Your Fear Of Weight Gain Is Holding You Back
You want bigger glutes, you want more muscle tone, you want a bigger squat and you want to look like the fit girls and guys on the gram? There’s definitely a few factors feeding into why you haven’t yet achieved these things and one of those factors is very likely your intense aversion to weight gain.
Hear me out.
Weight gain — but why?
1. Because you want bigger glutes. Your glutes are a muscle. To make them bigger, they need to grow which means they need both additional calories, protein and a mechanical stimulus etc. .
2. Because you want a bigger squat. More muscle is gonna help you get there. If you’re under-muscled or hit a strength plateau, you’ll get fantastic bang for your buck with some bigger quads, bigger glutes and a bigger back. Again, want to grow muscle? You’re gonna need some extra calories and your scale weight is gonna need to increase.
3. Because you want to be more “toned”. The appearance of being toned is just having enough muscle on your frame coupled with low enough body fat levels to show off the muscle underneath. You can be as lean as you want but if there’s no muscle to reveal, you won’t look toned. You’ll just look skinny. If you’re already lean but don’t quite have that toned look you’re after, what you’re missing is muscle.
Meet me on IG: a list of reasons why gaining weight is awesome (click the image to link to the IG post).
Note: It’s hard to build muscle without a little fat gain.
Muscle gain is a slow process, particularly for women. Controlling it so much so as to resist any fat gain is realistically not going to get you anywhere. You’ll likely just spin your wheels and stay at your current size.
If you want to build muscle but want to remain lean, rather than setting out with the goal of building muscle and no fat, the more productive goal would be to build muscle while gaining as little fat as possible. In this way, you’ll gain a little but not a lot body fat that you can just cut off later.
If this concept is new to you, I’d encourage you to read this article: “I want to build muscle without gaining fat.”
Your weight gain can be temporary.
“But how can I look toned if I’ve gained body fat as well?”
“ I want bigger glutes but I still want to be lean.”
“I want to be stronger and more muscular but I don’t want to move up a weight class.”
Your body weight increase and any additional body fat does not need to be permanent. It can be if you want but it doesn’t have to be. You can eat in a calorie surplus for a period, you can build muscle over that period, you can be heavier for a period — and then you can return to a lighter body weight and be more muscular and more lean than you were before at that same body weight.
This is how body recomposition occurs.
So if you want to recomp, you do need to go through these periods of being heavier and carrying a little more body fat. Otherwise, you’re welcome to just spin your wheels at your current body weight.
Many people are absolutely not willing to go through this discomfort. The thought of being heavier or carrying more body fat is so scary, nerve wracking or threatening, that they just aren’t willing to go through it.
This is okay. Nobody is going to force you to endure it. You will survive and the world will go on either way. However, if you’re complaining of a lack of or slow progress, and the aforementioned goals really are meaningful to you, then perhaps it is worth working through this. It’s likely that this is a significant limiting factor for you, and despite your hard work, grit and work ethic, this fear and insecurity is what’s holding you back from reaching new heights.
Let’s unpack why these fears exist in the first place. Why does a little extra body fat or a small scale increase make you go “fuck that, I’m not doing it”? Where does this aversion come from?
IG post: mentally surviving gaining phases (because it is extremely mentally challenging).
How did we come to hate body fat?
1. Cultural beauty standards are a beast.
Beauty standards in our culture influence what we, as a population, deem to be attractive. These standards aren’t permanent or concrete but instead change and flow between cultures and time. For example in the 90’s, thin bodies with minimal curves was in vogue. Think Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan. You can laugh at how distasteful this appearance seems now but the pressure to conform was absolutely suffocating for many at the time. Today, the trend is the curvy / fit ideal: lean stomachs, lean limbs and round, perky glutes. Who knows what 2030 and beyond will bring — it could well be the very body you have and deem inadequate right now.
We’re living in a period where low body fat is considered the ideal. Importantly, this isn’t objective and it hasn’t been the case forever. It’s just a “right here right now” thing. It’s totally arbitrary. Whether you realise it or not, some (if not all) of the aversion you have towards weight-gain is in part due to this external societal pressure — external pressure that we can rationally accept as a temporary feature of the generation in which we are living. Falling victim to this temporary fad could very well be impeding your long-term strength and physique goals.
2. How much of your self-worth is tied to your appearance?
Do you value yourself because you are physically attractive? And do you view yourself as more attractive when you are lean?
Pride in your shape and appearance can appear relatively harmless when your weight is static. I mean, if you already look good and are already proud of your appearance, what’s the harm, right?
But what happens when you gain body fat — because of changing life conditions, because of shifting priorities, because of a global pandemic, illness, pregnancy, or (wait for it), because you’ve intentionally decided to temporarily or permanently increase your body weight to support your goals?
Now your self-worth is challenged.
Or alternatively and perhaps more commonly, you decide that gaining body fat presents too significant a risk to your social standing and relationships. You never actually get to experience the benefits of a calorie surplus and controlled weight gain. You decide to put a hold on progress in an area of your life that is meaningful to you because you don’t want to risk losing your standing with those around you.
Now all of a sudden, that “harmless” self-worth you get from your appearance is slowing you down. Your own pride (or perhaps insecurity) is preventing you from reaching the fullest of your potential.
3. Eating beyond fullness is hard, but not for the reasons you think.
For some, trying to eat in a calorie surplus is physically really uncomfortable. There is only so much room in your stomach. As an aside, many in this category haven’t been creative enough about eating low volume/high calorie foods but that’s not the point of this article.
You can read about some hacks to help you with this in this article “Diet Tips”.
While eating beyond fullness can be physically really uncomfortable, in large part, the reason why eating beyond fullness is so challenging is psychological. Because we’ve been told our whole life that eating beyond fullness is gluttonous. We don’t want to eat high calorie foods; they’re “bad for us”. And we don’t want to eat in excess because it goes against everything we’ve ever been told — about eating to 80% fullness, about leaving food on our plates, about using a small plate, about eating mindfully. When we feel full, we feel bloated. And being bloated or round is “bad”, because that’s the message our culture has been sending for decades.
In summary, where does our fear of extra body fat come from? Cultural beauty messages. They’re a bit fucked (see point one — you getting this?!).
Maybe you’ve been privy to these pressures in the past, or maybe this is the first time you’ve considered them. Either way, being aware of the pressure to look a certain way doesn’t necessarily negate the pressure that you experience. So how can you rise above this fear of weight gain to build muscle and achieve your strength and physique goals?
Getting cool with weight gain — hot tips.
1. Improve your body image.
Body image has absolutely nothing to do with the way you look and everything to do with the way you feel about the way you look. If you feel negatively about your body, improving not your body but how you feel about it will have extremely positive implications.
One more time for the people up the back: how you look and how you feel about how you look aren’t necessarily related.
Improving your body image can contribute significantly to your quality of life overall and of relevance to this article for your ability to feel positively (or even just neutral) about your body when it changes.
2. Derive your self-worth from an array of things.
Your self-worth doesn’t have to (and should not) come from your appearance and certainly not from your appearance alone. Nor should it come from the number of IG followers you have, how many likes your last photo got or the nice comments people may have left you. Your self-worth can be derived from many different things and it really should be diversified for the safety of your mental well-being. You don’t want to tie all of your worth to your athletic abilities — what if you break your leg? You don’t want to tie all of your worth to your relationship status — what if your partner turns into an absolute jerk? You don’t want to tie all of your worth to your job — what if you’re made redundant?
Perhaps you can derive your self-worth from a number of the following:
Are you kind?
Are you a good listener?
Are you generous?
Do you contribute to the greater good — by your work, volunteer work, or otherwise?
Are you hard working? Do you do your best to achieve the things you set out to do?
For me, I’m a good friend, I’m a good coach, I’m generous with my time, I’m mindful of my carbon footprint, I donate to charity, I’m proud of my work ethic, my work is meaningful to me, I’m proud of my efforts athletically. If I gain a couple of kilos, I still feel good about myself for all of these reasons even if the little self-worth I do derive from my appearance is temporarily down.
IG post: how I got comfortable with weight gain
3. Periodise your nutrition.
A scale increase doesn’t have to be permanent and for many, a temporary scale increase would contribute to extremely positive body composition outcomes in the long term.
A periodised nutrition plan can be absolute fire when it comes to providing a long term vision and, importantly, trust and reassurance in the process. In terms of temporarily increasing your weight, a long term plan can guide:
What period of the year you’ll spend in a gaining phase
What weight you are comfortable getting up to
How long will you spend at that weight
The period of time you’ll spend cutting back down
What weight you will come back down to
As well as the nutrition and training interventions required to achieve the above.
Below is a loose ~12 month plan for online client, Victor. He competes in powerlifting in the 93kg weight class.
Seeing your weight climb up can be daunting, but when you can see the big picture, it can feel a lot less threatening.
12 month nutrition periodisation with the goal of maximising muscle growth and making weight at 93kg in September.
Actual data of Victor’s calorie intake and body weight over a 12 month period. Note the different phases: cutting weight from November to December, gaining from December to April, maintaining his heavier bodyweight from April to June, then cutting back down to 93kg from July to August.
4. Do your best to wrap your head around the fact that you aren’t going to be heavier forever.
If you are just gaining weight temporarily to support muscle development and intend to cut back down later, it can be immensely valuable to view your heavier body as just a temporary state. You haven’t “let yourself go” and you don’t need to be comfortable in this new shape forever. But if you can at the very least tolerate it for a couple of months, you will reap the benefits of the surplus calories and the extra muscle mass that you will gain.
Also, if you time your gaining and cutting phases with the seasons, you can get jacked up in the winter and cut back down to your “comfortable weight” in time to be vain for the summer (yeah, I do this).
5. Fucking grit your teeth for a bit of trial and error.
Gaining weight for the first time is scary. I won’t deny that. But there is so much you can learn in that first gaining phase, from the experiences that you go through, that will empower you with so much more confidence for successive phases. Your life won’t collapse, your partner won’t leave you and you probably won’t die alone because you’re a couple of kilos heavier.
But, you may absolutely love the new muscle on your frame and the strength gains that come with that. You’ll love the extra energy you have to bring to your training sessions. You’ll love the new squat PBs you’re hitting and the growth you’re noticing in your glutes. If you can bring yourself to experience that just once, chances are, you’ll wish you’d embraced the gain train much earlier. I absolutely felt this.
6. Remove emotion as best you can.
Easier said than done, sure, but if you can approach the process a little more objectively, you’ll be much more immune to the emotional roller coaster and the knee jerk reactions that can come from that.
Consider these truths, which you probably can already recognise rationally:
The laws of thermodynamics and energy balance govern weight gain and weight loss
Eating in a calorie surplus = body weight increase
Apply a mechanical stimulus (resistance training) and you’ll have some muscle gain in there
If you hate being heavier or when you come to the end of your gaining phase, you can easily reverse this weight gain with a calorie deficit
Nothing here is unable to be reversed.
That’s the objectivity of the situation. If you can remove the judgement of yourself as being fat or the fear of being criticised, it’s a lot easier to focus on the above and just get the job done.
IG post: understanding energy balance and the how and why of weight gain/loss can help to regulate emotions associated with scale changes
7. Have a coach to guide you.
It can be extremely challenging to be in charge of your own body composition changes. Despite our best efforts, we are very emotional creatures. Therefore, having someone more objective to call the shots can be extremely helpful. No matter how invested in your progress, your coach will be significantly less sensitive to fluctuations in your weight and shape, positioning them much better to make sensible, informed decisions, and to ground you when you need it.
With a training and nutrition coaching package you can ensure you are both eating enough and training enough to see the gains you’re after. To learn more about online coaching or to book a free consultation call, hit the buttons below. I would love to hear from you!
Weight gain feels scary. Our culture has made damn sure of that. But we do heaps of scary shit all the time in the name of moving forward.
My hope is that this article achieves two things:
Helps you understand the benefit of occasionally eating in a calorie surplus and pursuing intentional weight gain and,
Instills in you some confidence to do so if strength or muscle mass development is among your goals.
Discomfort is valuable. Discomfort gets things done.
If you want to read more on this topic, I highly encourage reading this alongside the article below “I want to build muscle without gaining fat.”
Billie x