That dreaded moment we step onto the weighing scales, we are confronted by a reading. We tend to put quite a lot of importance on the number presented to us, and it has long been the cause of great distress for many people around the world. It can hold the power to make or break our self-esteem, and prod us into action or despair. But what exactly does the infamous number mean?

Fluid is the first to go and where lack of nourishment is involved, muscle will be next- Matthew Muscat Inglott

To be precise, it is the measure of force exerted by gravity on the mass of your body, acting against the surface you are standing on.

The mass of your body is in turn made up of a number of physical elements. These elements include muscles, bones, internal organs, fluids, and fat to name a few.

Each individual type of material in isolation only represents a fraction of our total mass. Fat, for example is only a small part of the equation for most of us.

When considering the popular goal of losing weight, it is a fair assumption you would not really like to remove bones or internal organs from your system. It is also fair to assume you wouldn’t like to lose fluid or muscle. All the organs in our body require hydration for optimum functionality.

When we lose fluid, we impair performance and place the body in danger of sickness or injury. Muscles likewise are important because they produce movement and generate body heat. Fluids and muscles therefore are crucial elements for sustaining life and should not be sabotaged.

So if bones, internal organs, fluids and muscles represent the majority of our weight, then why are we so concerned with losing it? When we step on the scales in pursuit of a healthier leaner body and face off with the fearsome number, just like a sentence taken out of context, we simply aren’t getting the full picture.

When weight-loss is achieved too quickly, as in a crash diet, it generally tends to come in undesirable forms. Fluid is the first to go, and where lack of nourishment is involved, muscle will be next. This puts our health in danger and even worse, sets our body up in the perfect state to regain all the weight we lost, and then some.

This happens because with less muscle, the body requires fewer calories to sustain itself. This essentially means we need less food than we did before. So out of the same amount of food we ate before the muscle-loss happened, more of it is superfluous.

And what happens to superfluous food? You guessed it: it migrates straight down south to tummy and thigh country. This low-muscle/high-fat composition ratio can then only be corrected through physical exercise.

There are rare instances where fluid loss might actually be desired. Take a boxer or wrestler weighing-in before a bout. They might be a kilo or two over the limit of their weight category, and require a quick method for reducing weight before the official weighing-in procedure. Using a sauna is a popular method of weight loss in such cases, and could indeed result in a loss of anything up to two kilos.

In this dehydrated state, a boxer or wrestler could weigh-in and immediately afterwards proceed to drink two kilos of fluid, thus rehydrating in time for action. Any coach will tell you, however, that even in these specialised circumstances this practice is far from desirable.

It is even less desirable for those of us with no competitive aspirations whatsoever. Heat treatments provide many wonderful benefits. However, permanent weight-loss is certainly not one of them. Any weight loss acquired in this manner is temporary and will immediately be undone by drinking a few glasses of water.

So what exactly do we have to lose? There is only really one type of body tissue most people are interested in losing, and that’s fat. Fat-loss is the key term here, not weight-loss. If you are officially classified as overweight, then fat will represent a higher percentage of your overall weight than normal.

Measuring overall weight therefore gives us a good indication of your fat-loss progress initially, but the more you lose and the closer you get to your healthy weight according to national guidelines, the less reliable this method becomes.

When you come into a healthy weight range, body composition becomes the key concept, not overall weight. Body composition takes into account the all important ratio of muscle to fat. The fact that two men might be exactly the same height and weight tells us nothing about their body composition.

We could have an 80-kilo sports hero of average height with Adonis-like proportions, rippling muscles, and not an ounce of fat, and we could conversely find an 80-kilo couch potato of the same height with a flabby belly, and limbs appearing no more muscular than pencils.

Muscle weighs more than fat, so sometimes, just a little increase in muscle mass combined with a decrease in fat could result in an increase in overall weight, despite the fact excellent progress has actually been made. When your weight plateaus, you’ll need to explore alternative methods of measurement.

Something as simple as measuring the circumference of your waist can give you a more accurate indication of fat-loss. If your problem areas like your tummy or thighs are getting smaller, then you know you’re on the right track whatever the scales might say.

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