Throw Out Your Scales: 21 Ways to Ditch the Diet and Lose Fat Forever

By Andrew Cate

Discover how to keep yourself motivated, conquer your food weaknesses and get off the dieting treadmill.
You are unique. What works for your friend or partner may not work for you. Why stick to a 'diet for everyone' when you can tailor your own weight loss plan to suit your lifestyle, no matter how busy you are? Inside are questionnaires, quizzes and goal-setting tables that will become part of your own personal action plan to help you ditch those excess kilos - for good. Easy to follow fat loss tools will put you back in control of your weight and your life. Discover how to keep yourself motivated, conquer your food weaknesses and get off the dieting treadmill.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Feb 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780730495802

Andrew Cate

Andrew Cate is a health, fitness and nutrition consultant who runs his own personal training studio. He was a weight-loss coach for the successful Gutbusters health program for many years. He writes for several magazines and websites, and can be heard regularly on ABC Local Radio.

Book preview

STRATEGY 1

IDENTIFY WHY YOU CAN’T LOSE WEIGHT (FAT)

‘Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, you can achieve.’

Mary Kay Ash

What is stopping you from losing body fat?

There are usually several reasons for people being overweight, and extra reasons for their not doing anything about it. Lifestyle habits have a strong influence over your body shape, and your ability to change it. These underlying barriers, or limiting factors, hold you back from getting results.

Client confession

I’ve tried everything to lose weight!

I’ve known clients who have wrapped themselves in cling wrap, eaten soup for weeks at a time, tried hypnosis, magnetic ear clips, powdered drinks, cellulite zappers, tummy-trimming gadgets and sauna suits. I’ve had people ask about what illicit drugs they could take to get thin, and clients who have put all the weight back on after liposuction. If you hear about a simple solution to a complicated problem, it usually won’t work. None of these examples do. There seems to be an obsession with any method of fat loss that doesn’t involve exercise or healthy eating. Save your money.

Let’s discover what’s holding you back

Awareness of your limiting factors is the first step in addressing them. When you discover why you have excess body fat, you will be in the best position to do something about it. The quiz on the coming pages is designed to help you find your limiting factors. You will be asked about your diet and exercise habits, and required to think about what’s working and what’s not.

Top ten—Common limiting factors

Busy lifestyle

Medical condition or illness

Stress/depression

Excessive television viewing

Inactive leisure time

Misinformation

Unhealthy environment

Reliance on cars

Eating out often

Genetics

Quiz—Find your limiting factors

‘For every difficulty that supposedly stops a person from succeeding, there are thousands who have had it a lot worse, but have succeeded anyway. So can you.’

Your limiting factors are …

All the barriers listed in the quiz could have an influence over your body shape. Go back over the quiz and highlight your ‘no’ answers. These are your limiting factors, the obstacles that are holding you back from getting results. Don’t feel intimidated if you’ve identified lots of limiting factors. They can all be conquered. Other people have overcome these same barriers, and so can you. Your limiting factors just show you a lifestyle habit that needs attention, or an area you may need to learn more about. If you answered truthfully, it will become clear what needs to be changed. Solutions to all these limiting factors will be covered in this book. The rest is up to you. The only real limit to your success is your desire to succeed.

Client confession

Let’s drink to your limiting factor

After analysing Matthew’s lifestyle, I realised that diet and lack of exercise were not to blame for his excess body fat. It was the two bottles of wine he was having with dinner every night. ‘My wife has a few glasses too,’ he pleaded. Matthew’s limiting factor was easy to identify. After encouraging him to have 3–4 alcohol-free nights a week, and cutting back on the other nights, his belt size dropped dramatically.

STRATEGY 2

THROW OUT YOUR BATHROOM SCALES

‘Scales are for fish.’

Yes, you can throw out the scales for good

I am deadset serious. Sure, it’s a quick, easy measure that you’re used to, but it’s also a completely inaccurate measure of your success. My agenda here is to convince you that total body weight is meaningless, and then give you another easy measure that is a better indicator of your health and body fat levels. Let’s debunk the greatest health and fitness myth of all: the bathroom scales.

Fat loss in focus—The language of getting lean

Weight, or total body weight—the weight of your whole body, including the bones, organs, muscles, fat, blood and other fluids.

Fat loss—not a catchy phrase, like ’slimming’ or ‘fat stripping’, but this one says it all. It involves monitoring and controlling all the different components of a healthy lifestyle: food, exercise, sleep, stress and attitude.

Body fat—a soft, greasy tissue that stores excess kilojoules.

Fat mass—the actual weight, in kilograms, of your body fat.

Fat-free mass—the weight of your body, minus the fat mass.

Removing stored body fat—more than just losing weight, this is the ultimate result for a leaner, energised, healthier body.

Percentage of body fat—your fat mass compared with your total body weight. For example, if a 100kg man has 30 per cent body fat, he has 30kg of fat mass and 70kg of fat-free mass. Ideally, men should be 15–20 per cent body fat and women should be 25–30 per cent.

Client confession

We can’t print that!

A very famous weight loss organisation (which I won’t name) commissioned me to write an article for their magazine on how long it takes to lose weight. When I wrote that it’s humanly impossible to lose weight continuously, such as 1kg a week, and that you should use a tape measure to gauge your success, they refused to print it. They continue to use weight goals as the ultimate measure of success, depriving their members of the real facts, and setting them up for an unnecessary emotional roller-coaster ride.

12 reasons to throw out your bathroom scales

1. You don’t know if you have lost body fat

Bathroom scales don’t actually tell you what you really need to know. When you lose weight, or gain it, you still don’t know how your weight has changed. Weight loss does not necessarily mean fat loss, and it’s excess body fat that is wobbly, uncomfortable and unhealthy. Fat loss will make you feel better and look better. Depending on your lifestyle, you can lose fat and gain weight, just as you can lose weight and not lose fat.

2. The scales are least accurate when you want them the most

When you first begin to change your lifestyle, it’s normal to want reassurance that this change from your old, comfortable, sometimes lazy lifestyle is worth it. People get very focused on results, and weigh themselves regularly. But when you first start to exercise, it’s normal to gain 1–2kg of muscle. You might even gain a little more if you are just starting resistance training (weights). If you use the scales to measure your success, you might feel disheartened because there is no change in your weight, when in fact you are going great. There are also times during fat loss when you will reach a plateau. This is normal: there is a period of adjustment where you won’t see any dramatic change in results, even if you are doing all the right things. Relying on the scales to see how you’re going might make you want to give up when you should be celebrating the positive steps you have taken towards better health and a better body shape.

3. Losing weight could mean you are celebrating muscle loss

You have probably heard that muscle weighs more than fat. That’s because it is very dense tissue, and it holds a lot of water. So if you go on a strict diet, or cut out carbohydrates and force your body to break down muscle tissue, it will look fantastic on the scales. But at what price? Any weight lost without exercise is usually around 75 per cent muscle and water loss, with only 25 per cent being actual fat loss. Yet muscle is the engine that burns fuel in your body, and is essential for long-term fat loss. You should cherish your muscle and try to retain it, not lose weight and just hope it’s not muscle you’re losing.

Client confession

Celebrity weight loss fraud

I know of a celebrity who gained a considerable amount of weight and then auctioned himself off to the highest bidding weight control program as a weight loss role model. The advertisements were seen on national television with the caption ‘Results not typical’. Be wary of the types of advertisements that create an expectation that you can lose 10kg a week for 10 weeks.

4. Gaining weight could mean you are healthier

Jumping on the scales and finding you have gained weight would normally wreck your day. But if you are exercising more and eating better, you will gain weight in the form of fluid and muscle. You will also lose body fat, but if you lose fat and gain muscle at the same rate, you may gain a kilo or two, because muscle is heavier. The more active you are, especially if you do resistance training, the less accurate scales are as a way of measuring fat loss. Gaining muscle doesn’t make you bigger, just firmer and heavier. It means you are getting stronger and fitter, and that’s certainly not something to get depressed about.

5. Losing weight could mean you are celebrating dehydration

Fluid levels cause your weight to fluctuate. This is more pronounced in women, whose fluid levels change throughout the menstrual cycle. The body is approximately 60 per cent water—this is a significant proportion of your total body weight. Fluctuations in fluid levels can cause your weight to rise and fall by up to 3kg in a single day. So you could weigh less in the morning than in the afternoon. Excessive sweating and partial dehydration will help you lose weight on the scales, so if you are dehydrated and feeling tired, you could hop on the scales and feel good about losing weight. It’s insanity. Just remember that when you drink again, or eat again after fasting, all that weight will come