Losing Weight Is Not Important, Losing Fat Is

If you keep trying to lose weight, you need to stop. Too often when someone is trying to lose weight they base their success or their failure on what the scale tells them. What the scale tells you though, is usually very misleading. Because even if it appears that you are losing weight, there’s a good chance you’re losing the wrong kind of weight.

Popular fad weight-loss diets tend to work very well, or at least they seem to work very well, because they cause you to lose water weight very quickly. And that’s where the problems come in. If you base your weight-loss success on what the scale tells you, you may not realize that you’re only losing water weight. Our bodies can hold anywhere from 10 to 40 pounds worth of extra water. And losing that weight feels good yes, and it looks good on the scale too, but it’s not actually helping us.

Losing 10 pounds in one week feels great! And it lets us get into that special dress or pair of jeans. And that’s why fad weight-loss diets are so popular. Once you stop that diet though, you usually gain all of your weight back very quickly. And that’s because the diet caused you to simply lose water weight instead of real weight.

In some cases a fast weight loss diet might cause you to lose muscle mass to. Muscle weighs more than fat, so if you start losing your muscle mass it will look very good on your scale. Losing muscle mass is very dangerous though, and it can cause a lifetime of problems and illnesses.

To lose real weight, you need to burn actual body fat. And body fat is not always as noticeable on a scale. Usually the best way to tell if you’re starting to lose body fat is by how your clothes fit. You can also take measurements of the fattest areas of your body, such as around your waist, and monitor how those measurements reduce overtime.

If you have a lot of belly fat for example, you can measure the largest part of your waist before you start your new fat burning plan. Then simply measure that same section of your waist once each week, to see how you’re doing. If you are truly burning fat, you will notice that inches start disappearing.

The scale may not say you’ve lost much weight though, and this is common. It’s actually quite normal to. If you are toning or building your muscles, you won’t notice much fluctuation in your actual body weight. Muscles weigh more than fat does, so if you lose fat while gaining muscle your body weight may appear to be the same. Women particularly don’t always see what they want to on the scale either. This is because a woman’s body weight will vary from one day to the next, and its influenced by the menstrual cycle and hormone levels.

If you pay too much attention to what the scale tells you, you may actually sabotage your weight-loss efforts. Because if it does not appear that you are losing weight when you feel that you are making every effort to, you are more likely to be discouraged and stop trying.

So stop losing weight today, and start losing body fat instead.

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