Are you like most who us begin our weight loss efforts with a virtual obsession about the scale?

When most of us think about losing weight, it is usually about appearances. We focus heavily on the scale because we associate losing pounds with coming closer and closer to the perfect clothing size.

This focus is wrong.

In his book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, author and weight lifting champion, Tom Venuto, discusses why an emphasis on losing pounds will definitely hurt you in the long run. “losing weight is easy,” he explains. If you have trouble with this statement, just consider what would happen if you were to starve yourself, fast for two days or go on a pure liquid diet. You would lose weight right? And lose it quickly.

But the issue is in keeping the weight off. When you focus on pounds, you give yourself a short term goal. You are also likely to fall into that terrible statistic of people who gain back 105% of the weight they lose.

The way to focus on a goal that will have a long term effect on your weight, is to concentrate instead on your body fat percentage.

What is body fat percentage? Body fat percentage is a calculation that allows you to tell what portion of your total body mass consists of fat as opposed to lean muscle tissue.

This definition may make it obvious why reducing your body fat percentage instead of just your total weight will help you more in the long run. You can actually get off the dieting roller coaster, where you lose weight but always worry that it is probably coming back.

Now that you are convinced of the importance of reducing your body fat percentage as opposed to just your weight. You need to begin to include this new factor into your weight loss goals.

Do you know what your body fat percentage is today? Most people don’t. Let’s discuss how to measure this figure so that you can set a goal and check it regularly.

You can measure your body using a skinfold test. Without getting too complicated, the fat directly beneath the surface of your skin is a great measurement of your body fat.

If you have gym membership, you might try asking some of the trainers.

If you have a lot of money, you might try investing in some of the fancy and expensive electronic machines available.

If you are like most us and don’t have money to burn, and don’t like the idea of the guys at the gym grabbing a pinch of your side fat! Then you might try a third option, calipers.

A company called Accu-measure created a great, easy to use, set of calipers that can be found quite reasonably priced.

The calipers are designed so that one person can use them and come with their own measuring chart to help you to interpret your results. This is where the major concerns comes in when it comes to checking your body fat percentage, accuracy.

It is very easy to misread results. The problem here is obvious if you keep misreading the results measurement after measurement will be inaccurate and you will never really know what you body fat percentage is and you will never really know what kind of progress you are making.

The book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle actually gives you 7 step process that Venuto says will give you “laser accurate” results. He also includes his own interpretation chart as well as a small breakdown that gives you a visual impression of what different kinds of body fat percentages look like in the real world.

I can’t tell you how important this is.

I remember reading that the quickest way to reach your goals is to get and respond well to constant feedback. If you put your goals in writing and then faithfully and accurately track the results of all of your efforts you will be leaps and bounds ahead of most.

Request your copy of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle here.