Below is a short article I wrote last year that I never sent in for publication. Enjoy.

I’ve been working as a strength coach and personal trainer for close to six years now, and I have trained a wide variety of women. In my experience, most tend to have a certain “look” they’re after (think: Jessica Biel).

To achieve this look, women need to do three simple things: lift weights, eat more protein, and more importantly, throw away their scale.

While the scale can be an indicator of progress (especially for those women who need to lose 20+ lbs for health reasons), I do feel that many women tend to put too much emphasis on it and are neglecting the big picture.

The majority of women can understand why it’s important to lift weights, and eat more protein from a body composition standpoint. However, when it comes to suggesting they throw away their scale, it’s as if you were saying they should dump their best friend. Considering that most women have a love/hate (emphasis on hate) relationship with the scale, I’m surprised more women don’t just chuck it out the window and be done with it forever. Besides, I think it’s only fair since we men are always forced to throw away our favorite t-shirts regardless of how awesome they are.

Many women make the mistake of equating progress with the number on the scale going down. If they don’t see the number going down on a weekly basis, they feel they’re failing. Let me make this simple. The scale can be very misleading and in a lot of ways, invalid. How do you know the weight you’re losing is fat and not valuable muscle? You should be more concerned with what the mirror is telling you. Are you losing inches around the body? Do your clothes fit better? Perhaps these results are less quantifiable and harder to notice, however, the sooner you realize that these are better indicators of progress, the better off you will be.

Without getting overly technical, one lb of muscle weighs the same as one lb of fat, albeit takes up 25% less space. This is why you will often see contestants on the television show “The Biggest Loser” weigh the same as many professional athletes, despite being the twice the size. Following a resistance training program helps build muscle which increases strength and firmness. Aside from that, muscle is also metabolically active tissue which will also help you burn more fat. In essence, someone might see very little overall weight loss or even GAIN weight in order to achieve “the look.” The latter is especially true for petite women.

As an example, a 5 foot 4 ,140 lb woman with 25% body fat wants to look leaner and achieve that “toned” look. She wants those flabby arms to go away and she wants to fit into those pair of jeans that she used to wear back in college. To do so, this particular woman feels she should lose weight and get down to 110-115 lbs. If she takes that course, she may look thinner, but at the expense of looking older, emaciated, frail, and weak. In other words, she could totally pass for an Olsen twin.

Let’s take the right course instead. Six months later the same 5’4” woman has followed a resistance training program (which is also great for strengthening bones and preventing osteoporosis), changed her diet to include more protein (ie: chicken breast, lean beef, eggs, cottage cheese, whey protein shakes) and less refined carbohydrates (ie: cereal bars, bagels, 100 calorie snack foods), and most importantly, she threw away her scale. Now she’s 135 lbs with 18% body fat. She lost eleven lbs of fat and gained six lbs of lean muscle, for a net loss of only five lbs. But she looks like she lost 15 lbs. She’s not “skinny-fat.” She’s stronger and healthier. And she can fit into those jeans no less!

In a nutshell there are a lot of things that have to fall into place in order to attain “the look” that you’re after. Nonetheless, I do feel that if more women would put less emphasis on the scale to gauge progress and focus their attention on other indicators such as losing inches, the better off they will be. What are you waiting for? Throw away that scale!