If you’re like a lot of dudes, your goal for the coming year is “to lose weight.”
Really though, you don’t want to lose weight, you want to lose fat. And this distinction matters because it relates to how you’re going to measure progress towards your goal.
The most common way to measure fat loss is with a garden variety bathroom scale. But the number on a scale represents your overall body weight, which includes not only your fat, but also your muscles, bones, organs, and lots and lots of water.
Because a scale doesn’t only measure fat gain/loss, it doesn’t always give you an accurate picture of your progress. You may be feeling and looking trimmer, but find that you’ve gained a couple pounds when you hop on the scale. So have you gained fat, or does this added weight represent a gain in muscle or water?
After a weekend of eating salty restaurant food, you can put on a few pounds of impermanent water weight that you’ll shed in a matter of days. Read more…
