Fat Vs Weight - The Fitness Debate

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

02 Mar 2006 02:42 PM

In a previous blog I was talking about the fact that one size of fitness does not fit all. There's a lot of reasons why size matters in fitness and why one size cannot possibly fit all of us. That reason is the great fitness debate or for those of you just joining us:

The Fat versus The Weight

This debate rages on and affects every single person who studies fitness and looks into a fit and healthy lifestyle. Why? Because scales suck. That's the base answer, but truthfully the scale is an incredibly bad tool to measure personal fitness. It was never designed as a fitness tool. It's a tool designed to measure weight.

Scales in a grocery store are used to determine cost. Scales in a physician's office are used to measure how much medicine you may need if the doctor has to write a prescription. Those are both pretty excellent uses for a scale. But looking at a number on a scale to determine whether or not you are fit and healthy?

Pffft.

Health experts should know better, but everyone gets caught up in the weight frenzy. On the other hand, I've been 'overweight' for years and I've never had one doctor say boo to goose to me about it. Two of my doctors even laughed when I asked them why not?

"The answer is simple." He said to me. "You have great blood pressure, you work out regularly and you've got a lot of muscle. All our other numbers and tests tell us you're doing great. The scale's not a good number for fitness."

I've hugged those words to myself ever since. I do not measure my weight as a mark of my fitness nor do I look at weight gain as a sign that my working out isn't exactly working out. Instead, I recognize the fact that body fat is a lot different from weight and that my muscles weigh a lot more than my body fat does.

Here's a better look at it, if you will:

Here are two women, they both weigh 140 pounds. The first one wears a size 14 and the other wears a size 8.

Why?

Simple. One of the women has a body-fat level of 35% and that means that 49 of that 140 pounds is body fat. The other woman only has 16 percent body fat and 22 pounds of muscle. They weigh the same, but what makes up the weight is vastly different.

Truth be told, even though they have the same weight, the woman with the greater muscle mass likely has a trimmer, fitter look to her. She probably doesn't stress as much and she continues to burn extra calories even when she's not working out because more muscles requires more fuel.

So for each extra pound of muscle you put on, you're burning around 35 to 50 calories extra in a day. So if you lose 10 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle you will go from burning 10 to 15 extra calories a day to 500 calories a day.

BIG difference.

So the next time you feel like getting discouraged from your fitness regimen because the scale doesn't move, throw the scale out. It's not a measuring tool for your fitness. Check your dress size, check how you feel, check your stress levels and even check how often you are getting sick. If your dress size changed, you're feeling great and you're not stressing and every cold coming down the pike doesn't impale you - guess what? I don't care what the scale says, you're in a lot better fitness than you may think.

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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