Are you confused by your body composition report—or frustrated by a body fat percentage that never feels “good enough”? In this episode of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast, I break down the one number every woman needs to know to truly understand her health, longevity, and fitness progress: lean mass percentage.
Are you confused by your body composition report—or frustrated by a body fat percentage that never feels “good enough”? In this episode of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast, I break down the one number every woman needs to know to truly understand her health, longevity, and fitness progress: lean mass percentage.
If you’ve ever stared at a DEXA or InBody report wondering what all those numbers actually mean, this conversation will finally bring clarity. I explain why body fat percentage is the only number that appears on every report, why obsessing over it keeps women stuck, and how flipping the script to lean mass changes everything—mentally, physically, and emotionally. When you understand this one number, you’ll know exactly where you stand and what to do next to create the body you NEED to keep up with the life you LOVE.
“Body composition doesn’t have to be confusing—it just needs to be reframed.” And actually, that’s exactly what we do in this episode.
I walk you step-by-step through how to calculate your lean mass percentage using either a DEXA scan or an InBody report, and why this number matters more than your weight, BMI, or even your body fat percentage. You’ll learn why anything below 70% lean mass is considered the danger zone for women, how disease risk rises when lean mass drops, and what research shows about the optimal range for health, energy, and longevity.
We also clear up the confusion around terms like lean mass, fat-free mass, skeletal muscle mass, and bone mineral content—because no wonder women feel overwhelmed when every report looks different. I explain why I simplify the entire conversation down to one number, how this approach works for my clients, and why building muscle is the single most powerful lever you can pull for your health.
If you’re interested in women’s health, body composition, strength training over 35, aging well, muscle building, or finally understanding what your body comp report is telling you—this episode is for you.
Get FREE lifetime access to my 4-week Strength Without Stress program today! This unique program helps you build lean muscle and reduce inflammation—without the fatigue from long or intense workouts. All you need to do is post a review of my podcast, grab a screenshot, and upload it at: hollyperkins.com/review
This offer won’t last—soon it will sell for $197. Don’t miss your chance to grab it free!
Resources:
• https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/8/11/bvae164/7775409
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28696961/
• https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-022-01165-5
• Transcripts can be found on the official blog page for this episode here hollyperkins.com/blog
• Find me on Instagram: @hollyperkins
• Discover more on my website: hollyperkins.com
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Holly: What if there was one number that could tell you about your risk of disease, depression, and death? One number to tell you exactly what you need to do in order to feel better, look incredible, and perform like an athlete. In this episode, you'll learn how to determine that number so that you can stop spinning your wheels and start getting healthier. So keep listening.
Hello, and thank you for being here. Welcome back. Or if you are new, hello, I'm Holly Perkins, and I help women, mostly, mostly over 40, to improve your body composition to at least 70% lean mass, which is also known as fat-free mass.
We're going to talk about that in a moment so that you can reduce your risk of disease, stay in the game of life for all the wonderful years ahead, and stay out of the rocking chair. When it comes to your health, there are so many numbers to know, right? Think about it. You need to know your blood pressure, your total cholesterol, your hormone levels, what else? Blood oxygenation, resting glucose, body weight, oh my gosh, how many hours you sleep at night, your heart rate during your cardio.
That's a lot of numbers, huh? And it's no wonder that people are confused about their health. And while it is important to know a lot of these numbers, as many as you can, and certainly be very proactive about your health, I've got one number for you that is a big indicator of your overall health, and a number that influences so many of those other numbers that I just mentioned. And when you get this number right, it's like the ultimate health multitasking, and it's like feeding two birds with one scone.
And that one number is your body composition. How much of your current body weight, also known as your body mass, total body mass, how much of it is bone, muscle, and body fat? Knowing how your body weight is distributed is incredibly important because we know high body fat paired with low muscle mass is a real problem. So much so, there's a name for it, sarcopenic obesity.
It's dangerous, it impacts the quality of your life, including your mental health, and many, many, many women fall into this category. So a few years ago, I started getting more worried about some trends that I was seeing. Women were turning to medications to lose weight at all costs, leading to rapid weight loss, and women with blood sugar related issues were getting worse when doctors and practitioners kept pushing low carb and ketogenic diets.
Women with PCOS, thyroid issues, elevated A1C, were going ultra low carb because their trusted professionals were telling them to do so. And yet their labs were getting worse instead of better. New clients would come to me having lost weight only to watch their bone density decline.
So I was seeing these trends that weren't making sense. So I decided I had to start getting some hard data from my clients so that I could better guide them and ensure that what's happening underneath the surface looked as good as their now smaller body. So I started running body composition reports on pretty much all of my clients at the beginning of their programming and the end.
And the past two full years of data have been nothing short of mind blowing. If you're struggling to become lean and strong despite trying really hard and putting in the effort, or if you're frustrated because you've been spinning your wheels without any real progress, today's episode will be illuminating. And if you're dealing with any of the health issues that I just mentioned, or aches and pains, or you just feel terrible a lot of the time, you might find that it's time to reframe how you look at your body and your body weight.
In this episode, you'll learn why your body composition is more important than your body weight, how to get a body composition report, what kind of body composition report to get, what the numbers mean and what you should focus on, and the two most important targets to remember so that you can, number one, be truly healthy, and number two, get a lean athletic appearance if that's what you want. Sometimes all it takes is a few tweaks to your workouts and your nutrition programming in order to start getting better results. A lot of times clients come to me very frustrated because they've been trying to figure it out on their own and they were so close.
They were like on the precipice and all I had to do was spot a few blind spots, a few errors they were making, and then make adjustments and boom, it pushed them over that precipice to where they started getting and seeing some real results. And once you get that right, it's just a matter of time until you are as strong and as lean as you want to be. I always say in my coaching programs, as long as you're getting and seeing and experiencing some results every week or every two weeks, then it's just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other and continuing long enough until you're where you want to be.
Imagine if this next year was the year that you finally get it right and you reach your ideal body size where you feel strong and you have tons of energy and you feel great and you love how you look in your clothes. Can you imagine how different your life will be when you do that? And it all starts with knowing this one number so that you can start moving forward in the right direction and that number is not your body weight. So last week I got a DM from a follower on Instagram, oh by the way, if you don't follow me on Instagram, please do so, at Holly Perkins and she has been tracking my conversation here, recently got a body composition report but was a bit confused on which numbers to focus on because frankly it is confusing.
She wasn't sure if she should look at skeletal muscle mass or body fat mass or even lean tissue and it prompted me to do this episode today and walk you through getting a body composition report and then interpreting the numbers in a lot of numbers on any given body composition report and from my perspective all those numbers are valuable but you can really kind of sift through them and just focus on this one thing. Now if you're a new listener please make sure that you get my PhD playlist. It's a collection of foundational episodes that will walk you through the most important principles that I teach of health, getting lean, building muscle and losing weight specifically tailored for women.
It's totally free and you'll get basically a shortcut to better health. I think it's important to listen to those episodes as we go into this conversation today and as you continue listening to future episodes. So you can get my PhD playlist for free on my website hollyperkins.com forward slash playlist and because you're going to get that I'm going to keep this part brief.
The biggest mistake women are making is putting way too much emphasis on their body weight. If you're on a journey to become better even if it does include losing weight or becoming smaller it's expected that you're going to want or need to track and assess your progress right? So if you're like I want to be better how do we measure that? We've got to measure it in some way and the truth is one of the only concrete ways to really know if you're making progress is to watch your body weight and so I think that's why so many people are preoccupied by it but also if you're alive today listening to this you have been raised in a culture that focuses on weight loss. We have been programmed since a very young age to believe skinny is better, skinny is sexier, skinnier is more attractive.
A lot of programming so much so I think that a lot of women aren't even aware of it and it's natural to want to start to lose weight. See the number go down because in some ways for a lot of women that decline that getting skinnier is a direct correlation to your value as a human. Now I am not saying that's true we know that's not true but I am looking at so many women many famous women who have gone down the weight loss injectables and taken it too far.
We are seeing a lot of scary skinny celebrities and you can see in their eyes in the way they talk about it their life has changed because they are vindicated, validated and now more valuable because they're skinny and now more than ever we're in a time where smaller, skinnier, thinner once again is really being drilled in. We as women have a tendency to believe that if you are smaller you are winning, you are successful, you are better right and it could not be farther from the truth. In fact unless you are very very careful and strategic and diligent you will lose muscle as you lose weight.
It's actually very hard not to lose muscle as you lose weight that is something I've been refining in my programming over the past two years so that it doesn't happen it's it's totally possible and most of my clients I would say 95% of my clients do not lose muscle as they lose weight and the ones that do lose muscle it's because they didn't follow through on my guidance that happens from time to time but here's the thing if you don't do it right it's expected that between 25 and 40 percent of your weight loss will come from muscle and that is a massive problem because when you lose muscle your resting metabolic rate RMR slows down so that you actually have to eat less and less in order to maintain that lower body weight that's the opposite of what we want. We want you eating as much as possible while also maintaining your body composition. It's also a problem because your insulin sensitivity goes down when you lose muscle, your bone density decreases, your joints are more prone to injury and your body declines faster as you age.
So because of this I am on a mission to change the world so that the medical professionals stop looking at body weight as a determinant of health and instead start looking at your body composition. Your body weight literally does not matter. To me it is the silliest number ever.
I laugh anytime someone comments on body weight because it literally doesn't matter. It doesn't define you. It's not a good metric to determine your health and it doesn't tell you anything about your muscle or your bones.
So if you're someone who often feels bummed out about the number on the scale how would you feel if I told you that you should forget it because it means nothing? Wow that's a that's a reframe right? That's a whole new perspective on how you go about your health, your nutrition and improving your body. The one number that tells you more about your risk of disease, depression and death is your body composition and more specifically it's your lean mass which is also known as fat-free mass expressed as a percentage of your body weight. I'm going to say that again.
The one number that tells you more about your health is your body composition more specifically your lean mass expressed as a percentage of your body weight. This number gives you a better indication of your muscle mass and it shifts the focus off of body fat and weight loss and on to something that's so much more positive and productive building muscle. Doesn't that just feel better? Doesn't it feel better to say my doctor wants me to improve my muscle mass so here she told me I should start strength training instead of my doctor told me I'm obese and I need to lose weight.
I mean raise your hand if you've been told you need to lose weight by your doctor. It is not a good feeling. Now I've never been told that.
I've always been at a very healthy weight and I counsel people every single day and I can hear in their voice and see in their eyes how upsetting it is to be told they're in a category that is bad or negative or dangerous and you need to lose weight you little overeating person. That is a terrible way to help someone become healthier. The number one metric you need to know is your percentage of lean mass and so you might wonder okay how do I get that number and you do that by getting a body composition screening or report and you can do that in the following ways.
Number one the best and by far my favorite is a DEXA scan but they are expensive and they're harder to find. Please go out of your way to find one if you can. Do an internet search in your area.
To me I believe it's worth driving an hour or an hour and a half for. I really believe it is worth every single penny every headache and every minute of time that you invest into it because it tells you your body fat percentage and your bone mass and sometimes your bone density and it tells you in the most accurate way so that we know as close to the truth where you are at that moment in time. Number two the second best really is a professional model in-body machine or other bioelectrical impedance machine and you can often find these at a local gym many doctor's offices and even some health food stores.
If you can't get a DEXA try to get a professional in-body report and you might think what is she talking about a professional so in-body is the brand okay that's the brand of machinery and they create probably 20 30 or more different versions of their machines and just like anything else you can buy a low-end washer you can buy a high-end washer you can buy an inexpensive vehicle you can buy a Rolls-Royce so in-body does that as well and their higher-end professional machines are more accurate those are the ones that you'll find at a gym or doctor's office and often those are free or at least much lower cost than getting a DEXA. So then the third but least accurate option is a home version of a bioelectrical impedance machine and this is the of pretty much any kind of home monitoring device that you might have or you might buy like an upgraded bathroom scale usually you'll hold on to a handle sometimes it's just measuring through your feet when you step onto it and if this is your only option I've got some clients that live in very rural areas in Canada and so this is the only way that they can get this kind of data and that's fine anything is better than nothing it works the thing you need to know about home monitoring devices is that the numbers are not accurate I don't care what the manufacturer tells you I've looked at the reports they are not accurate but there's a big but it's a good option for you to track your journey at least it gives us a starting point so that when we retest you down the line we know if we're going in the right direction and so that can be an accurate way
to track your progress if you do the following with a home device you've got to track at the same time of day consistently and I would even suggest that you track seven days per week which can get a little tricky for people depending on where you are on the spectrum with getting overly preoccupied with those numbers you have to just track it every day ignore the numbers and then once a month go back and take a look and assess the second thing is you have to keep your hydration levels consistent because any kind of bioelectrical impedance device even the fancy expensive in bodies are highly sensitive to water retention what we call interstitial water holding and just hydration in general so let's say if you worked out yesterday you had a big workout and your muscles are holding on to water any kind of home measuring device is gonna is gonna be adjusted because of that if you've got any muscle soreness your water retention is going to be higher and so that is one reason why number three I say monitor seven days a week so that we can account for any deviations in water retention and so then we can start to see trends over a number of weeks or number of months and while there are other kinds of technology and screenings out there a dexa or an in body really is your best option I'm also a big fan of a bod pod they're harder to find these days because the maintenance on the machine is very problematic and they're expensive but if you can find a bod pod I would say that is up there with the dexa and could be as good so the first step here is getting the most accurate report that you can get your hands on once you have that it's time to interpret the numbers so up next I'm going to walk you through what the numbers mean what to look for and what to set as your target going forward but first I want to share a word from my sponsors so please sit tight and I'll be right back once you have your body composition report the next thing to do is get a sense of the numbers now this episode is not a deep dive into all of the numbers because that would take hours and hours there are a lot of numbers on a dexa scan and then there's a lot of different numbers on an in body my intention with this episode is to show you my preferred ways to assess the most important numbers relative to body composition so that I can create or adjust programming to improve it so let me walk you through what the numbers mean what your report is telling you so that you know what to focus on next the first thing is to know that every body composition report looks very different wildly different and that is why I determined that I needed to come up with a shortcut and a cohesive conversation that applied for everyone especially like you you might be listening to this following along but we've never met you've never dm'd me or emailed me I might not know you and so I need to have a streamlined conversation that applies to everyone regardless of the type of body composition report that they're getting. Now if you're a nerd like me you are welcome to deep dive and do your own research on all of the different numbers in your report because it can be insightful but at the end of the day the only numbers that we really need to know are number one your body weight according to the report at the time of the screening and number two your body fat percentage as noted on the report. After looking at hundreds if
not thousands of reports the only number that is always on a body composition report is body fat percentage.
It's the only number your body weight and your body fat percentage. It's on every report because at this time the world is still obsessed with body fat and most people are getting a report specifically so they can know where their body fat percentage is. So any and every report for any and every machine is going to give you your body fat percentage.
It's the only number that is on every single report. Every other report has a bunch of different numbers because they all interpret the information differently. We're going to use that one number your body fat percentage to determine the one number that actually matters more than any and that is your lean mass percentage.
Regardless of the technology you first want to locate on your report your body fat percentage. On an in-body report you'll find this number under the obesity analysis and it's labeled pbf percent body fat. That line item is just going to show it as a number let's say it says 32 but that means it's a percentage.
You'll see in the small print it says expressed as a percentage. So whatever pbf is that is your percentage. Let's go with 32 percent body fat.
Now on a dexa it's usually right at the top glaring blurting right into your face it will say total body fat percentage. Now I know for most of us that's pretty obvious but for some people it's not. Some people are looking at an in-body looking for body fat percentage but it's actually pbf right and this is where people get confused.
Now as I've said I actually don't want to focus on that number. I don't care what your body fat percentage is technically because you're just going to feel bad about it. It's never good enough.
It's never low enough. People have expectations of what that number should be. You'll see something mentioned online that your body fat percentage should be xyz and let me tell you I have been obsessing over this topic for over two years now and I cannot tell you how wildly incorrect a lot of that information is out on the internet.
That's why I flipped the script and we talk about it differently and here's why. Anything over 30 body fat is generally a bummer. It's generally labeled as obese and it doesn't make anybody happy.
So instead we're flipping the script and we're using that number to determine the number that does matter and that is a lot more inspiring and that is your lean mass percentage. Now that I've made that crystal clear to determine your lean mass percentage, simply subtract your body fat percentage from 100%. For example, if your report shows that you're 32% body fat, you'll subtract that from 100% to arrive at 68% lean mass.
Doesn't that feel a whole lot better to say I'm 68% fat free mass? Fat free mass and lean mass are synonymous depending on the report that you're looking at. But doesn't that feel a whole lot better than I'm 32% body fat? I'm obese. Feels terrible and your lean mass percentage is the number that we want.
This is the number that I talk about all the time and in a minute I'll review what this number should be and what you can do to optimize it. Now if you want to jump ahead right now because you've been following along in my conversation and you might even know what I'm going to say next, you can jump ahead because all you need is your lean mass percentage and if you're interested I'm going to walk you through some of the other numbers that you're going to see on your body composition report so that this conversation makes more sense. In my experience people want to know what all those other numbers mean.
You're going to see numbers like total mass in pounds. If you're in the U.S. obviously it'll be kgs if you're not in the U.S. This is the total mass of your body i.e. your body weight. Total mass is your body weight.
You'll also see fat tissue in pounds. This is the actual weight of your body fat. So you might be 32% of your body weight in fat.
They calculate that to tell you how much your body fat actually weighs and that is determined by taking your body fat percentage multiplied by your total mass. 32% of your total mass is the weight of your fat mass. This is where it gets more interesting and confusing for people.
On a dexa you'll most likely see lean tissue in pounds. You'll also see BMC bone mineral content which is also in pounds but they don't make it obvious. No wonder people are confused.
Lean tissue is not your muscle mass. It is the weight of your body that is not fat and is not bone. It's also known as fat-free mass because your report is reporting on your body fat percentage.
Everything else is what they call fat-free mass or lean mass or lean tissue. It's everything else including skeletal muscle, organs, connective tissue and water because it's not fat, right? And BMC is your bone mass. It is the weight of your bones.
It is not your bone density. We can only get your bone density through a dexa report. Not all dexa reports for body composition show it.
This is something I dive in deep when I do my twice yearly three-day free workshop which will be coming up in early 2026 somewhere around February, March of 2026. We'll go into all of these details even more. Now remember we determined your lean mass percentage by subtracting your total body fat percent from 100% and then if you want to calculate that out to determine the actual weight and mass of your lean tissue you'd multiply your total mass by lean mass percentage and that will give you the weight of your total lean mass which is your fat-free mass, okay? Now on a dexa report you can also just add up lean tissue in pounds in BMC, your bone mineral content in pounds and that will give you the weight of your lean mass which is also your fat-free mass and you could do that if you want but again I really think it's just easier to focus on lean mass percentage.
That's why it's the one number because it tells you everything. As you might see these numbers can start to get really confusing for some people and that's why I prefer to simplify the whole conversation down to one number across the board and while my way of doing it could be argued or dissected honestly it's working for my clients because it simplifies things and it tells you just focus on this, just improve your lean mass percentage by building your muscle because when you build muscle it burns off fat and your lean muscle percentage goes up. Doesn't that feel great? And it's simple but more on that in a moment because after I review the numbers on an in-body you'll see why this simpler conversation is so needed.
So when we look at an in-body report it gets even more confusing because the numbers are totally different and an in-body or bioelectrical impedance accounts for water weight specifically. So in the top section of an in-body you'll see body composition analysis. You'll see a bunch of really confusing numbers it even took me a minute to sit down and be like wait wait they're adding this up to here so why is the diagram laid out the way that it is it's very visually confusing in my opinion maybe not to other people whose brain works differently but in the top section you're going to see a bunch of numbers which for the most part in my opinion don't really matter a ton because you can simply focus on lean mass percentage.
Your water fluctuates every hour so I don't really care what your water numbers are it's going to change tomorrow it's going to be different if you ate sushi last night or canned soup and it's going to be different if you worked out this morning so it doesn't really matter if you just focus on lean mass percentage everything works lean body mass on an in-body is your fat-free mass which is your body weight less your body fat mass if you divide lean body mass by the weight column you'll get your lean mass percentage the one thing that confuses people is that lean
body mass is different from SMM skeletal muscle mass which is under a different section the muscle fat analysis section further down the report you certainly can track this number over time so that you know exactly how your muscle mass is changing if you want you can look and say hey I gained 0.2 pounds of SMM skeletal muscle mass so that you can know you can certainly do that that's certainly valid if you want because ultimately we do want this number to go up and up and up and up in my opinion you can never have too much muscle so you could just focus on that number if you're following along in my conversation but the reason I discuss it a bit differently is because your muscle mass could be going up alongside of your body fat right so you can gain muscle and gain body fat and therefore you're not actually better you have more muscle but the truth is really and truly at the end of the day too high of body fat is a problem we'll get into that in a moment so the truth is go for more muscle keep an eye on that SMM but we still have to know your lean mass percentage and the other thing to note on an in body is that dry lean mass is not the same as your lean mass percentage your dry lean mass is lean body mass minus total body water so you can see is this confusing or what because an in body takes into account water whereas a DEXA scan is an x-ray so it's not influenced by water at all and that's another reason why I like a DEXA scan okay so to summarize here so that you can determine your lean mass percentage the one number that ultimately matters if you listen to my podcast if you follow along with my conversation number one on a DEXA scan simply subtract your total body fat percentage from 100 on an in body find PBF and subtract that number from 100 and that's going to give you your lean mass percentage okay now that you know that number what should it be and what should you aim for again to simplify the conversation and give you an easy target to remember and aim for my recommendation is to first become at least 70% lean mass write that down and please write down the fact that I said in all caps and bold at least 70% lean mass this would mean that your body fat percentage on your report needs to be 30% or less some people will be shocked to hear this because we have been programmed that 30% body fat is considered obese but there is a ton of confusion and misunderstanding even amongst professionals in my industry because for so long we have been saying that it's 30% body fat using BMI as the corollary and as the metric that correlates to body fat percentage but we know that's not an accurate metric regardless of what's considered good bad or ugly I can tell you right now there are a ton of normal weighted women walking around with more than 30% body fat I myself have been higher than 30% body fat at times and I am perfectly healthy and I am certainly not obese so if you think that 30% body fat is so high please think again please do some research because it's not when we're looking at a DEXA scan and oh by the way it's the norm so let's call it what it is and give people a conversation that's inspiring and motivating to change it it's important to become at least 70% lean mass because this is any less than 70% lean mass is the danger zone we know that your risk of disease goes way up when you are less than 70% lean mass high body fat is associated with nearly every disease and a lower quality of life it is absolutely critical that you get out of this worrisome category ASAP
that is why it is the first and only thing to focus on when your body composition report shows more than 30% body fat a 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis looked at studies done on nearly 1 million participants to determine how body fat influences all-cause mortality and it determined a j-shaped association between body fat percentage and fat mass and all-cause mortality risk with the lowest risk being at a body fat percentage of 25% now the j-shape means too low of body fat as a problem as well the sweet spot to reduce to put the lowest risk of all-cause mortality is 25% body fat according to a DEXA scan according to an accurate measuring device and there are tons of other insights that suggest if you want to reduce your risk of disease that happens mostly around 25% body fat or 75% lean mass so if your top goal is to be healthy and age well and reduce your risk of cancers heart disease metabolic disorders and cognitive decline your best first step is to get your body fat below 30% which means your lean mass would be above 70% and then you're out of the worst of the danger zone but we really do want to continue on to 75% lean mass so that you can be optimal every percentage that you move from 70 to 75% lean mass you are reducing your risk of disease and beyond that you are improving the quality of your life now and forever and i want your ultimate goal to be 75% percent lean mass because remember focusing on muscle goes a lot farther than focusing on weight loss here's some tips to help you go from less than 70% lean mass to more so if your body composition report says you are more than 30% body fat this is for you take action like your life depends on it because my friend it literally does and even if you feel healthy and invincible and you're never going to catch a disease by the way that's unlikely this also is going to improve your happiness and the quality of your life it is time to get to work my friend and start taking your body composition seriously forget fast fixes or losing weight in 12 weeks even though i'm hoping to light a fire under your sexy booty do not go after a fast fix yes you can lose weight fast it's easy to lose weight fast but you're going to lose muscle and building muscle takes time so i want you to focus on lifestyle changes that help you to build muscle this is precisely why building muscle will save your life number three your programming should focus on a combination of calorie restriction and strength training those are the two most important pieces of the puzzle at this time cardio will always be important but the emphasis and the real needle movers here are a small calorie deficit in your nutrition okay not in your energy expenditure because people often think oh i want a calorie deficit so i can burn more calories through my workouts disregard that i want a small calorie deficit coming from your nutrition by eating a little teeny tiny bit less and progressive resistance strength training those are the magic power duo and number four how long it's going to take you to become at least 70 lean mass is dependent on where you are where you've been how committed you are and how consistent you stay but how surprised would you be to find out that you can transform your body quite quickly when you put your mind to it so forget how long it's going to take forget fast fixes set your sights on becoming one percent better now if you're already above 70 lean mass i.e your body fat is less than 30 what's the game plan first i want to congratulate you because you're out
of that danger zone and you're in a great place to move forward the next target is to become at least 75 lean mass because this is where the threshold of your risk of disease is at its lowest this is also the threshold where you look and feel leaner and more athletic so in my opinion every woman's target should be 75 lean mass and if you want to be leaner than that that's cool i'll comment in a moment but we got to get you to 75 first if the world is going to be a better place here's some tips to help you move from 70 to 75 lean mass number one it is all about building muscle it is not all about strength training because you can strength train and not build muscle it is about building muscle actually building muscle your top priority is progressively increasing your weight loads every single month so that you're actually increasing the weight of your lean muscle mass number two nutrition should be around maintenance so that you're fueled so that you go into your workouts like a beast and you can work so hard to increase your weight loads because that is what builds muscle most effectively for women over 35 and number three cardio needs to be in there for cardiovascular health cardiovascular fitness and yes for fat burning but cardio should be super strategic without doing too much once you hit this 75 lean mass mark you might wonder what's next from here on out it's really up to you if you're under 40 it's going to be easier to inch towards 80 lean mass if you want if you're interested and if you're over 50 it's going to be a lot harder so think about what you really really want because i don't believe that being ripped and super duper lean and having visible abs is necessary if you want that it's super fun i love it go for it but when we're talking about optimally living there's going to be some compromises that are really uncomfortable it becomes a lifestyle to target 80 lean mass and you're going to have to be committed to keeping your muscle high and your body fat low and while it's work it does pay off big dividends if you choose i believe because more muscle is better than less but once you cross that 70 lean mass mark i'd argue it's less about further reducing your risk of disease and it's really more about your preferences how you like to spend your time how you like to look some people really love spending two hours in the gym every day and lifting weights and those are usually the people that increase their lean mass above 75 percent these are usually fitness enthusiasts or people who just truly love their lifestyle it's less about body composition for them and it's more about how they like to spend their days and live their life and my friend that is a wrap on why 70 lean mass is the target for women and what your body comp report is really telling you and would you believe i thought this was going to be a quick episode i really thought this was going to be a quick one it's not i can't help myself i have a very hard time making these conversations shorter so if you're still here with me you are an og you are an insider you are a bestie thank you for still being here i love you i appreciate you and thank you for giving me a place to share my gifts and my talents i hope you enjoyed this episode if so let me know hey you know you can get free access to my four week strength without stress program for free simply by rating and reviewing my podcast and i would so appreciate that all you got to do is review my podcast wherever you listen that could be on my website it could be itunes it could be spotify grab a screenshot of your review and then send it to me come over to my website hollyperkins.com forward slash review you can upload it and you'll get immediate access for free to strength without stress it's a great program by the way i will at some point in the future actually that's not true i have sold it for 197 in the past and i will at some point in the future because it's absolutely worth that get it now while you can and stay tuned for another brand new episode on tuesday of next week stay strong my friend