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I’m a little busy today, but since I promised an update on my fat loss progress on Twitter this morning I’m tapping out a quick post. (I have some free time over the weekend, so I’ll be back with more of that fat-busting know-how I know you’re all craving soon.)
I’ve had a good week. My diet has been pretty clean and my training felt good. In fact, over the last few days I’ve been feeling fitter and leaner than I have in ages. So, I was hoping for good news when I weighed myself this morning.
As mentioned in last Friday’s post, last time I weighed myself I was 61.6kg and that was after a fortnight of very little activity, so I was almost sure I was in for a big drop. My clothes felt loser and I could see the difference in the mirror too..
So I was a bit disappointed to see that my weight had only decreased to 61.1kg. That’s a loss of 0.5kg, just over 1lb. Hardly worth mentioning. Except…
I also got my body fat reading. This is where it got interesting. It came out at 26%, which is a drop of 1% since last week.
This was a bit of a surprise because I would have expected a 1% drop in body fat to be accompanied by a larger drop in weight. The numbers didn’t really make sense.
Then it dawned on me – I did a bit of number crunching and calculated that I must have lost around 0.75kg of fat, but gained around 0.25kg of muscle.
Adding muscle to your body at the same time as shedding fat is notoriously difficult to pull off, so I’m pretty damned pleased with that!
I should mention that scales, body fat monitors, and even calipers, only give a rough estimate of what’s going on, none are 100%, so these figures will not be exact, and anyway, these numbers are very small, so I’m not talking about a huge difference, but this does provide a great illustration of why people who want to get leaner should not get h
ung up on weight.
When all’s said and done, weight itself is not important to me, what I’m interested in is getting leaner.
If I had only measured my weight I would’ve only seen 0.5kg drop, and wouldn’t have know that I’d actually lost 0.75kg in fat, 0.25kg of which has been replaced by a gain in lean muscle.
You probably know that, pound for pound, muscle is a lot smaller than fat, not to mention much more visually appealing on the body – just look at the representations on the right.
But the good news doesn’t end there. Muscle requires more calories to maintain in the body, so when you add muscle mass your metabolic rate increases. This basically means that the more muscle you have the more calories you burn, even when you’re resting.
So, if you’re with me in trying to get a better body I’d strongly urge you to measure more than just weight.
Progress Pics Coming Soon – Eek!
Next Friday will be almost two months since my first post on this blog, which seems like a good time to post some progress photos. Hopefully you’ll be able to see a decent improvement between those and my “before” pics. …Now that should help keep me on track for another week if nothing else does!
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Thanks for the visual on the fat versus muscle! I haven’t been measuring myself aside from on a set of basic scales once a week though I have been monitoring how well I make it through the exercise that I do. For example, where I felt tired the first time I did a dvd compared to now and also how much stronger I am in certain poses.
Looking forward to seeing your progress pics! Have a great week.
Hi Emily, glad the post was useful. Monitoring fitness levels is great way to know you’re making progress too. I’d recommend keeping a record of how well you’re doing (that could be how much weight you lift or maybe how fast/far you go) as well as how you feel after and during exercise. Sometimes, because exercise gets easier as we get fitter, we might notice the progress we’re making otherwise. If fat loss is one of your goals too keeping measurements and taking progress photos might help you with that as well. Julia x
Well done on your weight/fat loss! I used to hate only seeing small improvements on the scales but these days I am of the mind that as long as its going down its going in the right direction. I tend to weigh every day (once in the morning) as this helps to keep me on track but I do a full reading (muscle, fat, water, bone) once a month with my physical measurements too which gives me a more objective view of my progress, and that seems to help a great deal.
Hi Claire, you made a good point over on your blog about frequency of using scales – I find the same goes for the body composition reading. I try to get my reading every morning at the same time. There are inevitably fluctuations from day to day, but I understand why this is, and it’s interesting for me to keep an eye on. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to everyone, but for me, I find this gives me a much clearer idea of what’s going on than relying on a single weekly reading… I so need to write a post on this! Jx
I like the picture because it really does show how fat is bigger and wider while muscle is tighter but yet weighs the same. I think that’s why the scale doesn’t always tell the most correct story.
Thanks Hannah. Yep, it’s useful to see isn’t it?
Wow! very nice pic. I’ve always heard from co-members of a boot camp fitness programs that muscles weigh more than fat, I think your pic up there just confirmed it.
Thank you
Thanks to share the information. I also like the picture you give and the last sentence “I’d strongly urge you to measure more than just weight.” I totally agree with this. But you know lots of girls I know, they only believe is the scale. If the number is going up, they believe they are getting fat. My girlfriend is a good example, she wants get thin. But the problem she does not listen to me. She only looks the number on the scale. She doesn’t think the weight of fat and muscle. When we go to the Gym for a period, she just stop going because she is getting heavier. I tell her has is muscle, you can’t just see the scale. You may increase your weight, but losing lot of fat. But she can’t understand and won’t to listen. I feel sad for her. You are totally right. I also believe when you want to lost fat, weight is not that important. Also I believe scale is not important. You can’t tell how fat you are just based on the number on the scale. Exercise is the best way to lose fat and keep health. I hope she can agree with you after see your article. Thanks for your sharing your experience and nice picture.
Yes, the pictorial representation of fat vs muscles is very clear to understand. It also provides detailed information about having good muscles is great rather than having fat.