Sep 23, 2026 · 38 min · 9 segments
If weight loss is your main goal, should you lift lighter weights, do more reps, or spend more time doing cardio? Not necessarily. In this episode of Mondays with Matt, Matt Reynolds explains how…
if weight loss is my main goal, right? And so that could be for a myriad of reasons.
Like why is weight loss your main goal? I think that'd be the first thing that I would ask is it, are we trying to lose weight for primarily for aesthetics? Is it for health? Is it from longevity? You know, did you, something happen in your life that you got to maybe a bad health report or a blood panel or something like that? You're trying to figure out like, hey, it's probably time to lose weight.
Well, I mean, look, you guys that have listened for a while, most of you that are here, know most of my story i was uh i graduated very skinny from high school right it was 155 160 pounds you know 6162 got married in 2000 at 175 found the sport of powerlifting and eating through the sticking points and drove my weight up uh did fairly well in powerlifting in the 220 class 242s up to the 275s and even got into the 308s uh so made lots of uh weight increases over the course of four five six years uh and since then you know competed as a as a relatively heavyweight uh powerlifter and then strongman cut down to 231 which is not really what i weighed because i tended to weigh in around you know i would weigh 260 somewhere there 255 260 would cut weight to make 231s and then one day i wake up and i'm in my 40s and uh you know i'm still pretty overweight and uh strong but uh longevity is not really the thing that is on my radar and so uh you know i had enough of a wake-up call i decided this is the direction i need to go gosh i feel better and so you know i'm down i don't 50 60 pounds something like that over the past little less than a year and uh and i'll talk to you about what i've done in my training and what i do with most my clients and how they train and so for those of you listening to mondays with matt i'm going to assume some things so certainly there may be some ladies that are listening and really a lot of the major um the major components of how we train when we're trying to lose weight whether you're male or female are probably going to be the same for most of our listeners that are listening to this i'm going to assume you're probably somebody similar to me you're middle-aged and you're probably a male and you probably got some weight to lose um you probably want to look better you probably definitely want to feel better you want to feel younger you want to push towards and those health metrics, you're probably not a world beater right now trying to set PRs or certainly world record level sort of PRs in the gym.
And so the question is like, how do I train if I'm trying to lose weight? And it feels weird because I know when I'm probably trying to lose weight, it's going to be hard to hit certainly strength PRs.
And I like going in and hitting big squats and big deadlifts and presses and bench presses and things like that.
The reality is that the training that occurs in the gym doesn't really need to change much.
You really are changing those things in how they apply to the fork that goes in your mouth.
Yes, we want to change the intensity of the food that goes in your mouth, the volume of the food that goes in your mouth, the frequency of the food that goes in your mouth, and probably some selection changes of changing the types of food that go in your mouth.
And if you do those things, then things you do in the weight room under the bar or the bar in your hands don't have to change much.
if weight loss is my main goal, right? And so that could be for a myriad of reasons.
Like why is weight loss your main goal? I think that'd be the first thing that I would ask is it, are we trying to lose weight for primarily for aesthetics? Is it for health? Is it from longevity? You know, did you, something happen in your life that you got to maybe a bad health report or a blood panel or something like that? You're trying to figure out like, hey, it's probably time to lose weight.
Well, I mean, look, you guys that have listened for a while, most of you that are here, know most of my story i was uh i graduated very skinny from high school right it was 155 160 pounds you know 6162 got married in 2000 at 175 found the sport of powerlifting and eating through the sticking points and drove my weight up uh did fairly well in powerlifting in the 220 class 242s up to the 275s and even got into the 308s uh so made lots of uh weight increases over the course of four five six years uh and since then you know competed as a as a relatively heavyweight uh powerlifter and then strongman cut down to 231 which is not really what i weighed because i tended to weigh in around you know i would weigh 260 somewhere there 255 260 would cut weight to make 231s and then one day i wake up and i'm in my 40s and uh you know i'm still pretty overweight and uh strong but uh longevity is not really the thing that is on my radar and so uh you know i had enough of a wake-up call i decided this is the direction i need to go gosh i feel better and so you know i'm down i don't 50 60 pounds something like that over the past little less than a year and uh and i'll talk to you about what i've done in my training and what i do with most my clients and how they train and so for those of you listening to mondays with matt i'm going to assume some things so certainly there may be some ladies that are listening and really a lot of the major um the major components of how we train when we're trying to lose weight whether you're male or female are probably going to be the same for most of our listeners that are listening to this i'm going to assume you're probably somebody similar to me you're middle-aged and you're probably a male and you probably got some weight to lose um you probably want to look better you probably definitely want to feel better you want to feel younger you want to push towards and those health metrics, you're probably not a world beater right now trying to set PRs or certainly world record level sort of PRs in the gym.
And so the question is like, how do I train if I'm trying to lose weight? And it feels weird because I know when I'm probably trying to lose weight, it's going to be hard to hit certainly strength PRs.
And I like going in and hitting big squats and big deadlifts and presses and bench presses and things like that.
The reality is that the training that occurs in the gym doesn't really need to change much.
You really are changing those things in how they apply to the fork that goes in your mouth.
Yes, we want to change the intensity of the food that goes in your mouth, the volume of the food that goes in your mouth, the frequency of the food that goes in your mouth, and probably some selection changes of changing the types of food that go in your mouth.
And if you do those things, then things you do in the weight room under the bar or the bar in your hands don't have to change much.
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