• 5 mins read

Don’t Lose Weight to Get Slim. Do This Instead.

I can already hear your cries. “How is that possible?”, “This is clickbait.” Calm down okay. It’s not that deep. Let me bust a myth for you. Everyone thinks they want to lose weight. And that is true for many. Being overweight or obese is a strong indicator of poor health and a hindrance to quality of life. But what most people don’t realize is that they don’t want to lose weight, they just want to look good.

Somehow the scale became the king of telling us if we were accomplishing our fitness goals or not. If someone spent 4 weeks training in the gym and then found that the scale reflected no change in weight or even that they gained weight it might cause them to quit the one thing that was helping them. So what should you do? And how often should you get on the scale?

Let me give you an example from my own life. Recently, I went through a phase where I was eating like I wasn’t going to wake up the next morning. Even though I was working out about three times a week I was getting wider around the waist. One day at the gym I was looking in the mirror and not liking what I was seeing. I said aloud that I needed to lose some weight. Fortunately, my friend is a smart trainer and helped reinforce something I already knew to be true. “Don’t lose weight, change your body composition.” So for the sake of the experiment I got on the scale. Weighing in at 205. Then we set a plan and got to work. Knowing that I would wait at least 2 months before I got back on the scale. Here is what we did.

I set up a strength training program with a Certified Personal Trainer. This was the first crucial step. Getting a proper plan in place meant that I would build muscle in a systematic and effective fashion. Having more muscle is the most underrated and arguably most effective fat burning method. The more muscle you pack around the more energy that is required to maintain it. Meaning that your base metabolic rate will need to rise in order to sustain your growing muscle mass. In turn, you are going to be expending more energy to sustain this added muscle. So, when you are consuming energy, more of what you eat will be utilized to maintain this muscle mass rather than be stored as fat. Now we could get really deep in the physiological and metabolic processes that are happening here. But in the simplest of terms, adding more skeletal muscle to your frame will help you look better and allow more energy to go towards the building and maintenance of this mass and less being stored as fat.

The second and just as crucial step to this process was putting an emphasis on eating high protein meals. Here is what this did. For starters, it left me feeling more satiated (full) after meals. Protein has that effect on the body. Because I was feeling more satiated I was able to go longer without meals and avoided over eating during meal and snack times. So naturally, I was consuming less calories. On top of that, the protein helped to maintain the added muscle I was putting on my frame. This added muscle as stated earlier was helping to raise my base metabolic rate utilizing more of the food I was eating.

I know what you’re all wondering. The clickbait title is what got you here and now you want to know the results of my strength training plus high protein strategy. Here is what happened. Two months later I am looking in the mirror again. My added muscle gives me a figure I am much happier with, and I see that the fat around my waist while not completely gone is very much reduced and I am very pleased with my physique. For kicks and giggles I get on the scale. Who wants to guess?

203 pounds.. That’s it? You only lost two pounds? That’s what you’re probably thinking. So here is my question to you. Does it matter? I’m slimmer, I have more muscle, and less fat. The scale has dictated our perceived weight loss and training efforts for too long. It just does not tell the whole story or even an accurate story. My muscles added some weight which is why there was no total body weight loss. But I’m healthier and happier and more comfortable in my body.

The point I am trying to make is this. Don’t let the scale discourage you. Fall in love with the process. Love the way you feel and the way your body changes.

To read my “secret” to losing and keeping off weight read my article, “Don’t run and Diet”.