WEIGHTLOSS- THE TALE OF YOUR SCALE

In my last blog I wrote about five things you should keep an eye on for better health.

They were watching your weight, your waist, exercise, stress and smoking.

I thought I would write a little about each one of these in my next few posts.

As of late I have been working on loosing that “last ten pounds” and I will have to admit at 65 years old it has been a different experience than in my younger years.

As we all know as we age our metabolism slows down, we don’t seem to move as much or as fast and in most cases our eating habits change.

Well….. I didn’t lose my last 10 pounds but something even better happened…..I would like to share my experience and would love to hear what others have to say whether in success or their work in progress!!

Here is what happened….. At the four week point and after what I considered a pretty good effort, I was only down 2 pounds!

To say the least, I was discouraged. But here is one thing I hadn’t taken into consideration. I had started a more intense workout program which included resistance training and a friend suggested that I might be building some muscle. He suggested I buy a scale that not only measures weight but also fat content. I bought one and even though I’m sure it’s not as accurate as the “dunk tank” method it was at least consistent.

What I soon found had happened was I had lost approximately 6 pounds of fat, but had gained approximately 4 pounds of muscle!

It took some mental adjustment as I had always been concerned about my weight in pounds. But that is not the only way to look at it. Bear with me….and also remember…. One pound of muscle burns approximately 3X as many calories a day as a pound of fat. So as you build muscle, your body becomes a more efficient furnace!!

For the next month I did three days of cardio and four days of resistance training, overlapping cardio and resistance on Saturdays as I had more time. I continued my mental struggle at weigh in, as I wasn’t losing weight BUT my body fat percentage continued to go down!

I want to add here that I did watch what I ate and counted calories. I ate approximately 1800 calories divided up into three “meals” and two “snacks”. Each around 300 to 400 calories. The one thing I concentrated on the most was protein….You have to have protein to build muscle and I made sure I had around 25 to 30 grams of protein at each sitting. I wasn’t fanatical about it. I just did the best I could depending on what was going on each day.

So now here is where I am. I still weight 160 pounds. The exact weight as when I started!! But when I started I was 20 % body fat and now I am steady at 14%. I feel so much better, but had I not gotten away from thinking only about weight I probably would have given up.

This is not to say that if a person is 20, 30, 40 or more pounds overweight that there doesn’t need to be and won’t be weight loss. But after my experience, I strongly recommend keeping track of your body fat percentage as well as weight loss.