Pete Wright:
Welcome to Build for Health, the show that redefines strength, because muscle isn’t just for looks. I’m Pete Wright, and I’m here with Coach Srdjan Injac. Hello!
Srdjan Injac:
Hello.
Pete Wright:
Okay, today we’re talking all about healthy weight. What is healthy weight? What do people even mean? Nobody knows. Science hasn’t figured it out.
Srdjan Injac:
Well, it’s interesting, because one of my clients this morning asked me, what should I weigh? She was like, for my height and stuff, to be healthy, where should my weight be? She was asking me for that single number on a scale.
So I told her, the healthy weight isn’t that single number on the scale. It’s a range where your body functions well, performs well, maintains that good metabolic health. So it means you have a balanced level of body fat and muscle, stable energy, and the ability to move and recover without issues.
Two people can have the same weight and look completely different internally. One can be strong, metabolically healthy and active, while the other one may have lower muscle and higher body fat and poor health markers. So instead of focusing on what should I weigh, the better question is, at what weight do I feel strong, energized, healthy? What weight do my labs and lifestyle support?
It kind of got my attention, where I never really thought about it, that people actually think about that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Doesn’t it feel, though — I don’t want to put you on the spot, man, but doesn’t it feel like there should be a measure, some sort of indicator? Maybe it’s not weight, but some sort of number that collects multiple variables and says, you know, when you drill all this down, here is a number that’s safe for you. Is that even possible?
Srdjan Injac:
That’s why I tell people, don’t focus on that number on the scale. That’s the last thing you want to look at. It just tells you how much you weigh. It doesn’t tell anybody anything about how much muscle mass you have, how your metabolism is, how healthy you are. It just says the number. And it can be very misleading.
A lot of people I have here, they look skinny, they’re in shape, but that’s what we call skinny fat, and they’re not healthy. They look like they’re in good shape, and people think that because they’re skinnier they’re healthy, and they’re not. It’s completely wrong. So there is no number. I tell them, please don’t look at the scale. Throw the scale away. Just focus on other things.
It’s society that created this idea that skinny equals healthy, on the surface level, and that’s often misleading the way you look at health. Being thin doesn’t mean you’re healthy and your body is functioning well. You can have a low body weight and still have poor muscle mass, high body fat, low strength, unhealthy blood markers, all that stuff.
A lot of people fall into that category where they look clean on the outside but lack the muscle and have poor metabolic health on the inside. Social media and culture tend to reward appearance over function, pushing people to chase a certain look — those abs — instead of actual health. But real health is about strength, energy, hormone balance, metabolic function. It’s not that number on a scale. In reality, someone who carries more muscle and weighs a bit more can be far healthier than someone who’s simply thin and skinny and looks healthy.
Pete Wright:
Do people come into the gym and ask you what they should target as their BMI, their body mass index number? Is that something you get prompted with?
Srdjan Injac:
Yeah, they often ask me about that BMI number, and I’m like, oh my god. I’m like, just don’t pay attention to that BMI.
According to BMI, that body mass index, it’s a very limited tool, because it only looks at height and weight and does not account for body composition. It can’t distinguish between muscle and fat, which means someone with a high amount of muscle mass can be classified as overweight. I’m actually classified as overweight, obese. I should lose some weight, you know. And at the same time, someone with very low muscle and higher levels of body fat falls into that normal BMI range while still being metabolically unhealthy.
So BMI doesn’t account for factors like fitness level, bone density, visceral fat, or overall lifestyle habits. While it can be useful for looking at a large population statistically, it often fails to give an accurate picture of an individual person’s health.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I’ve always been curious, because I get told my BMI all the time. That’s a number that tracks with you through your life, right? And so I started looking into it just a little bit, to see why this number is so important to people.
So BMI was invented somewhere between 1830 and 1850. It was invented by an astronomer named Adolphe Quetelet. He was a Belgian, and he was an astronomer, a mathematician, a statistician, and a sociologist. And he never intended this number to be used as a means of medical assessment.
What he was trying to do was define l’homme moyen, the average man, as a statistical and social ideal. So he looked at it, again, as you mentioned, as a population-level tool, and he said, please don’t use this to assess fatness in individuals. So nobody did, for over a hundred years. Everybody just called it the Quetelet index. And it just sat there until 1972, when physiologist Ancel Keys rebranded the Quetelet index as the Body Mass Index. He studied white European and American men and concluded that this is by far the most useful tool. So white European and American men are what the BMI number is designed for.
The reason it stuck is because insurance companies began recognizing there’s a correlation between body weight and mortality, and built ideal weight into all of their tables to assess policyholders. So the number that my doctor uses to tell me that I am obese was invented by a Belgian astronomer who explicitly said do not use this on individual people, and it got popular because insurance companies wanted to know how likely I am to die. That is the pedigree. That is the science.
Srdjan Injac:
That’s crazy. Wow.
Pete Wright:
It’s ridiculous. We’ve been getting all of our scales — all the fancy smart scales — they’re all reporting this number, based on health advice from a guy who was mostly looking at stars, and an industry that profits predominantly when I am afraid. It’s ridiculous.
So that’s why, when I ask you for a single number, I recognize there’s probably somebody out there listening saying, isn’t that BMI? It’s not BMI. BMI is not the number that addresses this. What number should I be looking at and paying attention to, if not the number on the scale, and if not BMI?
Srdjan Injac:
Muscle mass. That’s the muscle mass.
Pete Wright:
Muscle mass.
Srdjan Injac:
That’s it. Look at the muscle mass. It’s even more important than how much body fat you have. The more muscle mass you have, the body fat is going to go down, because it’s going to speed up your metabolism. You’re going to start burning all that excess fat, if you have any, and your visceral fat’s going to go down. You’re going to look so much healthier and feel healthier. Muscles regulate everything. So focus on the muscle mass.
I told my client this morning — she doesn’t want to get bulky, of course, just like everyone else will say, the same thing. It’s not that easy, especially as you age. You’re kind of fighting that constantly, because as you age everything goes down, right? The hormones, everything. So you’re fighting that constantly, every single day. So make sure that muscle mass is what you focus on, and that’s what’s going to actually decide if you’re healthy, how long you’re going to live, all of it.
Forget the number on the scale. That’s why I have the InBody here. I take people’s measurements, and I tell them, don’t look at the weight, look at the muscle mass. It kind of changes the way they think and what they focus on, because everyone comes in and is like, I need to lose weight. I’m like, okay, let’s look at it differently. People focus on the things they see in the mirror, whatever. Focus when you think about the things you need to gain, instead of what you need to lose. As soon as you do that, you’re going to actually start getting those results that you want in the first place. You’re going to start losing fat.
So let’s see what you need to gain, what you lack — the muscle mass. Most people are scared of the muscle. It’s a good thing. So just having them change that mindset, and showing them how hard it is even to gain that muscle, it changes their mind. They’re like, okay, I see. And then they start getting stronger, better balance, metabolism’s now faster. So they start believing it more, and they shift their focus onto muscle mass instead of the weight itself, because that’s what social media showed them. Social media has really distorted this by focusing almost entirely on aesthetics.
It highlights the leanest physique, the perfect lighting, the peak-conditioned bodies, while ignoring the qualities that actually matter in the long term — things like functional strength, longevity, joint health, mobility, and that real-life performance. Being able to move well, stay injury-free, maintain the muscle as you age, and have that energy to live your life — that’s real fitness. So the truth is, someone who trains consistently, moves well, and takes care of their body will often be healthier and more capable than someone who simply looks shredded but doesn’t have the same foundation.
Fit doesn’t always mean shredded. That’s one of the biggest misconceptions. A lot of people associate fitness with visible abs, extreme leanness, that stage-ready look, but often it’s just a temporary, highly controlled state — not something that people live in year-round. It’s really hard to maintain that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, I want to go back to muscle mass real quick. What is the unit people are looking at? Is it percent muscle of the body weight? What are we watching for when you’re measuring muscle mass?
Srdjan Injac:
Well, we don’t measure it that way. I’m just looking at how many pounds of muscle you have, and it will kind of show you where they want you to be — and again, they’re basing all of this on your height and weight. Trust me, everything’s going to start declining, so I try to build as much muscle as I can at the very beginning when we start, because it’s going to start going down as you age. A lot of people have their life, they go on vacations, things like that, so they don’t train every single day, all year long. So you’re going to lose some.
When we’re in here, we focus on gaining as much muscle mass as I can put on them. And then, of course, when you leave for vacation for a month, you don’t really work out, you don’t really focus on nutrition. You enjoy life, you enjoy the food, the occasional drink, stuff like that. So you lose some of the muscle. But then you come back and we work on it again. People just feel better. The more muscle mass they have, they say it themselves.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So you’re not looking at percentage of anything. You’re just looking at the current muscle mass, and you want that number to go up while your fat mass goes down.
Srdjan Injac:
Yes. And don’t worry about the fat. It will go down as you focus on building the muscle, and of course you focus on the nutrition, because it’s all connected. It’s not like the percentage of fat is just going to keep going up — if you focus on building the muscle, it will go down.
Pete Wright:
Okay. The seasonality — that was the next thing you brought up, that it’s not something you can do year-round. So what is your take on maintaining? When do you get real depressed about it?
Srdjan Injac:
Well, this is the thing. That twelve percent body fat, really low, around ten percent, that a lot of fit people in the fitness industry have, like bodybuilders — it’s really hard to keep that. For most people, they have jobs, social lives, a lot of stresses. It’s hard to stay at twelve percent. It requires constant nutrition, disciplined training, good sleep, low stress. It’s not just effort for a few weeks.
A lot of bodybuilders and people in this stream can maintain it because their entire life — dieting, training, recovery — is structured around it. So it’s easy for me, because this is what I do, it’s my job. I eat, breathe, talk, everything fitness. For an average person, dipping down to twelve percent might be achievable in the short term, but maintaining it year-round often isn’t practical, or really necessary, to be healthy. A slightly higher body fat range is usually, for them, more sustainable, more enjoyable, and still very healthy.
Health isn’t defined by being as lean as possible. It’s defined by how well your body functions. You can carry a little bit more body fat and still have good muscle mass, a strong metabolism, and solid energy levels. So it’s really hard to maintain that low body fat percentage, and people are just so focused on that. I’m like, don’t worry about it. If you’re at twenty percent body fat, you can have twenty percent and still be really healthy with a lot of muscle mass. You don’t have to go that low.
For me, it’s something that gives me a goal. It’s something I work towards. It gives me that challenge — I’m challenging myself by giving myself a little bit more of an extreme goal that I can try to hit. But for people that have different jobs and families, it’s not very sustainable. That shouldn’t be the focus.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. When you look at the sort of fake scale in your head, for people who are still chasing that number — that scale is made up of a lot of different signals, and most of those signals are from mass marketing and social media and all those things. One of the things you told me early on, kind of as an aside on competitive bodybuilding, is that those guys, when they’re taking those pictures, that’s at a particular state in their physiological cycle. And that’s going to be at a peak. And that implies to me that everything they are about in those pictures has a shelf life. Those abs may have a shelf life.
Like, what you’re seeing and what you’re modeling your own aspirations on are probably not realistic, for many reasons. I wonder if you could just talk about what that cycle looks like, so that when I see a picture on social media that looks absolutely amazing, what do I need to keep in the back of my head about that picture?
Srdjan Injac:
Well, most of them are usually competitors. So right after they’re done with the competition, that same week, as soon as they get off the stage, that’s when they schedule a photo shoot, and they try to maintain that look. It’s not like just a random day they decided to do a photo shoot and they look like that. No. During the off-season they don’t look like that. They have a little bit more weight, they’re working on putting on more muscle, some of them might get a little bulkier, put on a little bit more fat, and the abs are not that visible. So all those pictures you see them post are usually right after the show.
But to get to that point — to compete and get to that body fat percentage, eight percent, seven, six — it’s miserable. It’s not easy at all. Those last maybe two months, the dieting, everything has to be perfect, the timing has to be right, down to the water intake — such small details. That’s why it’s not sustainable.
It’s really hard to get to that point. That’s why even people on the stage, some of them don’t really come as dry, because it was hard to keep that routine. Some of them are able to stay on the routine and look better and more dry. It is not easy. If you see a picture of somebody like that and they tell you, I’m going to get you in this shape — no, you’re not going to get into that shape.
Pete Wright:
[Off-mic production note about run time — approx. 36 minutes.]
Srdjan Injac:
There are people that have other jobs and stuff like that, but usually they have to make some sacrifices when it comes to their family and things like that. Sometimes, just to get to that point, it takes a lot of discipline.
Pete Wright:
Well, discipline, and some real structure around the macros that you are taking in, right?
Srdjan Injac:
Structure around the macros that you’re going to do. Yes.
Pete Wright:
Like, it seems like you can’t get there by just crash dieting and working out too much, right?
Srdjan Injac:
You can’t get there by just crash dieting and working out too much.
Pete Wright:
And that, I think, is the counterintuitive beat here, right? That the harder you chase this unrealistic extreme, the worse your long-term results are probably going to be. It’s like this pursuit of this expectation is sabotaging a good-enough outcome.
Srdjan Injac:
Definitely. Yeah. That’s why people are so focused on what they see, the pictures. I have one client who came in, and we had a consultation, and he took this photo out of his pocket, and he was like, oh, I want to look like this. So he showed me this guy who’s probably in his mid-twenties, maybe late twenties, and he’s of course a fitness model — abs and all that stuff. And the guy sitting in front of me, he’s in his forties, and nowhere even close to that. He looks okay, he’s a little bit skinnier, but I looked at it and I’m like, that guy looks great, I would love to look like that too. So he’s looking at me.
I’m like, do you even know what it takes to look like that? That’s his life. That’s all he does. He’s in his twenties. Now I have to go into very fine detail — all the things he has and what he hasn’t, how different they are, their hormone levels and lifestyle, all that stuff. People just don’t take that into consideration. They don’t know what it takes. They think it’s a lot easier — if they just work out for half a year, a year, they’re going to look exactly like that. I’m like, that’s not realistic.
I’m like, all right, let’s work on a different goal. Let’s take one step at a time. It looks great, but even I don’t look like that. I did a photo shoot once, because I wanted to see what it was like, the routine. And right now, you know what, I’m fine with that one photo shoot. Maybe if I decide to do another one, I’ll think about it. But I want to enjoy life. I’m still healthy. That’s all I care about. I just want to be healthy, look good, all that stuff. It’s easier for me, like I said, because it’s my life. I can easily flip that switch and be like, you know what, I’m craving all these things, but I don’t need it, I don’t want it, and I don’t eat it. I’ll eat something else.
Pete Wright:
So this is really good, because I think it’s important, as we get to wrapping up, to actually think about what health and healthy looks like when nobody’s filming it or photographing it. Because if the scale lies, and BMI is a hand-me-down from a nineteenth-century astronomer, and we know all the photos are fake anyway at this point — what does a genuinely healthy, strong person actually look like? Because my hunch is the answer is probably kind of normal.
Srdjan Injac:
It is. And you’ll feel it. You’ll feel healthier. When you’re healthy, you’ll feel strong, you’ll feel like you have a lot of energy, and your blood results look great. That’s how you know you’re healthy. It’s not by whether you have abs or not. So just go with how you feel, and work on getting stronger and working on that muscle mass. Don’t worry about those abs and things like that.
If you don’t get there, you’re going to get discouraged, and you’re going to be looking at that scale number, when it gets skinnier or this or that. It’s easy for people to be like, well, you know what, I can’t do this, and just quit. So a lot of people have a problem with the psychological side of all this.
At the end of the day, a healthy body isn’t just physical, it’s also psychological. Meaning, if a certain weight or body fat is causing stress, anxiety, that’s a sign it might not be the right place for you long-term. The goal should be a place where you feel good physically, but also mentally at ease and in control, without extremes.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. It just makes me think that the things that are most important about what I aspire to, to be healthy, are never really captured on media and marketing stuff. They’re not capturing my joint health. They’re not capturing how my knees are at my age. They’re not capturing, can I get out of a chair unassisted when I’m 80 years old? None of that is captured in these things. But all of that seems to be vastly more important than the week that I might have abs because I’m totally dehydrated and feeling like an absolute disaster. The functional stuff is not as much in the aspirational Speedo shots.
Srdjan Injac:
Yeah. On social media, as soon as I see a guy giving health advice and he’s shirtless, showing his abs, I’m like, okay, I won’t even listen to what he has to say. Don’t even pay attention.
Pete Wright:
And it says, it’s hard, but I can get you here in ninety days. Like, get me where, man?
Srdjan Injac:
No. And then people just focus on those, and I’m like, oh my god. They’re like, you can get me, I can look like that. No, stop. It’s crazy these days, the things that you’ll find on social media, and people just don’t know.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Okay, there we are. So you don’t need six-packs. Though they’d be nice.
Srdjan Injac:
No, they’d be nice ones.
Pete Wright:
I’m going to say, it’d be nice once, to feel like that.
Srdjan Injac:
There is a period when you do have the six-pack abs, and you can get there. It’s fine, you know.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, just a window. And then go have a pie.
Srdjan Injac:
But don’t think you’re going to be able to keep that through a whole year. Wintertime comes, and a rock-hard six-pack — probably not going to be there, depending on your lifestyle. But even I don’t have it sometimes. They’ll look at me like, you might have a six-pack, and I’m like, at this point, you can kind of see them, but they’re not how you think. I’ve been enjoying a little bit this last few months, summer and all that stuff. So it doesn’t quite look how you think.
And I’ll show them, and they’re like, oh. And I try to flex them. I’m like, gotta work on them.
Pete Wright:
You can see the working.
Srdjan Injac:
They are working, they’re trying, I’m trying. But even for me, it’s okay.
Pete Wright:
They’re trying. Yeah, it’s okay.
Srdjan Injac:
So it’s okay.
Pete Wright:
All right. It’s all right, everybody. You’re doing fine. You’re working toward the right stuff. And throw out your Instagram. You don’t need it right now. It’s okay.
And we would love to hear how you’re doing. Send us your questions. You can do so — just follow the link in your show notes. Wherever you’re listening to this show, swipe down, swipe over, swipe somewhere. You’re going to find a little write-up about what we’re talking about in the show. And there are some URLs in there. You can click on them, and they’ll take you to the place where you ask us questions. And we will answer them on an upcoming show. Let us know what you want to hear us talk about. We would love to get that in the upcoming schedule. So glad that you’ve joined us today. Thank you for your time and your attention.
Srdjan Injac:
Don’t forget to subscribe and share.
Pete Wright:
Don’t forget to subscribe and share. This is how we grow stronger together. On behalf of Srdjan Injac, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you right back here next week in the gym.
Srdjan Injac:
Right back here next week.
Pete Wright:
That was good.
