilty or gain weight back that you lost, so you jump back into another cycle of restriction

And the cycle continues.

This is not only extremely unhealthy emotionally and psychologically, but is leading to more fat gain.

When you’re in a significant restriction cycle, you’re sacrificing muscle and hormonal health
When that’s suddenly followed by a binge cycle, your body is even more sensitive to storing fat, so you quickly gain all the weight back you lost (or more)
You not only got minimal results when in a restriction cycle, due to a poor environment for muscle building and hormones, but you lost muscle along the way making your next weight loss effort even harder

There is a better way if your goal is sustainable fat loss (and not just short-term weight loss)

If you want to lose weight, but you don’t want to sacrifice your health, performance, or muscle in the process — focus on these things:

Don’t cut calories too much (or for too long). Cut calories by 10-25% of your maintenance calories, and don’t diet for longer than 12 weeks at a time (in most cases)
Focus more on strength training (and less on cardio). Strength training 3-4x/week is the sweet spot for most men looking to maximize muscle, performance, and body composition on a busy schedule. Higher intensity cardio is great for overall health, but it’s not a great strategy for trying to burn more calories and lose weight
Eat enough protein. Aim to eat 0.7-1g/lb of protein per lb of bodyweight. This will help preserve (or build) lean muscle when dieting.
Reframe your goals. Think about getting lean instead of getting light. Being strong instead of being skinny. Set goals that focus on performance within the gym and overall body composition, not just on weight loss.

All of these are laid out in more detail in the Body [re]Building Playbook — a free email course to walk you through step by step what’s needed to transform your body.

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Most men don’t fail for a lack of effort, but for simply following the wrong advice.

The health and fitness industry, social media, and influencers are filled with noise. You’ll hear advice that sounds good but doesn’t help you transform your body for life.

Don’t chase unsustainable programs or diets. Focus on the things that help you find sustainable progress for life.

If you need help getting started, make sure to check out the free email course I put together. This is designed to cut through the health and fitness noise and give you the x’s and o’s you need to get long-term results. Sign up for the Body [re]Building Playbook here, and get your first lesson to your inbox today.

If you’re tired of trying to lose the same 10-20 lbs over, and over, and over again…let’s talk. Fill out a coaching form to set up a time to chat and learn how I can help you radically transform your body in the next 3 months.