Do You Know Your FFMI? (The Muscle Metric That Ignores Body Fat) | Ep 366
Get your FFMI calculated automatically with the Physique & Biofeedback Tracker in Physique University to track your actual muscle development over time and understand exactly what phase of training you should focus on next. This special link also gets you a FREE custom nutrition plan:
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Is your strength training actually building muscle?
Scale weight fluctuates, body fat measurements are inconsistent, and progress photos depend on lighting and angles.
There's one metric that cuts through all this noise:
Fat-Free Mass Index (FFMI)
It shows your actual muscle development regardless of whether you're carrying extra fat or feeling bloated, and once you understand yours, it changes everything about setting goals and how to focus your training.
Most lifters have never heard of FFMI. Unlike body weight or even body fat percentage, FFMI isolates your actual muscular development from everything else, giving you clarity about your progress that no other measurement can.
Main Takeaways:
FFMI measures your muscularity independent of body fat percentage
Two people with the same training experience can have vastly different FFMI numbers, requiring completely different approaches
Building muscle takes years, while losing fat takes months, so you need a more precise way to track this
Your FFMI determines whether you should prioritize muscle building or fat loss (vs. your feelings or the mirror)
Episode Resources:
Chef's Foundry non-toxic ceramic cookware (50% off): witsandweights.com/chefsfoundry
Body Recomp Workshop replay and bonuses at live.witsandweights.com (includes free custom nutrition plan)
Timestamps:
0:00 - What is FFMI and why it's a game changer
5:06 - 2 scenarios that reveal everything about your training focus
8:16 - FFMI values explained (what your number actually means)
11:15 - How FFMI determines whether you should cut vs. bulk
17:12 - Natural vs. enhanced FFMI limit
19:45 - Why low FFMI means muscle building is your priority
22:14 - How the fitness industry gets muscle vs. fat loss backward
25:29 - Tracking FFMI over time to validate objective progress
27:03 - Muscle development vs. body composition
Why FFMI Might Be the Most Important Muscle Metric You Aren’t Tracking
If you have been lifting weights for a while, you have probably experienced the mental game of looking in the mirror and asking yourself whether you are actually building muscle. The pump fades, the lighting is bad, or maybe you are carrying some extra fat, and it becomes hard to see progress. Traditional metrics like scale weight, body fat percentage, or progress photos only tell part of the story and often leave you guessing. That is where Fat-Free Mass Index (FFMI) comes in.
FFMI provides a way to measure your actual muscular development relative to your height, independent of how much body fat you are carrying. Unlike scale weight or body fat percentage, FFMI cuts through the noise and shows you what really matters: how much muscle you have built.
What is FFMI?
Fat-Free Mass Index is calculated by taking your lean body mass (everything that is not fat, such as muscle, bone, organs, and water) and dividing it by your height squared. This normalizes muscularity for your frame, so taller and shorter individuals can compare more evenly.
Because it is independent of body fat, FFMI does not change if you are lean or carrying more fat, as long as your muscle mass remains the same. That makes it a reliable marker of progress whether you are in a bulk, a cut, or somewhere in between.
Why FFMI Matters More Than You Think
Most of us make physique decisions based on feelings. Feeling soft usually leads to cutting, while feeling small often leads to bulking. These choices are emotional, not data-driven. FFMI provides objective clarity.
If your FFMI is low, it is a signal that you need to focus on building more muscle. If it is higher but you are carrying extra fat, then cutting to reveal what is already there will give you the best results. It separates the two sides of body composition and helps you prioritize what actually matters.
FFMI Benchmarks and What They Mean
Although there are tables for both men and women, here are some general ranges for men (subtract about 3–4 points for women):
17–18: Beginner level. Some muscle, but still early in development.
19–20: Recreational lifter. Noticeable muscle mass that others can see, especially when lean.
21–22: Serious lifter. Several years of consistent training with visible muscularity regardless of body fat.
23–24: Advanced natural lifter. Represents years of dedication and training.
25+: Rarely achieved without performance-enhancing drugs. Considered the natural ceiling.
These ranges make FFMI a great tool for setting realistic expectations. Building muscle takes years, not weeks, and FFMI helps you see where you stand on that journey.
Using FFMI to Guide Your Goals
If you are sitting at 20 percent body fat with an FFMI of 19.5, you may already have a solid base of muscle to reveal, so a fat loss phase makes sense. If you are lean with an FFMI of 17, cutting further will not create the physique you want because you simply do not have enough muscle yet. In that case, building muscle should be the priority.
This is where FFMI becomes powerful. It shows you whether your next step should be building or cutting, and it keeps you from spinning your wheels switching back and forth based on how you feel.
The Science Behind the Numbers
Research from the mid-1990s measured FFMI in natural bodybuilders compared to steroid users. Natural lifters almost never exceeded 25, while enhanced athletes often went well above. This number has since been used to spot unrealistic claims about natural physiques. For everyday lifters, it serves as a reality check for how much muscle can be built naturally and how long it takes.
How to Use FFMI in Practice
During a cut: FFMI should hold steady if you are maintaining muscle while losing fat.
During a bulk: FFMI should increase slowly if you are gaining muscle rather than just fat.
During body recomposition: Even small improvements in FFMI show that you are building muscle while trimming fat.
Tracking this number alongside your other metrics can keep you grounded and motivated through the ups and downs of training.
The Mental Shift
Perhaps the biggest benefit of FFMI is psychological. It allows you to celebrate progress in muscularity even if you are not yet lean. It also prevents the trap of endlessly cutting without enough muscle underneath or bulking without a plan. FFMI gives you clarity about what is working and what you should do next.
FFMI is not just another metric. It is one of the most reliable ways to measure actual muscle growth over time, independent of body fat or weight fluctuations. By tracking it, you gain objective insight into whether you are truly building muscle and where you stand relative to realistic, natural benchmarks.
Instead of guessing whether you should bulk, cut, or maintain, let FFMI guide your decisions. Building muscle is the foundation for every physique and performance goal, and this metric keeps you focused on what really matters.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
you've been training for two years. Some days you feel jacked, other days you feel small. You're stronger than ever, but you can't tell if you're actually building muscle or just getting better at lifting. What if I told you there is a number that cuts through all the noise, a metric that shows your actual muscle development, regardless of whether you're carrying extra fat or feeling bloated or lean. It's called fat-free mass index and most lifters haven't heard of it, but once you understand your FFMI, it changes how you think about progress, goal setting and whether you should be cutting or bulking. Today we're exploring the muscle metric that might be more important than anything else you're currently tracking.
Philip Pape: 0:51
Welcome to wits and weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip pape, and today we're going to talk about a number that could reframe how you view your physique progress. Picture this you're looking in the mirror after a training session, after a workout, your pump's gone, the lighting's bad. You're questioning whether all these months of consistent training have actually built any muscle. Or maybe you're carrying around some extra body fat and you're wondering if there's muscle underneath that is worth revealing. This is a mental game when it comes to physique versus body fat versus muscle in the context of our training and it happens to all of us because we're often tracking the wrong things or failing to track things that will better validate what we're trying to measure. Scale weight fluctuates daily. Body fat measurements are inconsistent and only part of the equation. Progress photos are also highly subjective and they depend on lighting and angles. But there is a metric that cuts through a lot of this and can show you something more fundamental how much muscle you've actually built relative to your frame.
Philip Pape: 2:04
Now, before we get into this metric, this FFMI metric, I want to share a message from Matt in Physique University. He says Philip Pape's amazing. You've got questions about health. He's got answers. It's not diet and exercise, but also the mental side of losing weight. I've recently been dealing with more stress than normal and we figured out a way. The membership is a no brainer for anyone on the fence. He will help you in any way he can. Thanks for everything, philip.
Philip Pape: 2:30
So I'm sharing more of these testimonials directly from folks in Physique University, so you get a sense of what we have in there, right, because it's not just about information and education like on the podcast, it is. How do we implement that? How do we personalize it? What specific ideas can we come up with to help you look like you, lift and deal with stress and increase your metabolism and find a flexible way to eat so you no longer feel restricted, and all of those things? So if you want access to the tools in there that also help you calculate and track your FFMI that we're going to talk about today, alongside other key metrics that matter for building muscle For example, our muscle gain efficiency tracker, or our body, our physique and biofeedback tracker all of that stuff and how to implement it, like Matt mentioned, head to witsandweightscom. Slash physique to join Physique University. We will help you. Take all of these tools, put them together to understand. This is what's actually happening and this is what I need to do now. All right, so let's talk about FFMI and why it is such a game changer, why I'm focusing on this more now, why I added it to our Physique Tracker in Physique University.
Philip Pape: 3:41
It stands for Fat-free mass index. It is your lean body mass. It is everything that is not fat divided by your height squared. So it's a simple formula. There are adjusted versions of that for gender and for extreme heights and all of that, but very simple. It is a way to normalize your muscularity for your height. So if you think of your muscles, your bones, your organs, your water, all of that structural stuff that makes up your body is your lean mass, and so it looks at that because it's not your fat mass, so it's independent of how much body fat you have and normalizes it for your height, and that's what makes this powerful. Ffmi is completely independent of your body fat percentage, and we're going to talk about why that's helpful and why that's important. Because whether you're 10% body fat, super lean, or you're 25 or 30 or 40% body fat, you have a little extra body fat maybe to lose. Your FFMI is going to stay the same as long as your muscle mass stays the same, so it gets rid of the variable of body fat for this analysis, which is helpful, for in a lot of ways, this means it can show you something that most other metrics cannot your actual muscular development, separated from everything else. That is the power behind it. Now, why this changes everything about progress and how you view and track it, as well as your goals.
Philip Pape: 5:06
I'm going to give you a couple scenarios. Right, that happen all the time. I see this with our students. Scenario one let's say you're a guy who's been lifting for a year. You're sitting at 20% body fat. You're feeling a little bit soft. That's maybe a little bit more than you want. Maybe you're 25% body fat. You're wondering if you should cut or keep bulking. And some of you are wondering like, well, why wouldn't you just cut at that point? Well, a lot of you guys care about your strength, you care about building muscle, you understand the value of eating enough and sleeping enough and training hard and getting PRs, and you don't want to sacrifice that just for the sake of leanness. So you go ahead and you calculate your FFmi and it's 19.5. Well, that tells you that underneath the layer of fat you've built a recreational level of muscle mass. Right, there's a bit of muscle there, maybe more than somebody who is skinny, fat or hasn't trained at all, and you just need to reveal it. So that's one scenario.
Philip Pape: 6:00
Scenario two maybe you're lean, maybe you're 12% body fat and again, I'm using males here for the body fat. You can add about eight to 10% of that for females. So you're lean, 12% body fat. People say, hey, you look good but you feel kind of small. You're FFMI, you calculate it and it's 17. Okay, now that's kind of skinny or skinny fat, right, it depends. And again, we don't care about the fat for this calculation, but that's may what it presents itself as. And now you understand, okay, that's why I kind of feel kind of small and not very muscular, despite being lean, despite being in a low body fat. You just haven't built much muscle yet, right? Those are two common scenarios.
Philip Pape: 6:38
I guess a third one that just comes to mind, and I've seen this as well, as guys who've been lifting or men who've been lift, women, I'm sorry who've been lifting for, let's say, three to five years or longer, and they're carrying a lot of extra weight on their frame because they really never have gone through a fat loss phase. But the FFMI can tell them hey, I actually do have a lot of muscle under there and I just have to reveal it. So it's kind of similar to the first scenario. And then, if so, if you're like skinny fat, right, cutting anymore is not going to change anything, you're just going to get skinnier, fatter, or just, you know, skinnier, without any definition. Same training experience, different scenarios here, different next steps.
Philip Pape: 7:18
When you think about FFMI, independent of fat, so what it means is is as follows. I'm actually going to go through the different FFMI levels and what they mean. And, by the way, one of the inspirations for this episode was a recent Jeff Nippard YouTube video about, natty or not, how FFMI is often used as a cutoff, like if you're over 25, you're on drugs, if not, you're not, and there's some truth to that. But that's kind of where it came from. For practical, everyday purposes, my audience you guys listening and our students in physique you, you know, don't care about that distinction. They care more about how. What do I need to do next? What do I need to focus on? How muscular am I? Is this important? So there are different tables that we have for comparing men to men and women to women, but I'm just going to go with the male side of things. And then for women, it tends to be less because women carry more body fat and less muscle, and it is what it is right, but we do have comparison tables for both.
Philip Pape: 8:16
So if you're around 17, 18 FFMI, this is the low end. This is the beginner territory. This might be the lean guy who looks okay in clothes but then feels small, or the higher body fat guy who's just starting to build a base. So a lot of us in our forties, fifties, who are just we're kind of sedentary most of our life and hadn't lifted or are detrained and have some extra body fat, still don't have much muscle right now. So that's 17 or 18 FFMI. Then we get up to 19 to 20. You're a recreational lifter at that point and, by the way, the FFMI is a kind of narrow range. I mean we're talking 17 to like 24. For the vast majority of people that's a small range of numbers. I almost wish when they came up with this they were able to, you know, scale it up so it has more resolution. But it is what it is.
Philip Pape: 9:00
So back to what we're talking about 19 or 20, recreational lifter. You have some noticeable muscle mass. If you're lean, people probably can tell hey, you're kind of fit, you lift. You know, maybe at the earlier stages not big and jack, but you lift. If you're carrying some fat on top of that, then there's something underneath that could be worth revealing, depending on how much fat you have to lose and how defined you want to look and all that.
Philip Pape: 9:24
Then we move up a little bit more 21 to 22. This is where you get into what I'll call a serious lifter. Somebody who has dedicated themselves for a bit maybe a year or more, maybe two years, doing it the right way, has developed some muscle. That is obvious, regardless of body fat levels. And I say that because obviously, if you have too much body fat it's going to be hard to tell, but even then, guys who have a lot of muscle can carry a lot of body fat and you can still tell they're muscular. You know they're not going to have six pack, but if they're wearing a shirt you can see the big traps, big shoulders, the back, the taper and all that stuff. Okay.
Philip Pape: 9:55
And then we get to 23 to 24 and I've been lifting now for officially, seriously, for about four years, four to five years, and I'm around 23. And honestly that I have a long way to go, but this is somebody who is getting along with their development as a natural lifter. It represents several years of consistent training and honestly, the difference between 20, 22, 23, 24 can be really big. So if you're, if you're 22 or 23, that you've, you've worked hard to build muscle and that's a lot of you out there. Be proud of that. To get to 24 is quite advanced and quite muscular, and then again 25 is kind of the peak. So 23 to 24 is years of consistent training. Maybe some solid genetics Again, I don't buy into that too much being a deal breaker for people.
Philip Pape: 10:46
And then we get to 25 and up and this is the natural ceiling based on decades of research on drug-free bodybuilders versus steroids. Most of us listening don't have to worry about that. If you're enhanced, great, you might then crack that ceiling, but it's not something we have to worry about. So hopefully this sets a good frame for where you want to be or where you are right now. And then for women, just shift these down about three to four points. What I just said. That's really all you have to do. So FFMI becomes very powerful for decisions.
Philip Pape: 11:15
Most people get caught up in kind of endlessly cutting and bulking, not knowing when they should do both. It's one of the most common questions I get when should I cut, when should I bulk? I've done episodes about that and even then there's not like a universal principle. But if I were to get as universal as I could, I think FFMI is a great metric for that. Now, because FFMI is independent of fat. If you have 40% body fat, even though you're super muscular, I'm probably going to say you need to lose some fat for health reasons, right, but those are kind of I'll call it the outliers or on the edge.
Philip Pape: 11:48
Usually, a lot of guys I work with, or even women who have a lot of weight to lose, it's not that they're carrying like this massive amount of muscle underneath with some exceptions, right, I do have clients that are like look, I have built muscle, I am muscular. I just don't know how to deal or dial in my nutrition. Okay, that makes sense. So if your FFMI is really low let's say 17 or 18 for a guy to me, no matter what, your priority should be to build muscle. Now, again, if you carry a lot of extra weight because we're trying to separate the two variables you can still build a lot of muscle while being in a slight deficit. Perhaps we just went over all of this when we talked about body recomp on a recent episode, as well as in the workshop we had, which you can still grab that replay. You can grab the plan. You can grab the nutrition plan, all the guidance on how to set up your next 12 weeks to body recomp that is available at livewitsandweightscom link in the show notes. But if you are on the low end of this scale, build muscle please. Unless you're very, very high body fat, I want you to build muscle and what that means is at least body recomp, but ideally in a surplus. You need more muscle mass before you worry about getting leaner to reveal the muscle Again, unless we're talking health reasons and then you're kind of doing both at the same time. If we move up the scale and your FFMI is pretty solid, let's say in the 21 to 22 range, then it's going to depend more on the body fat at that point, and cutting at that point to reveal what you have makes complete sense if you're not as lean as you want to be because you've done the hard work of building the muscle.
Philip Pape: 13:19
Hey, this is Philip, and before we continue I want to talk about cookware. We all love to make our own food. I love nonstick pans. The problem is I've avoided them for years because when they get scratched, when they get heated, they can release microplastics, pfas, small particles that can accumulate over time in the body and some studies have shown them to be linked to health issues. If you're optimizing your nutrition and making lots of food for you and your family at home. It doesn't make sense to compromise that with questionable cookware. So that's why I was interested when Chef's Foundry, who is sponsoring this episode, showed me their ceramic cookware. It's called the P600 and uses Swiss-engineered ceramic coating which has no Teflon, no PFAS, no plastic components, it is nonstick, it works on all stovetops, it goes straight into the oven. All the things you need if you're trying to cook a lot of your meals at home. Right now you can get the p600 at 50 off by going to witsandweightscom slash chef's foundry. You'll also get a bunch of accessories with that. There's a whole page that explains what you'll get for that discounted 50 off. Go to witsandweightscom slash chef's foundry or click the link in the show notes. All right, let's get back to the show Now.
Philip Pape: 14:32
Building muscle takes time and it takes longer than you think. It takes years, especially as you advance. I will say the first year is a huge step change for people who do it right. So you can definitely get a kind of a quick win in that first year or two, um, and then couple it with a fat loss phase to to reveal that. But then you're going to probably spend, you know, three to five years of consistent training to go from an 18 to like a 22 FFMI, which makes sense, cause, again, I'm, I'm around there 22, 23, and I've been lifting for four or five years. If you've been lifting for like 10 years and you've done it consistently and you have decent genetics, you're probably pushing 23, 24 at this point.
Philip Pape: 15:12
Right, and a lot of people are surprised by that because most people are not competitors. Most people are not posing and oiling up and, and you know, trying to be a bodybuilder on stage or get like 8% lean. But I have clients who are not competitors and when they do take the time to really lean out which, again, is an extreme thing it's not the best thing for your health. I'm just going to say that it's not the best. But getting super shredded, you end up looking like somebody who maybe can go on stage at least in an amateur competition, right? So it's, it's achievable is my point and my show Whits and Weights. The show is not about. It's not about physique for its own sake. The reason I care about all this is for the muscle side of things. But a lot of people have vanity goals. They have physique goals as well and they both align physique and health, as long as you are not pushing an extreme or doing it for very long.
Philip Pape: 16:04
So back to FFMI three to five years of consistent training to get to that 21, 22 range and compare that to how fast you can lose fat. You know, if you want to drop 8% of body fat, it takes about three to four months for most people. Yeah, you can drop five to 8% body fat in three to four months. I can help you do it. We do it all the time and I know a lot of you are like, yeah, but that's really what I want. But the time and I know a lot of you are like, yeah, but that's really what I want. But no, that's not what you want. You want to look and feel better, you want to be stronger, you want to be fitter, you want to have better health. That comes through building muscle and then losing fat is kind of the easy part and it actually gets easier when you build muscle. But fat-free mass index, depending on the number you are today, is going to help you understand the timeline you're operating on. So you have realistic expectations and we just did a survey of like 130 intakes in our what do you call it? In our Physique University. We did a survey of the intake assessments and found that the vast majority of people who join our program are looking to build muscle and lose fat and they understand the value of building muscle for all the things that are important as we get older. That's why I care about this.
Philip Pape: 17:12
Okay, now let's get a little nerdy here and look at the science and history behind these numbers, which I think are fascinating, and then stick around for the end when we're going to talk. We're going to tie this all together on really how to use them in terms of tracking and making progress and setting goals. So the landmark research on this comes from Khoury and colleagues back in 1995. They measured FFMI in natural bodybuilders versus steroid users. They found a clear cutoff that natural guys rarely, very, very rarely, exceed 25 FFMI, whereas enhanced athletes easily surpassed it. Now you could be enhanced and not above FMI if you're not genetically gifted, if you're not working consistently. I mean, a guy who's sedentary and takes drugs isn't gonna be a high FFMI, but if you are natural, you're definitely not gonna get above 25, 99.999% of the time is the point.
Philip Pape: 18:04
And what's fascinating is this research coincided with this transition period in bodybuilding. If you look at classic bodybuilders from the pre-steroid era guys like Steve Reeves and there's an asterisk on him Some people think, oh well, yeah, he had access to the earliest steroids before even the Soviets knew about it. I don't think so, but anyway, steve Reeves, john Grimmick, reg Park their FFMIs typically fell right around that 25 mark and then in the 1960s, steroids became widespread. Suddenly, we saw physiques that were off the charts of what we think of as an enhanced bodybuilder today, and the research at that time was a foundation for the natty or not movement. Okay, people then started to use FFMI calculations to analyze modern physiques and to call out impossible claims.
Philip Pape: 18:54
And even though I kind of my premise of this episode is you haven't heard of this or you're not using this metric, I do think that that's a true statement. With most people, they really don't know what this is. It's just social media and fitness influencers that are trying to talk about Natty or not. And okay, this guy has a 27 FFMI, he has to be on steroids, whatever. So when we talk about that limit of 25 for natural it's, it's based on a lot of data and, again, that Jeff Knippard video is really good at showing the clustering around that and we know from competitive natural bodybuilders versus the genetic elite who are natural, who've optimized everything and this is like the ceiling right. So I think it's helpful. That little tangent was helpful to talk about where this came from. Now let's get back to us. Why do we care?
Philip Pape: 19:45
I think once you know your fat-free mass index, your training focus can become clearer, because if you have a low FFMI, your job is to build muscle. Strength and muscle I should say they go hand in hand and this might mean you have to go into a bulking phase or maybe stop undercutting your nutrition, stop underfueling. It could be as simple as that that you're just under eating Women ladies this is often the issue Under eating food, under eating carbs, but men face this issue too. It could mean that you need to go into a bulking phase and prioritize that hard training and building your base, building your peak, and not worrying about getting a little bit of fat in the process, because that's going to come off fairly easily and the muscle has to be a priority and has to come first. Now, if you have a more solid FFMI you know somewhere over 20, but then you have higher body fat, well, that's a very enviable position to be.
Philip Pape: 20:37
We have a guy in our group I just thought about who was confused on this number because his FFMI was reasonably high but he carries extra body fat. He's like how can I be like an athlete? I'm like the athlete's underneath it. That's what it is. You've built muscle, which is cool. Like other people have a longer path because they haven't even built the muscle yet, and you're in the enviable position of having that muscle to reveal, and so a proper cut will transform your physique because there's actually something substantial underneath. Now, if you have a high FFMI because you've been training well, now you're playing a different game because your gains are going to be slower. You're closer to your genetic potential and it's more important to maintain what you have than try to aggressively push for more muscle. And you're more in the body recomp slash fat loss regime or you're really gonna have to dial it in with the surplus when you are trying to continue to build on top of that high level of muscle you already have.
Philip Pape: 21:34
Now, if we think about this in the context of our goals and the fitness industry, we've been conditioned to focus on body fat first, on body fat percentage, and I talk about it a lot. I talk about leanness. I talk about body composition, yes, but we put it first to an extreme where it's all about getting lean all the time and forgetting that leanness involves muscle as well. That body composition is two-sided, it's not just the leanness. So if you have like, let's say, 20 or 30 pounds to lose which is kind of a subjective statement, but you know what I mean A lot of times we do a fat loss phase first because of the psychological win.
Philip Pape: 22:14
It's like Dave Ramsey and his snowball effect. Anybody who ever followed him when it comes to debt in his you know the way he explains it is the logical thing to do would be to pay off your highest interest rate debt, but the psychological thing to do as a human might be to pay off your smallest debt. So you get rid of it, then your next one, then your next one. So I think of like people having a little extra weight being a little fluffy and they haven't really lifted. I get them lifting, but then we might do a fat loss phase fairly early just to get that psychological win, to get that leanness, even though there's not much muscle there. If anything, it could also help prove to yourself that you need to build muscle because, hey, I didn't quite get the physique I wanted yet, even though I've lost some of that fat and I get the value of building muscle. So that's my point of all this.
Philip Pape: 23:00
And I think the FFMI is another really solid metric to show us why the building muscle side is important. Because if you're a 150 pound guy at 15% body fat but you have an abysmally low FFMI of 16, cutting to 10% body fat's not going to create the physique you want. It's not going to do it. It's just going to make you look smaller, scrawnier, skinnier, weaker. That's it. You're going to be a smaller version of the same thing. Right, it's strength and muscle over skinniness. Because even if you want the physique we think of as, I guess, skinny, skinny, muscular, whatever you still have to have the muscle. That's really the point. You still have to have that, right?
Philip Pape: 23:38
This is also especially relevant for women who've been told to do all the cardio and to move and eat 1200 calories or a thousand or 800 or whatever. I'm going to do an episode very soon, I think next week, about those low calorie levels. Are they safe or not? What's the narrative around it? What should you be thinking of in the context of calorie intake, but I do think a lot of women are under eating and do so to try to get lean, but then they have a very low muscularity right, it's like 14, which is the equivalent of like a 16 or 17 for a man, and then you're not going to have that shape or the tone or the definition that you're looking for. You're just not. You've got to build the muscle. So the real power of FFMI comes from tracking it over time and watching it change, just like a lot of the other things we talk about During a proper muscle building phase. You should see FFMI gradually increasing.
Philip Pape: 24:33
In our 90-day body recomp workshop I walked through the tracker and I gave an example of a very conservative body recomp phase over three months. Okay, by body recomp again, I mean building muscle, losing fat at the same time Very conservative. Lost a tiny bit in the waist, you know, gained a little bit in the neck. This was for a male, but for women same thing could apply. You can use the hips as well and when you look at the numbers you notice that by just fueling yourself appropriately and not dieting, and you lose a tiny bit of fat and you gain a little bit of muscle, your FFMI starts to climb up, and that's a really good validation that even a short period of training effectively and fueling yourself pays off. It will pay off. So if you're afraid of gaining too much fat and you don't want to go bulk and go into a surplus, that's okay. You can body recomp. If you're afraid of restricting and trying to diet to lose fat, you don't have to do that either. You can body recomp. That's my point. So you know.
Philip Pape: 25:29
If you're in a cut, by the way, your FFMI should hold steady while your body fat drops. That is important to understand as well, because that tells us we're holding on to our lean mass, right, because it's just a function of lean mass, normalized by your height. So both of those should hold steady. They go hand in hand. Now, if your FFMI is dropping during a cut, then you are losing muscle, right? If it's increasing during a bulk, you're gaining. No, if it's not increasing during a bulk, then you're gaining mostly fat and not muscle. So again, it's just another way to objectively tell whether your training and nutrition are working, and it is a nice simple number to normalize against.
Philip Pape: 26:08
Now let's talk about the mental side. Let's talk about psychology. There's something very liberating about this number, about FFMI the more I've thought about this, because it separates your muscle development from your body composition and that means you can actually feel good about your progress. You have a win there, even when you're not at your leanest. Because people always ask how do I focus on other stuff when I'm gaining this extra fat? And one of the things I'll say is hey, have a couple sets of clothes one for when you're bulking, one for when you're leaning and wear your bigger clothes. That's one way to feel better. Great. Also, focus on the process of building strength. Also, focus on your measurements. But a lot of those are a little bit kind of buried in the weeds. If you have this one number FFMI you can and you just ignore everything else. It's kind of liberating in that you know are you building muscle or not, because that's the goal. That is the goal right. So you know, regardless of how much body fat you have.
Philip Pape: 27:03
Now the power lifter sitting at 22 FMI and 25 or 30% body fat, he's built impressive muscle mass. He's not fat, he's very strong with a layer of fat over the muscle. I think that's a very different mindset. There are guys that carry a lot of extra fat, but they have a lot of muscle under there. They're in a much healthier state than the average person who doesn't have that muscle. The skinny, fat guy who thinks he's in decent shape because he's not fat well, his 16 FFMI just shows that he is lacking one of the most important pieces of tissue on his body and has to build muscle. He doesn't have to lose weight anymore. He really doesn't.
Philip Pape: 27:40
So I think what really makes FFMI really transformative is how it changes the relationship with physique development. Most people are trapped in this reactive thinking you know, I feel fat, so I need to cut, or I feel small, so I need to bulk. But then they're making these decisions based on feelings, based on the mirror, not based on data. And you know how much I love data, know how much I love data. Ffmi gives you objective clarity and tells you whether your feelings match reality or whether you're focused on the wrong variable.
Philip Pape: 28:09
And it reveals that building an impressive physique is primarily about one thing accumulating muscle mass. Over time, it really is Everything else. Getting lean, looking bigger, feeling confident becomes much easier when you have substantial muscle mass to work with. I'm going to keep hammering that home time and again. And this changes how you approach training as well, because instead of hopping around and switching between programs and switching between cutting and bulking cycles based on how you feel that week, you develop a longer term perspective. You understand that building muscle is the foundation. Everything else is just revealing or optimizing what you've built.
Philip Pape: 28:52
And so here's the thing If you're listening to this podcast, have you been spending years spinning your wheels because you're trying to optimize body composition without enough muscle mass to optimize? Or even just you've been trying to lose weight? And now you realize it's about much more than that. Well, ffmi is a really good number to tell you which side of that equation needs your attention, all right. So FFMI fat-free mass index at the end of the day, it's just going to tell you reality and then you can act on it. You know whether you discover you have more muscle than you thought hiding under some fat.
Philip Pape: 29:40
No-transcript. And it's not about body fat percentage in and of itself. Right, because body fat percentage is tricky. It can be the same at different body weights because you have more or less muscle, and so the more muscle you have, the less you're concerned about body fat percentage, if that makes sense. Right, because you can be lean at a higher scale weight. We want to build that muscle mass first and then optimize how you present that muscle. That's the way I would put it.
Philip Pape: 30:10
Okay, so start tracking your FFMI. You can take the formula that I mentioned today, you can look it up or join us in Physique U. We have a way to track that automatically, based on your measurements, where it automatically gives you your lean mass, your fat mass, your muscle to fat ratio, your fat-free mass index, the comparison tables, all of that stuff, so you know what's happening over time, even if you're doing something very precise like body recomp. So if you wanna do that, join us in Physique U. If you wanna go straight to get the replay and the bonuses from the body recomp workshop, there's a special link for that. It's livewitsandweightscom and, by the way, you get another bonus in there, which is a free custom nutrition plan. So you'll have everything you need.
Philip Pape: 30:52
I gave it all away in that workshop. Go to livewitsandweightscom or click the link in the show notes and you're gonna get access to all of those tools, made clear on how to use them All made clear on how to use them All. Right, until next time. Keep using your wits lifting those weights, and remember that building an impressive physique starts with understanding what you're working with. This is Philip Pape, and you've been listening to Wits and Weights. Talk to you next time.
