#TBT - Keep the Goal the Goal

Another article from the archives. Enjoy.​

​I have this client.  Let's call her Joanne Bending, a totally random name to protect her anonymity.

Joanne told me she wanted to lose weight and look better.  A lot of people come to me with these two goals and I always ask them which is more important, weighing less or looking better?  Most say looking better.  So it is fat loss they want appose to general weight loss.  It's easy to lose weight, just don't eat enough protein and your muscles will waste away leaving you, what I call "skinny fat".  People who do lots of cardio are at risk of being "skinny fat", they may be slim, but don't have a desirable body shape and are still wobbly around the middle with no definition on their arms due to lack of muscle.  Joanne does not desire this figure, so I don't make her jog.  She eats well and lifts heavy, perfect for promoting fat loss and looking good.

I met Joanne today, she told me how good she was feeling, her training had gone well and she was looking better.  She then asked to get weighed, personally I didn't see the need as she had already stated how she looked and felt better, which was her goal, but I obliged, also measuring her body fat and muscle mass.  The scales showed a gain of 0.3kg, not much but still a gain.  When we looked at body fat and muscle mass, it actually showed that she had actually lost 0.6kg fat and gained 0.9kg of muscle, probably the reason she was looking better.  When you haven't got a lot to lose 1lb of fat off and 2lb of muscle on can make a big difference.

Being the objectionable character she is, she was not pleased.
I was a bit bewildered and explained how she had lost fat and looked better, exactly what she wanted.  Joanne proceeded to tell me how she used to weigh less and wanted to get back to that weight.
"Did you look better at that weight?" I asked
"No, I was flabby" she replied

After banging my head against the wall and using a lot of language that my mother wouldn't have been proud of, I sat her down and tried to explain again.

The moral of this story is that you need to 'keep the goal, the goal'.  Losing weight may be a sign that you're looking better, but it also may not and it can become a distraction that starts to sabotage what you want to achieve.