http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9674189
As you can see in the video what most people are doing wrong is focusing on the scales and not on how they fit into there clothes or look in the mirror.
Fat Or Muscle?
Lets put it another way, would you like 5lbs of muscle or 5lbs of fat on your body, they both weight the same so on the scales you would still be the same weight. But would you look the same?
As you can see in the image above the 5lbs of fat (in yellow) would take up more room in your body frame compared to the 5lbs of muscle, making you look slimmer even though you still weighed the same weight.
The Common Mistake?
Most people believe that hitting the cardio trail (walking, running, cycling, etc) is the way to the new you. Yes, you might lose weight to start with because of the increase in activity if you haven't done any exercise of late, but as you can see in a previous post i made Acceptable in the 80's part 1 the research isn't behind steady state cardio for fat loss.
As Monica said in the video the KEY to losing fat and completely changing your shape permanently is resistance training.
Resistance training helps you to build lean muscle tissue, which in turn helps to speed up you metabolic rate. Over the years your metabolic rate slows down as you loss lean muscle tissue and causes you to put on weight and fat. This is one reason to give resistance training a go if you don't already.
Another reason to give resistance training a go and keep off the fat, is for health benefits. As it mentioned in the video the areas that you hold your body fat can be very dangerous to health. The belly region in men and women can be very dangerous to health with causes being heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, to name a few.
In Conclusion
STOP focusing on the scales and start focusing on your shape, add the resitance training to your program and see the changes, and even better than that take pictures over the week and see your shape change and feel better in your clothes.
