188: Lean Mass vs Fat Mass
Lean Mass is the sum weight of your skeletal muscle, organs, skin, bones and body water. Fat Mass is the amount of fat in your body. As we age (which, sadly, starts in our 30’s) we begin to lose muscle mass. The less muscle we have, the worse our metabolism works. Muscle is one of our greatest metabolic assets because it serves as a storage tank for carbs. The less muscle we have to store glucose, the more quickly it turns to fat. Thus, we start conceding more lean mass over to fat mass which is a major metabolic nightmare!
I recently had a body composition scan to assess my lean mass versus fat mass (scale weight doesn’t give you any insight into this important ratio). In this week’s episode, I’m telling you all about it in case it’s something you might want to do too.
EPISODE 188: Lean Mass vs Fat Mass
Show Notes
(0:00) Intro
Hello my friend, welcome back to the club, how are you today?
I recently had a DEXA scan to measure my body composition - how much of my body is fat versus how much of my body is lean mass.
TOFI which stands for Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside.
(4:50) First let’s talk about lean mass and fat mass:
Lean Body Mass is the sum weight of your skeletal muscle, organs, skin, bones and body water. It’s everything but the fat in your body.
Fat Mass is The amount of fat in your body.
So your weight is the total of your lean body mass + your fat mass.When you get on a scale you get a total body weight number. But what that number doesn’t tell you is how much of that weight is lean mass or fat mass or how healthy the state of either of that mass is. Same with using your standard BMI or Body Mass Index.
These tools do not calculate fat vs lean mass ratio.
One in three adults aged 50 and over dies within 12 months of suffering a hip fracture. Older adults have a five-to-eight times higher risk of dying within the first three months of a hip fracture compared to those without a hip fracture.
One of the biggest factors, if not the biggest factor, for better health as you age is having muscle.
Muscle iswhat supports your bones and makes them stronger.
Muscle is mobility. Muscle is strength. Muscle is pushing yourself up out of a chair and navigating stairs. And it’s this age-related loss of skeletal muscle - called sarcopenia - that really robs you of your independence and vitality as you age.
It’s also lack of muscle that concedes the body over to fat.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon says that we need to stop looking at people who are overweight as overfat and diagnose them as undermuscled.
Muscle is not only a mobility organ its a metabolic organ and, in fact, Dr Lyon calls it our highest metabolic AND longevity asset.
When you eat carbs and they turn to sugar in the body, the first two places they get stored are in the liver and the muscle.
You can only hold - or you’re only supposed to hold about 4 grams of glucose in your bloodstream and the rest has to be stored.
Your liver might hold around 100 grams and your muscles can hold around 300 grams on average and when those storage tanks are full, the rest of that sugar gets stored in your fat cells, it becomes fat.
There are two kinds of fat:
Subcutaneous fat: that’s the fat most of us think of when we think of fat - it’s the fat that lies beneath the skin and you can pinch.
Visceral fat: is much more sneaky. It’s fat that lies deep in the abdominal cavity and wraps around your organs - like your liver, intestines and kidneys. It’s not obvious like subcutaneous fat is because it’s more of a hidden fat.
This is what we’re talking about when someone is skinny fat or TOFI - thin on the outside fat on the inside. And it’s dangerous— It increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, dementia, diabetes, obesity and overall inflammation.
A protruding belly is usually a sign that there is visceral fat behind the subcutaneous fat and especially when you see someone with hard belly fat.
(13:50) DEXA Scan:
A DEXA scan is considered the ‘gold-standard’ method of measuring fat-mass.
DEXA stands for Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and it uses two low power X-ray beams to scan your body.
The X-rays work by differentiating tissue density, so it is able to detect the difference between muscle and bone (which has a higher density) and fat (which has a lower density), and therefore be used to calculate fat-percentage.
It’s measured in microsieverts and just for perspective a DEXA has between 1-4 microsieverts, a flight from Australia to California has 40 microsieverts, a chest Xray has 60 microsieverts, and a mammogram has 400 microsieverts.
So my total lean mass is 96.3 lbs and my fat mass is 31.8 lbs. I’ll let you add that up if you want to know how much I weigh. That comes out to 24.8% body fat for me.
25-31% fat is in the average range.
20-24% fat is in the fitness range
32% and above is obese
The majority of my fat is on my hip and bootie - I didn’t need a scan to tell me that.
My estimated Visceral Fat is 31.2 and the goal is to have less than 100 - so I was happy to see that.
My bones looked good too. I did have just a little bit of osteopenia in one area.
Osteopenia is what’s used to describe low bone mass and does not necessarily mean it will develop into osteoporosis - it’s not necessarily like “preossteoporosis.”
I keep thinking about what Cynthia Thurlow said when she was on the podcast about how we want to be a filet and not a ribeye. That’s the best visual. I mean, I love eatin’ me some ribeye, but I don’t want my muscle or organs to be streaked with fat like a ribeye. I want to my muscle to be dense and lean like a filet. We are filets my friend.
(23:50) 10x Stronger Program:
We are starting my 10x Stronger program in January - it’s 4 weeks of more muscle, more protein and more Jesus and it’s going to set us up for leaning out, increasing strength, shifting body composition from fat mass to lean mass - and this is going to be my major strength training focus - pull ups. You get to pick your strength training goal but here’s the quick overview of the program in case you’re not familiar.
We work on building our protein intake week by week using a 30g protein distribution goal. This sets us up for optimal muscle protein synthesis so we can give our body the materials it needs to build muscle.
We do 2 strength training sessions a week focusing on the train to fail approach which means we push our muscles to its weakest point because we when do that’s when they respond, that’s when they grow.
And while we’re growing our muscle, we’ll also be growing in our faith and relationship with the Lord. Just like our muscles grow from weakness, so does our faith. 2 Cor 12:9-10 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”...For when I am weak, then I am strong.
You know, It’s only when we can’t do one more lift or rep, when we’ve pushed our muscle to its weakest point that it is stimulated to grow. The power is made perfect in weakness.That’s how our faith grows too. We’re human. We fail. Giving our personal weaknesses over to the Lord is a stimulus for spiritual growth. It’s admitting that we can’t do it all on our own. It’s acknowledging Him as our greatest source of power. It’s allowing Him to do a great work in our lives. When we are weak, He is strong. That’s what will be our spiritual focus in 10x stronger. So if your new year goal involves reshaping your body and spending more time focused on the Lord and your faith - we put it all together, all in one place in 10x Stronger and invite you to join us. Registration is open. We start January 2nd so plan to join us. I can’t think of a better way to kick off the new year in spirit, mind and body.
(29:36) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!