Getting Lean is weird for guys.
We wanna be lean – 6% body fat lean, but we don’t want to be light.
Call it social pressure or whatever, it makes for an interesting conundrum.
But here’s the truth.
Most of the time to get lean you are going to have to be lighter than you probably think is acceptable.
I’ll use myself as an example:
I’m 5’10”
I have about 150-ish pounds of LBM, for sake of arguement lets say 155 pounds
Right now I have a fasted weight of around 172 pounds and around 10% body fat.
Now here’s the reality:
If I want to be 6% body fat, I’m going to have to weigh less then I do now (obvious).
In fact, I’ll probably have to weigh 165 pounds.
For me and my personal biases there’s something..weird… about a guy who is 5’10” and ‘only’ weights 165 pounds.
But, consider this…at this weight I would have no less muscle then I do now – And I’m perfectly happy with the amount of muscle I have right now. I’d also be just as strong (I did a power lifting competition at 165 last year and hit some good numbers).
So at 165 I’d have everything I want…same amount of muscle, same amount of strength, less body fat.
So me thinking that 165 is ‘a little light’ is simply a result of personal bias, probably driven by the media and inflated reported weights of actors, athletes and wrestlers. It could also be the fact that we like to forget about height when comparing weights…just because a 6 foot guy weighs 200 pounds, doesn’t mean a 5’10” should (this is a big part of the philosophy behind The Adonis Effect).
So for the guys (and maybe girls too) the question becomes, is fear of being light preventing you from getting lean?
BP
