So Who’s Overweight?

If you are overweight, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are fat. Muscle tissue (which makes up most of our LBM) is an active tissue that burns calories in order to stay healthy. Even when at rest, muscles are still burning calories. Fat, on the other hand, does not need any calories; it just sits in its storage sites, stock-piling and doing nothing. Muscles are very heavy, much heavier than fat. This means that we can carry more weight in muscle and not be fat, even though the scales tell us we are heavier.

Imagine someone with a build similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. A very large percentage of his body is muscle, and he carries very little, if any, excess fat. If he used a traditional height/weight chart, however, it would probably tell him that he is overweight. This is because such charts do not account for the fact that muscle is heavier than fat. Therefore, although according to the chart he may be overweight, he certainly isn’t fat.

Similarly I have a very good friend, Carol, who is a fitness teacher. She is six feet two inches tall and weighs almost 180 pounds. This may sound a lot, but because her body has a large percentage of muscle and a relatively low percentage of fat, she is not fat. So again, although a height/weight chart may tell her she is overweight, she looks fantastic and turns heads wherever she goes.

As you can see from these examples, the scales do not always tell the whole story. What we need to look at is the body composition, not just the total weight.