Lean muscle mass is essential for preventing bone injuries. Unfortunately, when we lose weight, we lose lean muscles first, not unwanted body fat. This reduction in muscle mass is not noticeable when we use a bathroom scale to monitor weight loss. In addition to body weight, many people also measure body fat percentage. Reduction of body fat used to be an obsession amongst bodybuilders. The availability of bathroom scales capable of producing different body measurements at once, including body fat percentage, has changed how we assess the weight loss progress. We can now see our weight and fat percentage every morning. But what is a healthy body fat percentage? It will depend on your age and gender. Some sources say that you are overweight if your body fat percentage is above 35%. What is healthy body weight? Calculate your BMI (Body Mass Index) by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in meters. If the number is above 30, you are overweight.
Next time you are on a mission to lose weight, frame your goal differently: "My goal is to maintain or improve lean muscle mass by introducing the following changes into my lifestyle.....". By keeping your mindset on increasing muscle mass, you will soon notice a reduction in body weight, body fat and waist circumference.
If you set your goal to increase your lean muscles mass, you will get stronger and gain many health benefits. More importantly, you will gain psychological power over your self-sabotaging habits. By concentrating on muscle mass percentage's increase instead of weight or body fat percentage's decrease, you create a more positive mindset. It will empower you to commit to a resistance training program and adhere to your new nutrition plan. It would be best if you stopped checking your body weight which is a poor indicator of your progress. It naturally fluctuates, and the intermittent backwards results may demotivate you.
How do you measure lean muscle mass? Some scales will provide you with this information. You will find other methods available in the gyms or health clinics such as BOD POD and InBody Scanner. However, the DEXA scan is considered to be the gold standard in body composition measurement. Check out my results after seven months of resistance training. My goal was to improve lean muscle mass. In the process, I lost almost one kilo of body fat.
