To lose weight you should cut your calories and increase your activity. But on the road to losing fat, don’t be surprised if at first you gain some weight.
If you follow all the steps outline in Part One, including strength conditioning, your scale may initially show that you are gaining weight. Strength conditioning, done right, will add muscle and muscle weighs more than fat. So while your scale reports weight gain, your clothes may be fitting a little more loosely.
The opposite of fat is not skinny. Fat is a tissue; there is no tissue in the body called skinny. The opposite of fat is muscle. If you don’t want to be fat, you must become more muscular. And by becoming more muscular, you will create the conditions that let you grow lean.
Adding muscle to your body is a great way to lose fat, because in the right conditions resting muscles burn fat. Since it is metabolically active, a pound of muscle consumes about 37.5 calories each day. Adding just seven pounds of muscle will increase your resting metabolic rate by over 250 calories per day. So just by growing more muscular you will grow leaner. Your added muscle will help your body become a fat burning machine.
To gain muscle, lift a weight heavy enough that you can only complete between five and eight repetitions. Don’t train any body part more than twice a week, so each will have plenty of time to recover and grow between workouts. Once you can do more than 10 repetitions, add more poundage.
If you go beyond the recommended deficit of 500 calories per day, the scale may report that you are losing plenty of weight, but it may not be fat. To get a true read on your progress, be sure to take “before” photos as well as measurements of your neck, waist, hips, thighs, and flexed biceps. Repeat these measurements weekly and track your progress in your journal. If your weight is not dropping as fast as you would like, but your waist is getting smaller, you can rest assured you are making progress.
Deceptions of the Scale
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