Lose Inches, not pounds

You really can melt away inches. It’s not marketing hype and it’s not based on some strange supplement or magic formula. It’s grounded in physiology and is based on fact. I’ve always had this fantasy of doing an infomercial and actually telling people the truth about how to lose fat. You know what I mean -- not the usual quick fix or fantasy machine that has you achieving six pack abs and a tight butt in 10 seconds a day. My fantasy may have to wait awhile, but at least I can share some of my insights with you here.

This week a member, told me how happy she was because her clothes were fitting much looser and that she had lost inches all over her body (yes, including her thighs, butt and "love handles"), however, the scale had not gone down! She went on to tell me that when I originally told her how to lose inches, she just couldn’t seem to buy into it. Guess what? She’s a believer now. She knows scale weight will drop in time, but that losing inches and a few dress sizes while maintaining the same weight has an almost magical quality to it.

There are some things about muscle versus fat that you should know. If you compare one pound of fat to one pound of muscle, you can see that the fat was much larger in size and volume compared to the one pound of muscle. The one pound of muscle may have appeared to be the size of a small compact tennis ball whereas the one pound of fat may have been three to four times the size and actually resembled Jell-O. That tells us that muscle is leaner and tighter than fat.

For every pound of muscle you gain, the body burns 30-50 additional calories per day. If you gain five pounds of muscle, that’s 91,000 additional calories per year that you’re burning. Increasing muscle helps to burn fat, stokes the metabolism, increases bone density and makes one look more pleasing to the eye. When fat is decreased on the body and slight muscle gains take place, it creates a more fit and symmetrical look.

I can hear the screams now, "Yes, but I don’t want to get bulky -- I don’t want to look like a bodybuilder." Who says you have to? Testosterone is the main hormone for making major increases in muscle. A woman has approximately one-third the testosterone compared to a man. So, you have nothing to worry about.

If you gain muscle and you increase your body fat, well then yes, you will look bulky. However, that’s because you’re simply eating too much. You’ll have to blame the excess calories on that one, not the muscle increase.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, how out of shape you are or how much total weight (body fat) you need to lose. Everyone should be doing some form of resistance exercise. Are you over 65 and injury-free? Do you need to lose 50 pounds or more? Yep, you still need and will benefit from resistance exercise like we offer in the studio.

The initial result will be a melting away of inches. The slight increase in muscle will stimulate the metabolism and help to burn more calories and fat. This might result in a loss of body fat, but a gain in muscle -- which would show as no weight lost on the scale. However, you would have actually lost fat. Not a bad deal at all.