 Question is from Joe Zaphyane. Does it take longer to build muscle or burn fat? I'm trying to get a feel how long to bulk and cut. Oh, this is a cool question. It's an interesting question because there's a cool question. Yeah, because, uh, you know, initially I want to answer this from a physiological standpoint and say it's much harder to build muscle than it is to burn body fat physiologically speaking. It's a slower process now, genetically speaking, or just, just psychologically or just culturally, uh, wow. Now we're talking because, uh, you know, physiologically, yes, building muscle slow, burning body fat can be fast if you do everything right. But what about all the roadblocks in front of you to trying to burn body fat? I mean, what I used to tell clients was, you know, and this took me kind of because you're right, uh, physiologically, you would say right away the answer is building muscle because technically, uh, I could go to the gym right now and run on the treadmill for five hours straight. And I'm going to burn off some body fat. I cannot go to the gym and lift for five hours and build a pound of muscle. So technically, if we were to compare it like that, building muscles technically harder, but I tell, I would tell clients, and again, this is coming, you know, full circle for me as a trainer, you know, after training so many people on both sides of this is that the grass is always greener on the other side. So if you're in, and, and that's, you have to take an account to genetics. And some people just struggle really hard with losing body fat, being in a caloric deficit, their body to actually burn like that. They've already slowed their metabolism way down. And so creating a large enough deficit for them to shed body fats and incredibly hard, but they can go to the gym, touch some weights. And the next day they feel like they put muscle on. And so to me, it's, it's really the grass is always greener on the other side. The side that you've probably had the most challenging with, it's, it's hardest for you. Sure. Now, I mean, but, but again, I think for most people, burning body fats hard because it requires more, it requires more fundamental changes in your behavior, lifestyle, discipline than building muscle does. So like you could take, I disagree with that. Well, no, it totally, I'll tell you what, you take the average person and who's eating too many calories or whatever, have them lift weights three days a week. They're going to build muscle to get them to burn body fat substantially. They have to change their diet. They have, which is very hard changing diets way harder. But take a kid like me, for example, who, uh, I, I was not able to consume, or I shouldn't say I wasn't able, I wasn't consuming enough calories to support the amount of activity that I was doing. Oh yeah. Yeah. You're not the average person though. Of course. Well, I think there's a lot of kids that, there's a lot of young kids with fast metabolism that plays sports, like athlete, athletic kids. I know that you always have to answer this with the pens. Cause like, yeah, whoever is in front of you, the case you're making right now, for the, I'm talking about the majority, the kid, you're the case you're making right now for the majority middle age generalized client. Sure. But I think there's just as many people listening to this podcast that struggle with building muscle as, as equally as somebody burning fat, it's the grass is green on the other side is the answer to me. It's not, I don't believe burning fat is more difficult. No, no, no, I 100% agree with you. But what I'm saying is the majority, cause we have an obesity epidemic. We don't have a hard gainer epidemic, right? Um, most, for most people, when confronted with this question, for most people, for them, it's burning body fat is harder, which is why when I would get a client, we have, we have an obesity epidemic because eating over consumption and being fat causes medical problems and not building muscle doesn't cause medical problems. Therefore it's, it's talked about more, but there is as equal amount of people on the earth right now that would struggle to build muscle as there would be to build burn body fat. Well, so think about this way. When you got the average client, the average client's goal was I want to lose weight. What would be the first thing that you would focus on with them, get them stronger and build more muscle? Correct. Okay. Part of the reason why we do that is it's a smart strategy. The part of it, it's easier. It's easier for them to get their mind around that. Like, okay, fine, come to the gym. I'm going to lift weights. I'm going to build muscle. I'm going to get stronger. We're going to focus on that first. So for most people, it's just a lot tougher. Now physiologically speaking, it's harder to build muscle. Look, I could, somebody could, could, uh, logically lose a hundred pounds in a year. Well, I just made, I gained a hundred pounds. I gave the analogy to one gym workout. You could go to the gym and literally burn off like a pound of muscle, maybe not a pound of fat. I mean, you can look, you could spend the whole day on the treadmill and you will burn body fat. Like if you spend all day on the treadmill and you don't eat any calories, you for sure will burn body fat. You cannot go to the gym and spend all day at the gym and build a pound of muscle. Right. It doesn't work that way. So hands down from a physiological aspect, 100% building muscle is more difficult. But I would just, I would make the case that it's normally the grass is greener on the other side. It's always whatever is more difficult for you is more difficult for you. Totally. You know, I've had so many clients that are one or the other. I've had the client who is extremely obese and boy, I throw them in the gym. They touch some weights and we just, we pack on the muscle. Like you said, it's an easier strategy for those people before we try and to lose body fat. But then I've had the kid or the young adult who's athletic and moves a lot and has a hard time consuming enough calories. You know, you asked them to come to the gym and add five pounds of muscle. It's like, yeah, nice. I've been trying at them for the last decade. I tell them to get on a treadmill, reduce calories. They'll lose body fat real fast. So, you know, I think it's equally difficult in terms of the adaptive processes of the body. Fat is a faster. Fat gain and fat loss is a faster adaptive process. That's what I mean by physiological. The, the, the way that your body burns body fat or stores body fat is based off of thousands of years of evolution of dealing with lots and lots of times where we had lots of food or we had no food at all. And so the body does a very good job of bouncing back and forth. Now, when it comes to muscle, muscle building muscle is also an adaptation. It's a longer, slower adaptation. First off, your body doesn't store muscle when you are eating extra calories because muscle is expensive. It also requires something that burning fat does not. Right. It needs, your body needs a reason to have that muscle. Yes. And you need to feed it in order to do that. See, with, with burning body fat, you can go the other direction and you could be extreme and be okay. Like, even though it's not ideal for you long term, I could technically shred, like using the, again, the analogy, I could technically shred, shred a pound of fat off someone's body by starving them and making them run like crazy. You can't do that same thing with, you have to feed the body adequate protein and calories in order for it to build muscle. It's also more specific when you're trying to build muscle. It's much more of a specific application of exercises and technique and sets and reps and burning body fat. You could do it in a more general way. And now, now this is not ideal, but like Adam saying, you could just move more and eat less and you're going to burn some body fat. If you just go to the gym and just randomly if it worked out, you're probably not going to build and not change eating behavior. You're probably not going to build any muscle. But that being said, psychologically speaking, most people have such a tough time with burning body fat. It's so hard for them to change their eating behaviors. It's so hard for them to change at least a long term, you know, a long term way. Yeah, I think they would be like equal and I'm trying to like decipher which one's harder. But if you try to like extract, if I'm just building a lean muscle and I'm not just, you know, consuming whatever the fuck I want to consume and I'm very disciplined in my, you know, regiment and I'm trying to like build this lean muscle versus, you know, maintain like the current amount of lean muscle mass I have while cutting down. I mean, those two processes are pretty damn equal, in my opinion. Well, to support more of your argument, Sal, because I know the direction you're going. And what I do agree with is that most clients, the majority probably listening, the majority of people that we would take on have fucked up their metabolism. They have, you know, yo-yo dieted so many times and when they come to you 50, 100 pounds, whatever overweight, a lot of times where their caloric maintenance is at is already in a very challenging place to take them to immediately start to lose body fat. I mean, more often than not, I get the client who's got 30 or more pounds of body fat they want to lose. They sit in front of me. You would think that, oh, this person's really fat, they must be eating 5,000 calories and McDonald's every day. And no, not at all. In fact, a lot of times that person is eating nowhere near that. And that's because they have slowed their metabolism down from poor choices of exercise and poor choices of food for such a long period of time that when we get them as a trainer, man, yeah, burning fat right away is really challenging because the state that they're currently in, you know, and so that's why taking them into a muscle building focus first is going to is advantageous for us. Now, the irony of this is that building muscle helps burning to burn body fat. Burning body fat doesn't necessarily need to help building muscle. In other words, regardless of what your goal is, if your goal is to lose lots of body fat or your goal is obviously to build muscle, build muscle first, build muscle, building more muscle will make any goal you have much easier, especially the fat loss one. This is a big one that we communicate all the time when people's ultimate goal is to lose weight. I think they focus so heavy on burning tissue that they just care about pounds coming off the scale, not realizing that they may be setting themselves up for long term failure, short term success, but long term failure. Building muscle helps with long term success regardless of what your goal is. So I always focus on that regardless of what the client's goal is.