Where Do You Carry Your Weight?

Where do you carry your weight? Before you read any further, do a quick visual evaluation of your fat pattern. Put on a swimsuit, stand in front of a full-length mirror, and take a look at where your body stores fat. Be honest about what you see. Does your weight distribution follow the classic male or female pattern? Or have you already crossed over into a high-risk reverse fat pattern? Have someone take pictures of you from the front, back, and side. Put them up someplace where you can see them every day such as on your bathroom mirror or refrigerator door. These pictures will become your motivation to stick with this program, and you will use them to evaluate your amazing progress as you drop inches and lose body fat.

When I first started my Fat-Burning Metabolic Fitness Plan, I would have someone videotape a "before" of my clients as they made a 360-degree turn. Then, four, eight, and twelve weeks later we would make a video record of the "afters" and compare the results. You may wish to create some sort of visual record as well, since it really shows you how dramatically your body can change in a relatively short amount of time. Kim Cummins, my executive assistant whose incredible makeover appeared in a recent article of Let’s Live magazine, literally cried when she saw herself on film because she hadn’t realized how much weight she had really gained. "I never realized how fat my face had become. It really shocked me."

Melinda Mabile, another participant in the Let’s Live makeover, was delighted to see the difference in her before and after pictures. Even though Melinda did not lose a great deal of scale weight, she lost a significant amount of inches over her entire body and 7.8 percent body fat. Her waistline slimmed down noticeably. Her posture improved dramatically from month to month, along with her overall energy level. I watched her develop a vibrancy and sparkle—an attractiveness that comes from greater health and metabolic vitality. Melinda told me that she has never felt better in her life. weight loss pills buy weight loss pills by tenuate online buy ACOMPLIA online buy xenical online

Learn the Difference between Male and Female Fat Patterns

Where you carry your weight has serious health ramifications. The most dangerous type of weight is core body fat (abdominal obesity). People who carry weight more evenly distributed over their entire bodies are less at risk for disease than those who follow the more classic fat distribution patterns. Unfortunately, most men and women store excess weight above and below the waistline where it hurts the body the most.

For a variety of reasons, including hormones and metabolic processes that affect fat storage in particular areas of the body, when men and women first begin to gain weight, they do not store it in the same place. A typical overweight man looks like an apple. He carries his weight above the waist, resulting in the classic bulging abdomen, also known as the beer belly. A typical overweight woman carries her fat below the waist in the hips and the buttocks, resulting in a pear-shaped silhouette.

When obesity sets in, people often develop a reverse fat pattern. A man will not only have a huge belly but will start putting on considerable weight below the waist in the hips and buttocks. Women will not only store fat below the waist but will carry a large amount of abdominal fat, turning them into an apple shape. While being overweight increases health risks, crossing over into a reverse fat pattern is a move toward serious health risks.