I am not a fan of the scale. Unless you have a tremendous amount of weight to lose, the scale does not tell you the whole story. I am willing to say 90% of my female clients use this number to gauge their progress on losing body fat and this bothers me. The scale takes into consideration a loss or gain of muscle, fat and water. If you only focused on that number and no other variables, you would never know if you are losing or gaining body fat, muscle or water. Bodyweight naturally fluctuates up or down up to five pounds over the course of a day. Read Don't Bow To The Scale for more insight.
Let’s say you weigh in at 141 at the beginning of your journey and you were 25% body fat. Two weeks into it, you have lost 6 inches, and your body fat has now dropped to 22% and you jump on the scale and you are now 143. You are crushed! How did I gain weight? Truth is, you didn’t gain body fat. You more than likely gained muscle. I don’t understand how anyone can be sad when they lost inches, their clothes fit better, body fat went down and they have more energy and feel better about themselves.
Helping women learn and understand this is challenging at times for me. Let me give you an example. I have one client who started with me around six months ago. He weighed around 170 pounds. He was around 22% body fat and today he is 170 pounds and around 12% body fat. How did this happen? He didn’t have as much muscle tone when he started. He lost body fat and he also gained lean muscle. He is stronger, feels great and looks awesome. At the end of the day it is about body composition and we all need to understand that.
9 TIPS TO GIVE YOU FOCUS
1. Lift weights
2. Do your cardio
3. Gauge your body fat
4. Take your measurements and monitor these. See how they change from week to week and adjust your exercise and nutrition accordingly.
5. Eat lean protein, healthy fats and clean carbohydrates.
6. Drink around 70-80 ounces of water a day
7. Get your rest – around 7-9 hours a night
8. Strive for an attainable goal
9. Quit being so hard on yourself
This should help you stay on track if your goal is to lose body fat and gain lean muscle!
