TIME CONSTRAINTS

I’m not an impatient person, just as long as things happen fast. Of course, I’m joking (kind of) but I think a key impact factor in patience is setting expectations at the beginning.

When it comes to fitness, there are two primary phases that most are focused on, fat loss and massing.

A fat loss phase is when the goal is to maintain lean muscle mass and lose unwanted body fat mass. The result of this is more definition and improved body composition.

What I like to call a massing phase is increasing muscle mass while trying to minimize body fat gain. While a controlled body fat gain is normal and needed, we want to avoid excessive body fat gain that some experience when they follow what most call bulking.

Both processes take time to do it properly but the amount differs on each.

While it is different for everyone, the fat loss phase is usually a faster process than the massing phase. The reason is because the body doesn’t want to add muscle tissue without a proven and repetitive need. This takes a consistent training stimulus along with proper nourishment and recovery. With increased muscle comes an increased metabolism.

While that sounds great to us, the body doesn’t want to do that unless absolutely necessary. When the metabolism is higher, survival becomes more challenging due to an increased calorie demand (think about if food is scarce/hard to come by).

On the flip side, fat loss doesn’t require this training stimulus (although resistance training is key to minimize muscle mass and metabolism loss). Running a calorie deficit will result in the body fat loss. However if it goes to fast, again a survival mechanism will kick in and the body will slow down the metabolism to blunt fat loss (darn survival priorities…)

As a general rule, massing takes longer not just in time but also to see progress. The key on both is to be patient and to work with your body and not against it. This will help set expectations and perhaps improve the required patience in each.