How to “tone up”?
One of the most common questions I get asked is; “how do I tone up?”. Some would go on to say, “I don’t want to get too big or too skinny, just some more definition”. Now, spoiler alert. It doesn’t quite work like that, sorry for the clickbait, but let me explain. When we talk about body composition, there are two things we can change, which are fat mass and fat free mass (muscle). So, for anyone looking to develope that “thigh gap” or “hip dip” (both pictured below), unless you are wanting to go under the knife for a surgical procedure, this is quite difficult to achieve. Everyone will have their own individual anatomical structure, which will make it possible for some, but not everyone. Therefore, how broad your shoulders are, your hip to waste ratio, the length of your femur bone etc, are not things you can manipulate yourself, apart from add muscle mass or drop body fat.
Pictured above are before and after photos of the supposedly transformations for the “hip dip” pictured on the left, with the “thigh gap” pictured on the right.
Now firstly, we will talk about the fat free mass which is muscles. Muscles serve a very valuable role in the human body, for which they are responsible for movement. Muscles pull bones, allowing us to maintain control and stability without just collapsing on the floor. I won’t bore you with the stuff you don’t need to know about muscles, but what you do need to know to understand for “toning up”. Is that muscles will either get bigger or smaller, stronger or weaker. Now this will depend largely on the way they are trained, or not trained in some cases. And sometimes you can get a cross adaption, for example you might get bigger and stronger, they don’t necessarily always occur simultaneously but can do. Now, why is this important to understand how to tone up. Well how “toned” your muscles look is quite irrelevant of muscle size or strength. What is important however, is the amount of fat mass which is covering them.
This ties us in nicely to our second part, fat mass. Now in order to see our muscles more visibly, we must drop body fat to do so. Noting to do with any specific macronutrients we eat, or how much sugar we have consumed. But the fat covering our muscle tissue. How do you achieve this you ask? Well…. a calorie fucking deficit. Excuse the language, but this is the only method to see our muscles more “clearly”. Now, does having bigger muscles help? Well sure it does, the bigger the muscle is the more we can see, but the fat mass covering it will still determine how it looks, regardless. Ever see a boxer or UFC fighter step on the scales to make weight for a fight? Well yes, they have lost a lot of weight (albeit some water weight via a process known as dehydration), to drop to the lowest weight category to maximize their size and therefore, chances of winning. See below an image of UFC fighter Conor McGregor weighting in for two different fights with a 25 pound difference in weight category.
Pictured above Conor McGregor weighing in at 145 pounds (top image) and 170 pounds (bottom image), with a total of 25 pounds in the difference between images.
Now here’s the informative part of the article, to put it quite simply. Depending on what your primary goal is, will depend what environment you need to place yourself in to optimise that. If the goal is to gain muscle mass, you will require a surplus of calories beyond your maintenance (i.e. what you require to stay at the same body weight), a high protein diet (for the building and repair of muscle tissue), adequate training stimulation for muscle growth (e.g. resistance based training with progressive overload) and sleep (to maximise recovery). Now, if you are happy with your muscle size and just want to “tone up”, I mean drop body fat!! You must enter a different environment, one which consists of a reduction in calories below your maintenance (calorie deficit). Now this is all that’s required for fat loss, however, adding training to your week, combined with good general activity levels (e.g. daily step count), a high protein diet and good sleep. This will allow for you to maximise the reductions in body fat you wish to achieve, and allow you to smash your goal of toning up, right? There is another method called “Re-comping” which combines the goals of both methods; however, this topic will need an article in itself to dive into and is not the optimal environment for hypertrophy (increase in muscle mass) or fat loss (reduction in fat mass). Hope that helps. P.S don’t be gullible.
Peter McDonald
