Health Issues: Weight/Size Maintenance

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed below are my own and are not to be taken as professional medical advice. If you want real advice on health matters, go to a real doctor and not to the blog of a random stranger whose avatar is a rabbit.

Okay, now that we’re through with the formalities, I’d like to start what I hope will be a series of posts on health and fitness by discussing of something that gets very little attention: weight maintenance.

Let’s face it, whether you’re happy as you are now or whether you think you need to lose some pounds, your goal, first and foremost, should be to not get any bigger. Weight loss, if desired, will follow from a solid base of weight maintenance.

But maintenance is harder than it sounds because of the way body composition affects metabolism. To put it simply, muscle speeds up your metabolism; fat slows it down. Gaining weight in the form of fat makes it more likely that you’ll gain more fat, thus slowing your metabolism further. Conversely, gaining weight in the form of muscle will help burn fat. And since muscle is more dense than fat, some people actually gain weight while losing inches.

This is why I believe scales are largely useless. Honestly folks, do you really care what the scale says? No one knows your weight unless you advertise it, but they can tell just by looking how big or small you are. So leave the scale alone!

Instead, make this simple promise to yourself: Never buy clothes that are bigger than the ones you have now.* If you have any “fat” clothes, put them in a box and take them to Goodwill.

Now you’re committed. You will either fit your clothes or you’ll have nothing to wear. No cheating by filling your closet with elastic waistbands, unless that's what you've got in there already!

Okay, so how do we maintain our current weight/size? Good question! This is highly individual and goes back to body composition and the matter of age. Getting older will slow down your metabolism, no matter what you do, so it’s important to get some kind of exercise each day (muscle burns fat, remember?) and to also have a realistic understanding of your diet. I’ll address both diet and exercise in future posts.

For now, let’s just accept that wherever we are today is our baseline, or perhaps more appropriately, our “Do Not Pass” line. Every day you stay at or below today’s size is a day to congratulate yourself. Many studies have suggested that stability and not weight/size in any given year is the best predictor of long term good health.

Be healthy and all other goals become possible!

* Note: Pre-menopausal women who are already on the skinny side of normal should expect to gain a dress size (one, not twelve!) after menopause. If it doesn’t happen, fantastic! But in general, this may be considered the exception that proves the rule of “never buy bigger clothes.”