Have you been exercising? Eating small meals throughout the day? Increasing the intensity of your workouts? Waistline is decreasing? Scale number increasing?
Well, you are not alone. You'll want a membership in this group!
Take me for example…
I never ever want to gain weight, fat that is. However, I love the look of my muscles. If they are getting bigger, I can see them without flexing, well they are increasing also in mass. If you are weighing yourself on a scale that does not distinguish fat and water from muscle tissue, then how do you know you are making progress?
It can be a depressing thing.
This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time that I dispel these faulty claims of weight lost through the scale prayer. It just does not lead to healthy thoughts, and therefore leads to unhealthy habits, such as poor eating, and slacking on the workouts. Stress causes weight gain and not the kind you want. Storing fat is the body’s response to stress.
The reason dieters yo-yo (celebrities are famous for it)is due to the low levels of mass building exercises, starvation, and diet pills. When they slack off, weight creeps back. The metabolism has slowed. The first sight of it shows in the waistline.
The waistline tells the story.
If your waistline is increasing, since it is typically the largest storage system for fatty tissue, then you are officially gaining weight. Stop the obsession with the scale. Most people who pray to the scale, suffer unhealthy weight, and gain. If your waistline is decreasing, you are building muscle.
Watch and see.
I have noticed weight gain, muscle increasing. How? My waistline is reducing, despite the size of my gluteus increasing. Yes. All of those lunges and squats have served to increase the size of my buttocks. It appears even bigger than it likely is due to the reduction in my waistline. My clothes were appearing smaller, but now seem to snug around booty. Yes. Something is happening. Now this is not just an increase behind me, but all over. I have used this muscle, the larger one of the body, to illustrate my point.
Do I want to continue the bulk? Hmm...that's a tough question to answer. I would like a leaner look. How do I achieve that? Increase cardio sessions, decrease weight training. Specifically, I have selected to increase the cardio and decrease the number of sets I perform from four to three. In addition, I have dropped the low rep of 8 in the original 15,12, 10, 8 sequence. Losing the eight, I have most of my weight training on the higher (cardio and strength) end.
But like any change, I am monitoring for results. The scale doesn't tell all. The tape measure is my friend.
As for the butt/glute...Lunges and squats are my all-time favorite. I just can't seem to sacrifice them. However, I can increase the cardio that I perform pre and post training.
My best advice? Keep striving for a healthy body through clean eating and exercise. Ditch the scale, pick up the tape measure, and let the clothes and your eyes tell you the progress you are making. If you are planning to use the scale, do so only once every month or once a season. With measurable progress, this number can tell you could signal loss of body fat. This way, as the number increases on the scale, you will have a mental representation of the reduction of your body fat percentage.
