Why Your Weight Scale Is Holding You Back From Reaching Your Fitness Goals
The weight scale is a tool used to see how much a person weighs, but how much we weigh doesn't really mean much when losing Body Fat. The weight scale gives us an overall number of how much we weigh overall (Body Fat, Muscle Mass, Water Weight). We have body fat and muscle mass, the goal is to only lose body fat, there's no reason why anyone should want to lose muscle. Having a lot of muscle will actually benefit us from gaining unnecessary body fat. A lean, and muscular person will have a higher metabolism, and their bodies will burn more calories at a resting rate compared to an average person. This means you can eat more foods higher in calories, and you won't gain body fat, this is pretty awesome especially if you like to eat a lot of food like I do.
Why The Weight Scale Can Make You Lose The Wrong Type Of Weight
Okay So let's say someone steps on the weight scale and it says they weigh 200 lbs and their goal is to lose 50 lbs, what would that person do to lose that weight? The first thing the average person would do is as much exercise as possible (Mainly Cardio) to lose the weight. Also more than likely the average person has no clue what they need to eat or the quantity of food they need in order to lose weight. We now have someone eating the wrong foods or even worse which is very common not eating much of anything at all in hopes to lose the weight. They eventually see the scale moving, and they are happy to see that they reached their goal of losing 50 lbs, but when they look in the mirror they do look skinner but they also still look fat. They notice they still have a stomach, love handles, rolls, and now they also have loose, hangy stretchy skin. If you heard of someone losing 50 lbs you would think it was amazing, but what went wrong why are they unsatisfied with their body, why isn't their body toned the way they imagined they would look by losing the 50 lbs? What happened was they were so focused on getting the number on that scale to drop down that they did anything in their power to do so and weren't concerned with what type of weight they were losing. They didn't know if they were losing muscle mass, body fat, water weight, they just wanted to lose those 50 lbs so when the scale didn't move either they did more exercise or didn't eat. Even though the weight scale number is going down it's very easy to lose muscle mass, and if you lose more muscle mass than body fat you will still look fat when you slim down and may have loose skin.
How To Prevent Losing The Wrong Type Of Weight
If you want to ensure you are losing more body fat than actual muscle mass you need to forget about the weight scale. At the end of the day if you had the body of your dreams with abs, and everything but the scale said you weighed 300 pounds would it matter? The answer is NO, no one walks around with their weight on their forehead, we need to focus more on how our body actually looks instead of how much we weigh. Someone that is 200 pounds muscular vs someone who is 200 pounds overweight has a complete different look. Some tips to lose the right type of weight are as follows:
Do weight training exercises this will burn way more calories than just cardio alone, it will also ensure you are keeping and/or adding lean muscle mass to your body. Eat a high protein diet to maintain and increase lean muscle mass, eating a high protein diet will also aid us in losing body fat. Find out what exercises, and foods you need to eat for your body, remember everyones body is different what works for me might not work for you, and what works for you might not work for me. Last tip is you should only use the weight scale once a week, and only to make sure you aren't losing more than 2 pounds per week. If you lose more than 2 pounds per week most likely you are losing more muscle mass than body fat. It's normal for the weight scale not to move that often if you are also putting on muscle mass. If you weigh a bit more or the same but look leaner then that means you are adding muscle mass and are losing body fat.
-FitnessWithFlex
