I recently de-phatted myself after a season of exactly the same barbell pure strength training you describe, except I was on the See Food Diet™. I was determined to "do the program" as-written, meaning adequate rest, adequate sleep, and more than adequate food to drive recovery. Bunches of weight added to the bar, and bunches of pounds (20) on my body later, the novice period drew to a close and it was time to pare back down. BMI sucks royally as an individual health metric, but Flight Docs are stuck with it and I don't want to listen to any more lectures about it, especially ones that immediately follow a congratulations on how awesome my resting heart rate, EKG, and blood pressure are. The cognitive dissonance is too much to bear. As I've gotten older (52) merely stripping carbohydrates out of my diet has not worked as well as it used to for whatever reason. So I reduced them to very low levels except on the 2-3 days/weeks I did HIIT with the Prowler. Yes, I used MetCons. But as Charles C contends, I'm under no illusions about where the "power" is in body comp: it's diet. If you view the MetCons as "auxiliary" or "complimentary" to the dietary cleanup, they can be beneficial. I stripped-off the 20 pounds in about 5 weeks. But again: the FACT of weight loss was DIET. The SPEED of weight loss MAY be enhanced with MetCons.