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When you are on a diet and losing weight, it is very important that you take body fat measurements at least once a month. Not a lot of people know this, but you can lose weight and actually get fatter, your weight loss all depends on what type of weight you are losing from your body. Let’s look into this a little further. Let’s say you virtually starve yourself for one week and you manage to lose 10 pounds that week and the weight you lost was 8 pounds of muscle and 2 pounds of fat. You would of lost ten pounds but now you would actually be fatter than you was before. Now do you see the importance of measuring you body fat percentage and using this as your main tool for judging your weight loss.
Before I was the same as most people I would put loads of weight on, and then go on a crash diet and try to shift as much weight as I could in the quickest time possible. Boy did I make a huge mistake, my body’s lean muscle mass kept getting lower and lower which meant my body fat percentage has kept rising and rising. My current weight is 205 lbs and at 6 foot 2 inches tall my body fat percentage should be a lot lower than 24.4%. I’m training hard and eating better now, and I’m taking body fat measurements this Friday which I haven’t done for 2 weeks. Hopefully I will be at 203 lbs and at around 23.5% body-fat.
When I first started on my body fat reduction journey, I thought I could easily lose 1% body-fat every week. Looking at this now, I now know that I can’t do this. A body-fat reduction of about 0.5% each week is probably more realistic. I’m like everyone else though I want results and I want them now. The best way to do it, is give yourself 12 months to achieve your goals. In the past I have been able to lose weight very quickly, I have never looked at putting weight on as an issue. Because I always say to myself I can lose it just as easy as I put it on. I still can, but it’s not body-fat that I’m losing. This is the first time I have ever judged my weight loss off my body fat percentage and taking body fat measurements on a regular basis is definitely the correct way to go about it.
Setting this body fat blog up is the best thing I have done in a long time, it is keeping me motivated and already I have made some great friends online just through this blog. If you are trying to lose weight I highly suggest you start taking body fat measurements because losing fat is much more important than just losing weight. And by taking measurements you know exactly how much fat and lean body mass you are losing each week.
