Give Up On Weight Loss

What? Yes, you read that right. Give up...on weight loss. Here is what I mean. A lot of people focus on losing weight, and they make that their primary goal. That is the wrong idea people!

Losing weight is not what is important. You want to lose the fat, not the weight. If you have been sticking to your New Year Res., right now is about the time when most people quit because they stop losing weight. Don't quit training, just give up on weight loss.

The definition of physical fitness means that you meet these two criteria:

1. I am healthy - My cholesterol is normal, my blood pressure is good and I have enough energy to do all the things that I need to do every day.
2. I look good - I am completely happy with how I look in the mirror.

That is it folks. Never did I say I weigh a certain amount. Weight is irrelevant unless you are a boxer or wrestler trying to make a weight class to be able to compete.

If you have been on a program for a while, and you have stopped losing weight, do not get scared. Start measuring the inches you are losing instead. I'm sure you have heard that muscle weighs more than fat, right? Well, what that means is that muscle is more dense. Let's look at it from a size stand point.

Pretend that a pound of muscle is the size of a 8oz glass of milk. If that was the case then a pound of fat would be the size of a whole quart of milk. You see fat is four times the size of muscle. What this means is that when you have more muscle tone, you will weigh slightly more but you will be smaller. If you were a size 16 to begin with, and you trained hard enough to lose the fat, then you could end up a size 4 and still weight the same as you did when you started. When you look at it that way, it isn't so bad...is it?

So, the bottom line is to not get discouraged if you aren't losing any more weight. Remember that your goal is to be healthy and look great, not to lose weight! Just give up on weight loss, and focus on fat loss.