ERIC KIM

What is the Ideal Body Composition?

Indefinite (slow, steady) growth is pure joy:

What is the ideal human body composition?

  1. Ideally high muscle mass
  2. Ideally lowest body fat percentage

Why? High muscle mass makes you look bigger, more massive, more impressive, and also increases your testosterone and other beneficial and empowering hormones.

Why low body fat percentage? Having less adipose tissue makes your muscles look more impressive (the “ripped” and “chiseled” look), you can see more definition in the muscles, and also having less adipose tissue makes your face look leaner and sharper, and also having less adipose tissue (body fat equally distributes throughout your body) is also more beneficial for your health.

How to Increase Your Muscle Mass and Decrease Your Body Fat

So how do we increase our muscle mass while lowering our body fat percentage? Simple ideas:

1. Intermittent fasting

Simple instructions: don’t eat breakfast or lunch, and “break your fast” at dinner. Dinner can be as early as 4pm, perhaps late as 10pm. The general idea is this:

While there is still light outside, or while you’re still doing work during the day, don’t eat.

Once you eat, your body has an insulin response which makes you sleepy. Also by reducing your feeding window (and eating less frequently), your body is able to spark the autophagy “human cell vacuum cleaner” effect, which essentially can fight pre-cancerous cells, and also you’re sharper and more focused throughout the day.

2. No carbohydrates, sugar, alcohol

I don’t think there is a moral evil to alcohol or anything — the reason I don’t drink (besides getting headaches and not really liking how it makes me feel) is that it increases your body fat adipose tissue. So if your goal is to maximize hour body fat adipose loss, don’t drink alcohol.

Also same goes with carbohydrates (both complex and simple carbs). Both spike your insulin higher than eating fatty meats and eggs, and the more often you spike your blood insulin, the worse.

3. Lifting weights

Powerlifting or weight lifting, or any activities which stress your muscles are good.

I feel that powerlifting is optimal, as it requires the minimal time commitment while maximizing your muscular strength growth. Also powerlifting is more fun than doing pointless reps (bodybuilding style). The basic goal in powerlifting is this:

What is the maximum weight you can lift once?

Insanely simple, yet extremely effective.

My favorite exercises:

  1. Deadlift
  2. Squat
  3. Dumbbell press
  4. Chin-ups (bodyweight and weighted)

4. Great amounts of sleep

If you’re wealthy, what’s the upside? Not the money — the ability to “sleep in” as much as you want, whether it be 9, 10, 11, or even 12 hours. I feel one of the supreme goods in life is to be able to sleep when you want, and being able to wake up when you want. For me, having control over my own time, schedule, and life is 1000x more valuable than all the riches in the world.

Therefore if you want to optimize your muscle growth and fat loss, sleep great amounts!

Simple tip:

Wake up without an alarm clock.

Also:

Don’t watch TV, movies, or any moving videos before you sleep.

At night, read books, relax, and if you cannot sleep maybe take 5mg of melatonin.

Optimizing your sleep seems to be 100x more important than optimizing your “productivity”.

5. Ketogenic diet

I’ve experimented with all diets, but it seems that the “ketogenic diet” seems optimal. Eat no carbs, starch, sugars, and only eat bitter herbs and meats/eggs.

Is there a “perfect” body composition?

One of my heroes is the Rock. It’s incredible — in his late 40s he is actually more muscular than he was than he was when he was professional wrestling. Sure Dwayne Johnson has great genetics, but he also puts in great effort and industry in working out and eating much. My aspiration isn’t to look like the Rock— my aspiration is to constantly push my bodily strength and physique to new levels.

Certainly there is no perfect body composition or physique. There are no ultimate measures of perfection— it is all relative.

My simple idea:

The more perfect physique is having a little more muscle mass (while maintaining low body fat percentage) than you had in the past.

What I consider pure joy

For example my ideal is indefinite, slow, and steady growth (for my entire life).

If I can indefinitely increase my muscular mass by 1 pound every month for the rest of my life, this would be pure joy for me. Also if I can indefinitely increase my “one rep max” in my lifts indefinitely, this would be pure joy for me.

Which makes me wonder:

Perhaps pure joy and happiness is witnessing your infinite growth, and witnessing your own personal growth grow indefinitely!

Never stop growing stronger! ERIC