Coach Micah's: Fit Project Podcast · Micah Smith

My Top 3 Issues with Fitness Content Online: BEING SUPER SHREDDED | FPP #158

June 20, 2025·37 min·2 clips

At 10% body fat, you can get abs and compliments, then some people lose control on the way back up.

Coach Micah closes out his three-part run on annoying fitness content trends. He starts by reminding listeners that the earlier weeks hit the steroid trend and the internet's strange fixation on weird, low-sugar, high-protein recipes, then he shifts to the bigger question of why being extremely lean keeps getting sold as the ideal. That ideal is the target here. He argues that looking shredded can be impressive and still be the wrong north star for most people, especially when social media can make that aesthetic feel more normal than it really is. He does not keep it abstract. He pulls the lesson from his own stretch in 2021, when the gym he worked for closed, he was jobless, and he decided to go all in on running, strict tracking, and staying locked in for months at a time. He got very lean. He says he was down to about 157 pounds, did not drink for about three months, and was so dialed in that he never cheated on his diet, but the payoff came with worse sleep, worse mood, lower energy, and getting sick more often. The point lands because it is personal. Rather than pretending the shredded look is automatically healthy, he uses that stretch to show how easy it is to confuse visible definition with actual well-being. He then steps back to the basics. For men, he places healthy body fat somewhere around 10 to 22 percent, notes that 10 percent is already very lean, and says most people can still look good and have visible abs around 12 or 13 percent. He also says many people will probably feel best closer to 15 or 16 percent. For women, he gives a higher healthy range, roughly 20 to 33 percent, and explains that body fat matters more because of hormonal balance and the fact that women have more hormones cycling through their 28-day cycle. He keeps the tone practical. Even when he talks about aesthetics, he keeps coming back to what a body can sustain, what it costs to stay there, and why online inspiration often skips that part. That broader warning ties the whole series together. The steroid talk from the previous week, the recipe talk from the week before that, and this shredded-physique discussion all point at the same problem: fitness content can make extreme choices look normal. Micah does not treat being lean as bad in itself, because he clearly thinks it can motivate people to train harder and clean up habits. He just wants listeners to remember that the look is not the same as health, and that the gap matters more the farther you push it.

As heard by us

Being shredded is not free if energy, sleep, and mood start sliding.

Coach Micah closes the three part series by pushing back on the idea that being extremely lean is the default for an aesthetic fit physique. He uses his own 2021 cut as the example: at 157 pounds and very shredded, he had lower energy, worse sleep, got sick more often, and felt…

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You want a blunt reset on why ultra-lean is not always the same as healthy.

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