So, you want to step on the scales each week and watch the numbers go down, right? … WRONG!
It still frustrates me, even though I hear it on a regular basis, when people talk about getting in shape in terms of ‘weight loss’. There is so much information around, some of it accurate, some not so, but generally speaking the information out there is just about enough to get most out-of-shape people on their way to looking and feeling great.
Yet people are STILL hell bent on using their own ideas and tactics that take them away from getting in shape and steer them straight into the inevitable brick wall of failure, demotivation and even worse – a slower metabolism than before they started trying to get in shape or ‘lose weight’ as it were.
In this post I will outline why in particular the term ‘weight loss’ needs to be removed from our vocabulary (unless we’re professional/amateur boxers and need to make a weight class) and what actual terms/methods we should be using instead to get us looking awesome and feeling proud of our bodies!
Body Composition
Our bodies (purely from a getting-in-shape perspective) are made up of muscle and fat. Bit of water there too but mainly muscle and fat. Here are some body type configurations based on varying degrees of those two components:
- Hardly any muscle, lots of fat
- Hardly any muscle, hardly any fat (skinny basically)
- Fair amount of muscle, quite a bit of fat (not as much as #1)
- Large amount of muscle, very little fat
- Fair amount of muscle, very little fat
The first three in the list are in less than great shape. Number 2 seems ok but is probably a little malnourished and may also have poor posture and may probably turn into number 1 over time due to a slow metabolism (skinny people are often so because of a naturally fast metabolism but are susceptible to putting on lots of fat once it slows with age). Number 3 is structurally sound and is often seen lifting heavy weights in the gym and just eating everything that moves. Nothing a few adjustments won’t fix though. We want to focus on the last two, both of which are in great shape, feel healthy and turn a few heads at the beach 
Thing is, you need to ask yourself what YOU want. The only problem there is that I’m not so sure people know what they want. In a previous post I mentioned that most people, when asked what they want from a workout regime, often say something garbled like this: I want to be toned, not TOO muscley but just a bit toned around my tummy/hips etc.
As you’ll read from my other post on the subject, ‘toned’ isn’t a real term used in the educated minds of Personal Trainers. Also, without a LOT of effort and maybe some steroids, you can’t get too muscley. It’s not like you wake up one morning in a smoking crater, so enormous from yesterday’s session you’ve blown a hole in your house while you were asleep. Muscle is good! It’s good for posture, metabolism, creating attractive curves, stability, strength and so on. Remember as well that muscle goes if you don’t use it and feed it, so it’s not ‘permanent’ like a tattoo. So, keeping/building muscle is good! Now on to a key point which is linked to the purpose of this post:
Muscle weighs MORE than fat! To put on muscle is to put ON weight!
As we mentioned before with our list, fat is the thing we don’t like. It hides muscular deffinition, isn’t firm like muscle, hangs off us like bags of porridge oats, is linked with all kinds of poor health conditions and pretty much all of us want rid of it. So this pretty much brings me to the conclusion of the post… if we DON’T want to lose weight, what DO we want to lose?
We want to lose FAT!
Yey, we got there in the end! Generally speaking an attractive body composition is high in muscle mass and low in fat. This also happens to be the most healthy type of body comp – score! Hmm, i feel a post about evolutionary psychology and sexual attraction coming on… some other time.
I won’t get into how to build muscle here or shred/burn/lose/torch fat but for now it’s a good idea to stop using the term or even the NOTION of losing weight. If you’re losing weight, you could be losing muscle. So this is my second and final point…
When we diet through mild starvation and calorie cutting (the standard method used by most people) we can indeed lose a lot of weight. But again, TOTAL weight means an amount of fat AND an amount of muscle. We lose muscle and our metabolism drops causing us to be MORE prone to fat storage than before we even went on a diet! The lack of calories and probable poor frequency of eating is another main contributor. We only need to be losing fat. We do this by developing our muscles, doing cardio at the right times of day for optimal fat burning, eating regularly and sensibly as well as cutting out crap foods and alcohol.
So this cocludes my post. I know I said a lot in a short space of time in that last paragraph, there’s much more to learn, so stay informed with my regular free newsletter.
As always, a reminder the I am a Personal Trainer in the North Wales area as well as a trained Life Coach. Whether you live in North Wales or otherwise, contact me, leave a comment or give me a call any time!
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Awesome article..
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