When asking clients about their fitness goals I regularly hear; I want to lose weight or I want to lose 5 lbs or I want to lose a stone etc.
It’s great to have a goal but I’m going to touch on the difference between wanting to lose weight vs wanting to lose fat.
Let me ask you this……
Do you want to weigh less? Or do you want to look better?
I can pretty much guess what your answer is!
To look better right!?
Would you even care what your weight was if you had a toned backside, toned thighs, a slim and toned waist and toned arms?
Of course you wouldn’t care!
So actually when you say you want to lose weight, what you really mean is…
>>>>You want to lose body fat and look better<<<<<
So if its less fat we want, then why worry about our weight?!
What really matters is something called BODY COMPOSITION
Body composition is looking at the different tissues that make up our body weight. We are made of lots of different tissue types including muscle, bone, organs and fat. By using body composition measurement, we get an accurate indicator of how much of your body is made up of each of these.
Ideally we want to increase the amount of lean muscle tissue in our body and reduce the amount of body fat.
You see the best way to improve your metabolism (the body’s ability to burn more energy) is to increase lean muscle.
But here is where the issue with just weighing yourself on scales comes in……
You can be losing body fat, getting a leaner, toned bod, fitting into those old clothes that were too tight but the scales might not be shifting as fast as you want them too because you are gaining muscle while losing body fat!
People often say “muscle weighs more than fat”….Actually that’s wrong……
5 lbs of fat weighs the same as 5lbs of muscle……5lbs right?
They actually differ in DENSITY. Muscle is about 18% more dense than fat. 5 lbs of muscle occupies less space (volume) in the human body than 5 lbs of fat.
If you look at the picture in this post, you will see 5lbs of muscle vs 5lbs of fat.
Muscle not only takes up less space but is also a lot less lumpy under your skin than the same weight in fat. Muscle tissue is smooth, lean and dense and has tons of other benefits!
Muscle increases metabolic rate because muscle tissue burns 3 x more calories than fat tissue so you burn more calories just by having more muscle…pretty sweet right?
So im going to put this out there and I might shock you with this…..
>>>The scale is not an accurate measure of what’s happening within the body<<<
Your total weight only shows you exactly that….not how much fat you have lost!
If you have lost body fat and gained lean muscle the scales might not be shifting as fast as you want them to….but you will find clothes are fitting more easily or you drop a dress size!
At our Cannock bootcamp, we know the scales are misleading so we measure progress with a tape measure, using before and after pictures and monthly body composition analysis as well as weight to REALLY show you changes in your body.
So the take home message is this: Stop obsessing about your weight!
If you want to get more accurate measurements, then get yourself a set of good quality body composition scales that can tell you your ratio of fat to muscle. If you don’t want to buy scales the best way to see the difference is to measure your body with a tape or take before and after pictures.
