Part I: Skinny Fat: Not Just Hollywood’s Problem |  Part II – Is Yoga Making You Soft?

Yesterday, I highlighted three major diet and exercise mistakes that contribute to the preponderance of skinny fat females:

1. An over-reliance on low-intensity physical activities.
2. Terrible exercise selection when they do resistance train.
3. Eating too many highly processed “diet” foods.

Unfortunately, simply acknowledging these behaviours as problematic isn’t enough. We need to dig deeper and tackle the root cause of skinny fatness: the fact that females seem to use body weight as the primary determinant of body image.

So sit down, grab a coffee and let’s begin.

Ideal Body Weight = Irrationality 101

Look, I hate to be the one to have to break it to you ladies, but most of you have a totally unrealistic concept of your ideal body weight. Not that I blame you, you’ve been fed a whole lot of half-truths your entire lives.

But the only way most females could achieve their theoretical “ideal body weight” would be to:

• diet in such a fashion so as to lose prodigious amounts of muscle mass
• perform ample amounts of cardiovascular exercise to make sure that muscle mass never returned

Now I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek, but sadly must acknowledge that these “weight loss” strategies are still the dominant ones being preached today. And it boggles my mind!

In a truly fascinating bit of gender psychology, body weight is one of those things that females obsess about constantly and most men don’t care about at all. As recent research highlights, women increasingly identify with a tiny, less curvy body shape as their ideal, whereas men continue to find thicker, curvier women, far more appealing.

In light of this disconnect, might it not be fair then to conclude that the bulk of the disordered body image issues and increased drive for “thinness at all costs” arises from how females judge each other, and not from any pressures placed on females by men?

And yes, this is a not so subtle jab at one of the excuses people use to justify the need for women’s only gyms.

So if the weak, waif look isn’t something men find particularly appealing, it makes you wonder why women have decided skinny fatness is a look they should strive for.

Of course, they don’t see it as striving for skinny fatness. Rather, they just see it trying to reach their “ideal body weight”.

Obsession: Not Just the Name of a Perfume

Being a nutritionist who specializes in fat loss, I have my fair share of female clients who have been, or are currently, in a state of skinny-fatness. Without fail, there comes a time when they’ll ask me, “How long will it be before I lose ___ lbs and get down to a body weight of ___?”

Since it seems that females are hardwired to obsess over these questions, I have now hardwired my answers.

To address the former: if you are willing to eat enough to fix your metabolism… a few months.
To address the latter: probably never.

Captain Compassionate, I am not. Well, better they hear the truth from from me than continue drinking the Chatelaine Kool-Aid!

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a client come to me complaining that the scale isn’t moving. At times like these, I like to cheerfully volunteer that maybe they’ve set their scale atop a natural magnet… but when that doesn’t even merit a smile, I have to brace myself for “the talk”.

Ahhh the dreaded talk. There isn’t a nutritionist or personal trainer alive who enjoys having to explain to a client why they are not losing weight. But what really complicates the whole issue of weight loss is the fact that so few individuals seem to understand the significance or mechanics of body weight change in the first place.

To revisit a theme I introduced in earlier articles, the fitness industry predominantly operates in black and white. When it comes to the issue of body weight, there are two prevailing camps:

1. In one corner, we’ve got those coaches who stress that, “individuals who faithfully track their body weight are more likely to maintain weight loss over the long-term“.
2. And in the other corner, we have the practitioners who advise all their clients to “throw out the scale because it lies“.

Definitely two divergent and seemingly contradictory viewpoints, which helps explain why so many people are misguided and confused when it comes to the importance of body weight in the first place.

But which view is correct?

As with most things in life, both statements have some truth to them… but they really don’t paint a complete picture.

What is Wrong with Weight?

The first statement, that people tend to maintain greater weight loss if they track it on a semi-regular basis, seems like a no-brainer. It’s really no different than retirement savings: individuals who invest monthly tend to wind up saving more than those who invest “whenever they remember to”.

Clearly consistent tracking is required on some level if we hope to produce long-term success. But my issue with the regular weight-tracking crowd isn’t over whether they are more successful, because the numbers clearly show regular tracking results in greater weight loss.

Rather, my problem stems from the issue of whether championing weight as the primary progress variable carries much value.

Before I get too far into this, let me clarify one thing: What we label body weight is actually body mass but that’s a physics argument for another day. Since everyone calls it weight, I’ll continue using that term just so no one is confused.

When you step on a scale, the number you see is total body weight. Often researchers will track a person’s health status based on a personal body mass index (BMI), which is just a relationship between your height and weight.

However, as the “throw out the scale because it lies” crowd has correctly identified, scale weight often provides incomplete information.

Take the graphic above. Both of these individuals are the same height and same weight (therefore they have identical BMIs as well). However, their bodies are clearly quite different.

The gentleman on the left has excellent bone density, ample muscle mass and minimal fat mass: in effect he is the picture of health. Conversely, the gentleman on the right is all flabby and likely soon to have a heart attack.

Is there even a question of which body type you would rather have?

Unfortunately, when you base your decisions solely on the scale, it is very difficult to determine whether you are becoming more like the buff guy or the chubby dude.

In light of this reality, we have to accept that progress on any diet and exercise program MUST involve tracking gains in fat-free mass (muscle, bone, etc.) separate from losses in fat mass.

When you do this, we call it measuring someone’s body composition because it allows us to estimate* the relative contribution of each component to the whole.

*always remember that no matter what body composition tool you are using, it is ALWAYS an estimate and subject to a varying amount of error. The only 100% accurate means of determining someone’s body fat is to kill and then dissect them… which tends to be bad for your renewal rate.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the limitations of relying on scale weight, let’s revisit the realities of conventional dieting.

Where Diets Go Wrong

I think most weight loss experts would agree that, in general, humans need to eat less and move more. That being said, the strategies preached by many popular weight loss programs are pretty pathetic.

Most calorie-restricted diets operate under a “the more weight you lose each week, the better” premise (Weight Watchers and The Biggest Loser, I am looking squarely in your direction).

In other words, no distinction is made whether you lose appreciable amounts of fat or muscle. Unfortunately, just cutting calories in the absence of resistance training tends to result in the condition where you also wind up losing a considerable amount of muscle mass. This is not good.

Not only does conventional dieting just make you a smaller version of your current self (i.e. going from 180 lbs and 25% body fat, down to 160 lbs, but remaining 25% body fat), it also leads to a condition where you end up with a significantly slowed metabolic rate.

This slowing of metabolic rate might not be such a dramatic problem if you could continue eating a low-calorie diet forever. Sadly, most humans become incredibly irritable and hungry when calorie deprived, which leads to them returning to their previous way of eating.

Only now they are eating more calories on top of having a sluggish metabolism to contend with… which leads to a delightful rebound weight gain!

And the creators of these programs grow rich with you having to sign up for another kick at the can!

If you didn’t understand this last bit, here are the Coles notes:

• Eating a little less = good.
• Eating a lot less = bad.
• Eating a lot less + no weight training = very bad.

Remember, if you haven’t optimized your diet and exercise program to protect muscle mass while simultaneously dropping fat mass, your plan will inevitably lead to failure.

You heard it here first people.

A Bit More on Body Composition

Although separating body weight into fat mass and lean mass is a big leap forward, the 2-component approach to body composition it still is a vast oversimplification.

A more accurate, and ultimately useful, approach would be to classify the human body into the following 6 components:

Six Component Model of Body Composition

• water
• fat
• protein
• bone mineral
• soft tissue mineral
• glycogen

I know by now you are muttering to yourself, “GT, I get it… weight alone doesn’t tell the whole picture…”, but there is so much more you need to appreciate than that.

Out of the six components I’ve listed above, some of them can change very, very rapidly whereas others can take months or years to change appreciably.

For example, water and glycogen levels can fluctuate significantly from day-to-day whereas protein and bone changes take months to meaningfully change.

Now why should you care? Because over the course of a day, depending on your diet and activity levels, your scale weight can easily swing up or down several pounds.

If you are someone who lives or dies by the scale, obsessively stepping on the scale at varying times of a day or even varying times of the menstrual cycle is a surefire way to give yourself an ulcer.

And depending on your method of assessing body composition changes, some of them (particularly bioelectrical impedance scales) are dramatically influenced by water shifts.

Remember, acute changes in water, glycogen status or even body temperature impact most methods of tracking body composition, so don’t assume that simply because you are using body composition and not weight that your methods are error-free, because that’s not at all the case.

Similarly, any “muscle” you think has cropped up only several days into starting a weight training program is not new muscle protein at all. Rather you are most likely observing increased muscle glycogen storage/water retention or potentially improved myogenic tone.

But new muscle? No. So don’t even bother trying to use that as an excuse for why you need to stop weight training… you are NOT going to get too bulky.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

Weighty Issues

So where does that leave us on the matter of tracking success on a diet and exercise program? We saw that weight was an incomplete measure, but then again, so too is the 2-component approach to body composition.

Does this mean that body weight and body composition are both worthless?

No. Both body weight and body composition are worth tracking, but we do need to accept that they are just two out of more than a dozen important variables that need to be tracked as part of any diet and exercise program.

What people fail to recognize is that you can easily change body weight but cause a number of other health variables to deteriorate, which all but guarantees failure.

Seriously – weight changes really are no more important than improvements in mood, digestive system health, complexion, VO2 max, pain, etc.

In fact, it’s only when you note concurrent improvements across all these domains that you are appreciably improving an individual’s cellular function, which is the real “secret” to fat loss, decreased risk of chronic disease, and improved well-being.

Imagine that: suggesting that we need to teach people about the importance of a multi-faceted approach to assessing their health and weight loss success.

I must be crazy!

So there you have it, an introduction to the issue of why so many females struggle to appreciably change their bodies despite following diet and exercise programs.

Obviously there is tons more that needs to be covered, but at least now you have an appreciation for some of the faulty assumptions built into so many popular approaches to weight loss.

For anyone interested in learning how to effectively change your own body or the bodies of people you work with, keep checking back in this space, as I’ll be making several announcements in the next couple of weeks about new coaching classes, online programs, and interviews that I’ll be involved with.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Related posts:

1. The Role of Exercise in Weight Loss: Part 2
2. The Role of Exercise in Weight Loss: Part 3
3. Total Body Overhaul: Crush Your Goals Today!
4. Plateau Busting: Keys to Restarting Weight Loss
5. Ladies, Cardio Sucks For Weight Loss