If you have excess weight only in specific parts of your body, you still must look at yourself as a whole. It's not possible to spot reduce; in other words, you can't dictate that you only want weight to come off one place or another. In most cases your so called "trouble spots" is where fat will come off last, so be prepared to lose weight in your fingers (rings fall off) and your face (friends may ask if you're feeling all right).

If you work toward building muscle and reducing body fat you will eventually tackle those trouble spots though, and develop a better physique in process. Muscle tissue is active meaning it requires calories to be maintained. If you were stranded without a food supply, eventually your body would turn to its own muscle tissue as a source of nutrition first (muscles are protein) while saving fat stores for last. Simply put, fat is nature's way of ensuring survival during times of famine. That's why prevalence of heart failure kills someone who is severely malnourished. By building more muscle you become a more efficient energy burning machine which translates to mean you can eat more food! That to me is a good thing.

The More Active You Are, The More You Get to Eat!

That explains why some people can eat so much more than others yet not gain weight; your efficient energy burning friend simply has a greater proportion of muscle to fat than you. Muscle is more dense than fat. It's often said that a pound of muscle is heavier than a pound of fat, but truth is a pound is a pound. What they mean is a one pound volume of muscle is a smaller package than a one pound volume of fat, or put another way, fat is billowy and fluffy while muscle is sleek and compact. Lady No. 1 weighs 120 pounds with 30% body fat so she has 84 pounds of lean tissue and 36 pounds of fat, while Lady No. 2 also weighing 120 pounds but at 18% body fat is carrying roughly 98 pounds of muscle and 22 pounds of fat. Would you rather be Lady No. 1 or Lady No. 2? Which do you think takes up more space, 22 or 36 pounds of fat? I'd say 36 pounds of fat would be a lot bigger package than 22 pounds.

Face it, if you weigh yourself more than once a day, you are a serious scale addict, and if you let number on scale affect how you feel, you are probably a bit too involved with that appliance. Danger, danger! Step away from scale!

The scale simply cannot tell difference between muscle and fat, and while fat is bulky and lumpy, muscle is sleek and shapely. Muscle also gives you strength, agility and power. Muscle can be used as fuel, but it is not primary fuel source. Fat on other hand is a storage fuel for times of famine. It also shields our body's organs and provides a protective layer from outside world. Without some body fat we cannot survive, and without some muscle you'd not have strength to get out of bed. But while fat is necessary, many of us have a bit more saved up than is necessary. Most of us never consider our body's ratio of fat to muscle. We instead rely on bathroom scale. We've been told we need to weigh a certain amount, or be within a certain range to point that many who start eating well and exercising consistently abandon their plan when they don't quickly see a difference on scale. Even when their body is visibly changing, they still are disappointed if scale won't budge.

Consider for a moment, those first hints that something is changing: Your waistband may be getting looser, your rings may be slipping off, your face may start to look a little slimmer, and your shoes, yes your shoes will start to become too big for your feet. Many will start losing in hands and feet first. That's just dandy, I know. We all strive for skinny fingers and toes, but I didn't design body, I just own and operate one.

You may own and operate a car? Do you take care of it same way you take care of yourself? Do you store gasoline in trunk, in case you can't find a gas station? Probably not. Do you stockpile extra oil and batteries? No, probably not. Then why do you worry about dinner when you haven't finished eating lunch? Have you ever gone ahead and eaten something because you might get hungry later? Why do we worry so much about food when there is no scarcity that I've noticed? Where I live there is food at every corner, 24-hours a day, at bank, gas station and even neighbor's garage sale.

Interestingly, I've found that when scale suddenly showed a loss, greater than expected, it seemed to induce in me a desire to remedy that situation. I'd overeat that day and next, somehow unraveling any good I'd done previously. Even with all knowledge and sense in world, we still become unsensible in face of that judge, bathroom scale!

I think problem isn't that we are unhappy by numbers so much as we expect certain numbers. If you are dieting, then you are wanting to see a lower number, but what happens when you do? Do you reward yourself for a job well done? Do you decide you've done so well, you might as well have a treat? The scale habit can adopting other ways to measure your progress, and starting a daily journal which gives you a way to chart what you are doing. You're not stopping one thing so much as you are starting another. Ending one habit always involves beginning another.