Episode 11. Fat Loss vs Weight Loss Why the Scales are not Enough

Fat Loss vs Weight Loss: Why the Scales Are Not Enough

Most women judge progress by body weight alone — but that number doesn’t tell the whole story.

In this episode, Ginny explains why fat loss, not weight loss, should be the real goal, especially for midlife and mature women.

In This Episode:

The difference between fat loss and weight loss
Why the scales can be misleading
What “quality weight loss” means
Why muscle preservation is essential
How body composition affects health and appearance
Better ways to track progress
How to detach emotion from the scale

If you’ve ever felt frustrated by slow or stalled weight loss, this episode will help you understand what’s really happening inside your body.

When you are ready, there are 3 ways you can work with me.

Join my free Facebook group

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Join my 12-week PROGRAM - limited spots available

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Work with me privately online or in person.

Email me for details [email protected]

Episode Transcript

I am feeling amazing at the moment.

We have a saying at Outlook,

Uh, we call it feeling vitally annoying, but I think Kenny thinks I'm annoyingly vital.

can be either way round. But anyway, I am feeling just fabulous, and I'm not sure whether it's my food,

Whether it's my exercise, whether it's my sleep,

The supplements I take, or my mindset.

I know it's not genetic, because I don't feel great all of the time.

So, there's something, at the moment, in that combination, you know, I'm 66,

And I feel like I felt at 36,

And my goal is to still feel like this at 96.

Anyway, today we are talking about fat loss,

As opposed to weight loss, because this is something that comes up

All of the time in my work, and in fact, we were talking about it last night in the members meeting,

And I'm sure we'll be talking about it tonight again in the 12-week meeting.

Um, it is, you know, it's an ongoing fight I have with people.

To some extent, it just comes up

so much. My message is, please do not solely judge

your progress, or your measure of success by a number on the scales.

Definitely do not judge your worth as a human being, or as a woman, by the number on the

My goal is to detach all emotion from it.

It is just data. It's just

a number. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just a number.

When it comes to tracking your progress,

You know, we want to know that you are losing body fat.

We don't want to lose muscle,

or water, or if you do keto, glucose out of your muscle, glycogen.

We don't want to lose bone density,

We don't want to have fabulous weight loss, and it turns out it was just a poo, and we don't want to be losing our hair, for that matter, either.

We want quality weight loss, if that is our goal.

And quality weight loss, quite frankly, is

fat loss. That is what we're interested in.

You know, one kilo of body fat

takes up a lot of space. If you're watching on YouTube,

This is the amount of space a kilo of fat, of your body fat, takes up.

It takes up a lot of space, especially when it's wrapped around your heart and your lungs and your internal organs.

Especially when it is starting to thread its way through your liver and your other organs.

On the other hand, a kilo of muscle is under a third of the size. It's about that big.

So, when it comes to body composition, or how big you are,

You know, we want to be losing fat, not muscle, for all kinds of other reasons that I always bang on around.

about. But, you know, it's just knowing that.

We want health.

We want to be a size, we might want to be a shape,

we want to have lots of energy, but we don't necessarily want to be or need to be,

just a number on the scales. So, I…

Really, really encourage you to use other metrics.

At Outlook, we use body fat percentage.

Um, and the best way for me to explain that to you

is, let's say, if you weigh 70 kilos,

And we put your… this is very crude, but we put your body into two compartments, right?

One is your actual body fat.

And the other is everything else. So that's your muscles, your bones, your internal organs, the fluid that you're carrying, your blood,

The food, everything that you've eaten and drunk today, your poo, it's everything, right?

So, there are ways of working out how much of you, crudely, unless you do the DEXA scan, crudely, we can work out how much of you

is fat, and how much of you is everything else.

So if you weighed 70 kilos,

and you were 30% fat.

That would mean 10%, 7 kilos, 3 7s of 21, you would have 21 kilos of fat.

Once we know that, we can track it.

And we can see, without getting too obsessed about it, but it gives us an overview

Of what kind of quality your weight loss is. Is it good, or could it be better?

Is it great for your health, or could it possibly be detrimental to your health?

Later on. So,

In my Outlook programs that are online, we use a thing called the US Naval Method,

And I get my clients to take 3 measurements every week,

One is around their neck,

One is around their waist, and one is around their hips.

And from that, we can crudely work out an approximation of their body fat percentage, which is really useful. People always say to me, why the neck?

And that's because, you know, if you get very overweight, or if you sleep with someone who's overweight, they snore.

And they may possibly have sleep apnea. Many of my clients have sleep apnea to begin with.

But by the time they finish working with me, it's gone. They no longer need that CPAC machine at night.

And that's because one of the places we store fat is through here, around the carotid artery.

So we use neck, waist, hips.

If you come and see me in the clinic, I use the calipers,

Which I've been using for years, I'm quite deft at it, and that gives us a really good idea. I use measurements and the calipers.

personally, I use both of those, and I also get a DEXA scan done.

About once a year, or once every couple of years, and that…

you know, it gives me a good idea of what's going on, where my fat is stored, how my muscles are doing.

Having said that, don't rely on the scanners that you see in the gyms.

Don't please, and don't rely on body fat percentage scales.

Because they are not very accurate at all. A tape measure is going to be more accurate.

So, you was talking about tape measure, we really want, for health, as women, this is women, not men,

As women, we want our waist measurement to be under 88cm.

If your waist measurement is under 88,

you have… you don't have an unhealthy amount of fat,

sitting around your internal organs, your viscera. You do not have visceral fat sitting around.

your digestive organs, basically. So, under 88.

Another one that I really love and use is your waist-height ratio.

So, if you measure your waist, narrowest part of your waist, in centimeters,

And then you take your height,

And you divide your height into your waist measurement, that gives you

a percentage, not a percentage, a number.

So, for instance, for me, let's say if my waist is 69 centimeters, and I'm 167 tall,

that if I divide 167 into 69, I get 0.41.

And that needs to be under

0.5 for health. So that's a very useful thing to track as well, and I do that with some of my, um, one-on-one online clients, because it gives me a really good idea

of how we're going. Another metric, of course, is your clothes. How are your clothes fitted?

Because we want to be a size…

You know, we want to be a size 10 or a size 12, or a size 14.

Not a size 69 kilos, or 62 kilos, or 75 kilos, right?

doesn't make sense. It's ridiculous, and you can see that it's ridiculous to judge your progress.

on the scales. We want to be a size and a shape. We want to be fit, we want to have energy, we want to be healthy.

So, body composition is really the most important thing, and that means keeping muscle mass as you lose weight.

burning fat is the most important thing.

That is what quality

weight loss is, and if you lose fat and maintain or increase your muscle,

as you lose weight, you are far more likely to keep that weight off long-term

And to keep it off far more easily long-term, without that repound.

And that… that applies to people who are on the GLP-1 agonists as well.

You know, if you're not careful, it's very easy to lose a lot of weight, that is muscle mass.

Not fat mass. So we're trying to ensure against that.

Three things that we do at Outlook to help with that. We make sure that

your nutrients are quality, that you're getting enough of the right kind of food to support your muscle mass.

And that means making sure that you have enough fi… enough protein at the right times,

And enough fibre.

The other thing is hydration, because muscle is 70% water.

So the other thing is making sure that your hydration is good, so your nutrition,

your hydration, and the other thing that I often feel I'm banging my head against a brick wall is to do some form of strength training.

So those are the three things that you can do to ensure that

Most of what you lose, if not all of it, is fat

Mass, not

Muscle mass is so, so important.

The other thing is, please…

Don't aim too high.

Aiming to high leads to you beating yourself up and giving up, quite often.

But also, remember, when we're trying to lose fat, we're

fighting our female biology and physiology, which is geared to hang on to fat.

So we want to take it easy.

We want to go slow, we want to honour our body. I know your brain is screaming right now, no, no, no, no, no, I want to lose 20 kilos in

12 weeks, or whatever.

But the chances are, if you do that,

You're not just losing 20 kilos of fat, I can assure you, and you will put it back on.

I would say at the most, you want to aim for somewhere around

500 to 800 grams a week. Remember how big that kilo of fat is? It's a lot!

It's a lot of change for your body to code with.

So, if you're aiming for around 500-800 grams a week, that's going to give you between 6 and 10 kilos over 12 weeks.

Which is totally realistic.

And totally sustainable.

You know, you've got to be in a big deficit to burn a kilo of fat a week, and most people will not sustain

a kilo of fat, week after week after week as a fat loss.

So, just… just think about that, you know, and if you're losing more than a kilo a week, I can guarantee…

that it won't all be fat. It may be fluid, it may be glycogen, it may also be muscle tissue, so…

So, just to simplify it,

Don't make the scales your only metric

Do not judge your progress or your self-worth

by a number on the scales. They are data. They are one measure to see that you're going in the right direction.

Use body fat percentage, or your tape measure,

Take that waste-height ratio, that's a really, really useful one.

How are your clothes fitting?

Maybe, like some of my clients, you have a pair of pants that you try on every week.

I had one lovely lady. Those pants lived in my office, in my clinic, and she would come in, you know, once a week, and then once a fortnight,

And to start with, they literally couldn't pull those jeans up above her knees.

And by the end, they were loose around the waist. So that's a, you know, that's a really…

far better way, really, of measuring success.

them beating yourself up for not being a number.

Um, aim for slow and steady.

quality weight loss. We want quality over quantity.

Because then it will stay off.

And optimize your protein,

Your fiber, your hydration,

And strength train, please, please, please, strength train.

Uh, that's me on fat loss for this week.

There's no podcast next week, because I'm having a procedure done on my bladder.

On Monday. And I'm not sure whether I want to broadcast this across the

autosphere. We do talk about it in my programs, because it's something that comes up for a lot. A lot of women

through menopause will get stress incontinence.

A lot of women who have had babies, who have wrecked their insides, can you tell my voice?

changed a little bit. Whether they have a strong pelvic floor or not will suffer from stress incontinence.

And I am finally, finally going to do something about mine.

So that's next Monday. I will come on here, not next week, but the following week,

And I will tell you how it went, what I had done, how I'm feeling about it, in the hope that

It may help someone else who is feeling stuck,

or embarrassed, or who finds that stress incontinence is stopping them doing things that they love to do.

Uh, so we'll do that, and then the following week, we'll be back on to

food, movement, mindset.

If you would like a hand with any of those things, I'll put the link below. You can jump onto my online program. There's a 12-week reset program,

That leads into my membership.

Or, you can work with me one-on-one, online, or in my Waihe clinic,

Just by flicking me an email, and I'll put my email address below as well.

Have a fabulously, annoyingly vital, or vitally annoying week.

And I will see you back here in a couple of weeks' time.

Episode 11. Fat Loss vs Weight Loss Why the Scales are not Enough

Fat Loss vs Weight Loss: Why the Scales Are Not Enough

Most women judge progress by body weight alone — but that number doesn’t tell the whole story.

In this episode, Ginny explains why fat loss, not weight loss, should be the real goal, especially for midlife and mature women.

In This Episode:

The difference between fat loss and weight loss

Why the scales can be misleading

What “quality weight loss” means

Why muscle preservation is essential

How body composition affects health and appearance

Better ways to track progress

How to detach emotion from the scale

If you’ve ever felt frustrated by slow or stalled weight loss, this episode will help you understand what’s really happening inside your body.