You might not be as overweight as you think:
Dieting is largely concerned with weight loss, not fat loss. For example, A 6 foot tall model weighing 130 lbs can be underweight according to the charts, but she could very well be carrying up to 39 lbs of body fat.
According to current medical definitions, a person is obese if they have a fat percentage of 30% or higher. So our tall, skinny model is technically obese.
On the other hand, according to current weight charts, body builders, athletes and fitness fanatics may be overweight, yet they only have fat percentages of 5 to 15 %. This is because muscle weighs more than fat.
So, a 6 foot tall heavyweight boxer who weighs 240 lbs would be considered obese by the charts, even though his body indicates otherwise.
So what does this mean to you?
Don’t set yourself an unrealistic target, based on how much the “experts” think you should weigh. It’s far more sensible to aim to be a certain size, based on a time when you were slimmer, or a relative with a similar bone structure to you.
Don’t make the same mistake I did when I was 18!!
I was 5′ 8″, weighed 168 lbs, and had spent the entire summer exercising and watching my calories. I was slimmer than I had been since hitting puberty — in fact; I was so lean that there wasn’t enough body fat to cover my ribs. I had even been weight training and toned myself to have slim hips and thighs.
Yet during a routine medical exam, a doctor told me that I was overweight and needed to lose 10 lbs. I was devastated because, being young and gullible; I took what he had said to be true!
The next day, I decided to cut my calorie intake to 800 a day. I was determined to lose those 10 lbs, come hell or high water! I weighed myself every day and even recruited other teenage girls to join me in my crusade to lose weight.
Within weeks, we were all transformed into diet-obsessed, depressed bingers. I didn’t lose a single pound on that diet, but that episode triggered over a decade of yo-yo dieting, guilt, denial, and shame.
The moral of the story is to eat sensibly - stop counting calories, fat grams, GI, carbs or whatever nonsense the experts tell you to count.
In fact, don’t even “go on a diet”. That suggests a temporary state of affairs.
Just restrict the amount of junk food you eat to one week a day, and eat a sensible balanced diet for the other 6 days of the week. I show you how in my metabolism-boosting plan, Metabolism Secrets.