“PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE SCALE!” By Rick Sobona 1/6/12

“PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE SCALE!”
By Rick Sobona
MS - Exercise Science
NASM – Performance Enhancement Specialist

When my friend Keiko asked me to write a guest entry for her blog, I was a bit apprehensive. I'm not a professional writer by any means. Then I realized what she asked me to write about is something I'm always preaching about anyhow, so I should give it a shot. Essentially, this is going to be about “Why weight doesn’t matter!”

Allow me to add a qualifier to this statement. Weight, by itself, does not matter unless you are a boxer, wrestler, sumo wrestler (athlete’s with weight classes) or you are trying to calculate sweat rate to ensure proper hydration.

I can hear the comments now, "But Rick! Doctors are always telling people they need to lose weight!” Yep, they sure are! But what they should be saying is that people need to lose body fat. Body fat is just one of the components of weight. Body weight also includes lean muscle mass, bone mass, blood mass, body water and your organs to name a few. There's a huge difference between losing body fat and losing ‘weight’.

Allow me to elaborate further. Lance Armstrong was always a great athlete. When he got cancer and went through chemo he lost a lot of ‘weight’. Since Lance already had an extremely low body fat percentage what he ended up losing was mostly functional muscle. Losing muscle is NEVER a good thing but there’s no doubt that Lance was able to turn it to his advantage. “So if it worked for Lance, then why shouldn’t I want to lose ‘weight’?” Well, first, by show of hands, how many of you actually want to get cancer and go through chemo? No one? Good! The point people seem to miss is that he was able to redevelop his muscle, power and endurance at that lower weight yielding a greater power to weight ratio.

Could Lance have obtained the same results without cancer and chemo tearing away at his body? The answer to that is an unequivocal and resounding “Yes!” Time in the weight room and plyometric exercise combined with the proper training regimen on the bike would have still yielded the same results at his pre-cancer weight. The ideal is to put on lean, functional, extreme power generating muscle while losing as much fat as possible. It’s body fat that is your true enemy.

During the 32 Days of Spinervals challenge, I went from a weight of 211.2 pounds to 210.4 pounds. That’s only a weight loss of .8 pounds. For the work involved, those results seem rather disappointing if not downright heartbreaking. But it does get better! When you add in the fact that I went from 18.9% body fat to 15.4% body fat, the true results start to show through. Initially I was carrying around 39.91 pounds of ugly, non-metabolically active, calorie storing fat. After 32 days, I’m only carrying 32.4 pounds of fat. That’s a fat loss of 7.51 pounds. Not bad for 32 days worth of work.

But wait! It gets even better! My lean muscle mass at the start of the challenge was 171.2 pounds. At the end of the challenge I had a lean mass of 178.0 pounds. That’s a gain of 6.8 pounds of glorious, calorie burning, power producing muscle! But wait! There’s more! My bone mass went from 8.6 pounds to 8.8 pounds - an unexpected increase in my bone mass. Women worried about bone loss really need to re-read that last one again!

Too many numbers for you? If you’re more like my wife and think of numbers as “Geek Speak”, then let’s put this into everyday terms. I was wearing size 36 jeans that were pretty tight (ok, very tight) on my waist when we began this challenge. I put them on now and they are falling off my waist. If I don’t wear a belt, I can take my pants off by merely shoving my hands in my pockets. Fortunately, my thighs have developed enough muscle that they help keep my jeans up too. Loose in the waist and snug in the thighs - NICE!

In the past, would I have wanted to weigh in at 185 pounds again? Sure! But with age comes wisdom. Now that I’m almost 42 it’s no longer ‘weight’ that I want to lose, it’s fat. I’d like to reach 7.5% body fat and based upon my current muscle mass, bone mass, hydration, etc. that’s a weight of approximately 202 pounds. I’m still big for a triathlete or a cyclist, but the power I should be able to generate with the newly formed muscle and loss of fat should make my first season of triathlon a VERY interesting one!

If I had relied on my scale and gone by ‘weight’ alone, I would have never known how truly effective the challenge had been for me. I lost fat, gained muscle and even increased my bone mass. ‘Weight’ alone doesn’t give you that information. It doesn’t give you the true snapshot of what’s going on in your body. Invest in yourself and buy a good scale that provides you the information that really matters (I recommend the Tanita BC-554 at the very least). Learn how to use it right and forget about your ‘weight’!