I am the poster boy for this one, probably
because I started this journey back in 1983
at a scrawny 95 pounds. That’s right, I
wasn’t even heavy enough to be a 98-pound
weakling. If you also started off as a little
guy, you probably also took immense joy
in watching your bodyweight on the scale
creep ever upward as the years of dedicated
training and eating went by. If you were even
close to being a hardgainer, you became
not only proud of how much you weighed, but also very protective
of that number. You did not want to see it go down any more than
a stockholder wants to see the price of his shares go down. You
worked much too long and hard to put that weight on to part with
even one precious pound. Let’s say you started your diet off at 240
pounds. A few weeks into it, you might be down to 225. For many
of us, panic starts to set in. Once we hit 220 or under, the real
mind games commence. Oh no, I’m shrinking! I’m wasting away to
nothing! Going back to the typical scenarios I’ve both experienced
and witnessed related to competitive bodybuilders, many fail to get
in shape because they had a weight in mind when they started the
diet that they believed was their target weight. For example, plenty
of guys have started dieting at about 250 pounds and assumed they
would be at the very top of the heavyweight class, which is 225¼
pounds. Many times, they underestimated how much fat they were
actually carrying, They get down to something like 225-227 and decide
they’re in shape, even though anyone with an experienced and critical
eye for physiques would tell them they still had at least 12-15 more
pounds to lose to be in very good condition. Believe me when I say
I know how difficult it is to be lighter than you are comfortable with.
With all my diets, I never wanted to lose weight, only fat. Obviously,
this was an insane way to think about the process, because unless
you somehow gain muscle (very rare), you will have to accept that you
will lose weight and be lighter on the scale. Rationally you understand
this is irrefutable, but that skinny kid inside many of us isn’t operating
on logic. You’ll just have to drown out his shrieks of protest every
time you step on the scale, and instead focus on those cuts and veins
making their way to the surface day by day.82 MD musculardevelopment.com July 2019
- It Kills
You to Lose
Weight on
the Scale