Don’t trust the scales! 

Why?

Body weight is often used as an indicator of fitness progress. When people attempt to change their body and don’t see the number reducing on the scales each week, they tend to get a little discouraged, even if they see progress during workouts or in the mirror.

This discouragement is based on the common misconception that you need to lose weight in order to change your body composition. Let’s not forget that muscle, fat, bone and water all play an important part in what number you see on the scale.

Listen, body weight is about so much more than just fat.

Body Composition

Based on your fitness level, your weight comes from:

  • Muscle: 30-55% of body weight
  • Fat: 10-30% of body weight
  • Water (not in muscle or fat): 10-25%
  • Bone: 15% of body weight
  • Organs, other tissues: 10-15%

The more you know about this, the more your understand the difference between losing weight and losing fat.

Also – losing water weight can lead to the appearance of losing fat (something a lot of these ‘slimming clubs’ will praise you for….but that’s for another blog 😉 ) , in reality, body fat % is the most reliable way of telling your fitness! Hello FIT Members, are you sick of Lise telling you that yet?

“Muscle weighs more than fat.”

You’ve heard that right?

Basically, muscle is more dense than fat, so the same weight in muscle and fat looks very different.

5-pounds-of-fat-5-pounds-of-muscle

Two people could weight the same, however one could have a higher body fat %  than the other, their bodies will look VERY different.

A lean person with more muscle might weight more than somebody who’s not so lean, because muscle is denser than fat.

fat-loss-not-weight-loss

Basically, never confuse “weight loss” with “fat loss”!

Water Weight

“Water weight” is a buzz phrase thrown around any time body weight is mentioned. Your body is made of about 50-65% water, so water certainly does account for a large portion of your weight.

You can drop a few pounds quickly by losing water weight. Besides that, any type of significant dehydration is unhealthy and won’t last long.

In order to make a lasting impact on the water weight your body is retaining unnecessarily, reduce the amount of salt in your diet and increase your water intake so that your body is more likely to release its excess fluid.

Muscle burns fat while you’re doing nothing

Something to consider.

If you want to lose weight quickly, by all means focus on a fat burning program – like our FIIT classes.

If you want to set your body up to have a higher resting metabolism and burn more calories/fat  on a regular basis, condition your body for strength training with our FITcamps!

www.hellofit.co.uk/fitness-classes

If you want to push yourself further, take advantage of our fantastic Personal Training packages at the Hello Fit Unit in Lytham.

www.hellofit.co.uk/personal-training