If you are trying to lose weight it is no good just trying to shed "POUNDS" you need to burn "FAT"!

What is the difference I hear you shout-well it can be one heck of a lot if you go about dieting the wrong way (like so many of us do!).

There is a prevalent tendency amongst dieters trying to lose weight to focus on "scale weight" as the principle arbiter of their progress in getting slimmer. This notion is even sustained by doctors and other health professionals although they sometimes use the slightly more sophisticated concept of Body Mass Index (BMI) which is simply your weight divided by your height squared to give an "index number"

Why is measuring your "weight loss pounds" this way so inaccurate and misleading? Well, because measuring in this way simply gives you an indication based on your total body mass which, as well as the fat that you are trying to lose, contains a number of other constituents, the most important of which are "water" and "muscle mass"(although the weight of your internal organs, bones etc also

comes into it).

So, with some types of diets, it would be entirely possible for you to lose 10 pounds very rapidly and hardly loose any "body fat" at all! -Huh??-How come?

Most likely this would come about as a result of water loss, because many "quick fix" diet pills and diet remedies have a diuretic effect prompting the body to shed water. This not only does not help you to lose any "real weight" (i.e. Fat) but can actually be bad for your health.

Another factor can be a reduction in your overall muscle mass. This will also show up on the scales as "weight loss pounds" but in this case you are achieving the exact opposite of what you need to do to lose fat because this actually damages your metabolism and makes it harder for you to burn off any of your fat deposits in the longer term.

From this it can be seen that it is not so much the quantity of weight that you are losing that is important (although clearly this is one part of the goal) but also the quality of the weight loss (which wants to be fat loss and not water or muscle loss).

Therefore "Body Fat Percentage", rather than scale weight or BMI, is the key metric that anyone who is serious about achieving a long lasting and healthy reduction in their fat deposits should be using.

The good news is that nowadays relatively inexpensive "body composition" monitors are readily available that can directly measure this using a simple technique known as Bioelectrical impedance analysis.

You just stand on or hold the device which passes a tiny(and undetectable) electrical current though your body and directly measures the level of fat tissue present (some monitors can also measure things like your hydration level and muscle and bone mass).These handy devices are even available on Amazon and Ebay (see example listings at the bottom of this page).

If you are able to measure your weight loss progress directly in terms of fat loss, which is what you really want to achieve, then you have a much better chance of losing weight healthily and retaining that weight loss in the longer term. If, unbeknown to you, your weight loss regime is causing you to lose hydration and/or muscle tissue (even worse) then this can actually propel you on to that deadly dieters switchback of yo-yo dieting where after the initial reduction, the weight bounces back and you end up starting all over again.

Believe me, I know all this only too well, as a direct result of my own experience in the past. In fact before I embarked on my own fat loss "mission" a few years ago I was amazingly ignorant about

how to achieve this successfully in the long term.

As a result of my own experience and researches I produced an ebook entitled "Weight Loss Made Simple" to share some of this information and knowledge with others and if you would like a copy of this it is available from: http://www.WeightLossMadeSimple.net

So I urge you to avoid the pitfalls of measuring "Weight Loss Pounds" and start measuring your "Body Fat Percentage". You have a better

chance of slimming healthily and permanently if you do.