If given the choice between weighing more but being leaner, or weighing less and being fatter, most people would choose the former. It’s a wonder then, why so many people choose fat over muscle time and again through the choices they make in losing weight.
The TV show, The Doctors, recently reported that a person’s metabolism doesn’t slow down naturally (as many people think). Instead, it slows down because people lose muscle mass due to decreased activity through the years.
Yet, the most common weight loss strategy for most dieters is that of a crash diet minus exercise. If you want to make your body one that puts on fat easily and burns it slowly, that is the ticket for you. Keep using that method and through the years you’ll have a perfect fat storing machine due to a slower metabolism.
When you don’t eat enough calories to perform the activities that your body naturally performs (e.g. breath, walk, yawn), as well as those that you require of it (e.g. knitting, running, cooking), your body will slow down it’s metabolism so that it can continue to do its job. Ultimately, that means a general slowing down of the ability to burn fat the more one engages in drastic dieting and little exercise.
It doesn’t take much energy to maintain a nice, big storage of fat but it does take energy to maintain muscle mass. This means that it takes calories to keep the muscle mass you have. The more muscle you have, the more calories it takes to keep it and the more calories you can eat without storing fat. This is what metabolism is all about.
Fantastic quick weight loss promises may be hard to resist but resist you must if you want to have the leanest body you possibly can have. Just let others continue down the road to more fat, less muscle, and less health through crash dieting. Remember the saying, “If your friends jump off a bridge, would you jump, too?” Be an individual and use what works. It may be slower, but you’ll win in the end while they will continue on the cycle of yo-yo dieting. The tortoise usually wins over the hare. Is making the decision of muscle vs. fat becoming easier?
Becoming the least fat person you can be starts with stopping the drastic dieting and focusing on an increase in muscle. Forget about the actual weight number on the scale. It’s useless. It tells you nothing about how much of the weight is due to firm muscle or flabby fat.
A lean, fit person weighs more than it appears they weigh. That’s a good thing. All that muscle has weight – what do we expect? Do you want to be healthy and lean? Dare to weigh more- increase muscle and increase metabolism. In the contest between muscle vs. fat, muscle should always be the winner.
