Stop Obsessing Over Your Weight

For as long as I've known, there's this whole cultural phenomenon of girls obsessing over their weight. Now if you were overweight or morbidly obese, I could understand this, but most of these people are in a healthy weight range looking simply to improve their physique. After hearing the thousandth complaint in my life about working out and not losing weight, I feel like I have to write something to address this completely misconstrued issue about fitness, and more importantly, physical attractiveness.

First off, a little comparison:

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Now just based on the shapes of their bodies, who do you think is more physically attractive?

This is obviously a rhetorical question. If you're at all related to the human genome you would say without a doubt, exhibit B. Now let's ask a more interesting question:

Who do you think weighs less?

Guess what. The girl in exhibit A is 105-110lbs according to where I saw this. The girl in exhibit B is Janessa Brazil, a brazilian model who is self proclaimed at 120lbs. That's right, 10 pounds of difference. Now ask yourself this: Would you rather look like A? Or B?

The issue with always obsessing over your weight is the fact that you completely ignore your body composition. If you're losing weight simply for the principle of losing weight, then by all means, go anorexic before anyone cares. But if you're losing weight to become healthier or more physically attractive (which I think undoubtedly, most people are) then you're totally barking up the wrong tree.

There's a big difference between weighing less and actually being lean. You could be 10 lbs skinnier and still look like a flabby surfboard, or you could weigh the same with a lower body fat percentage and end up looking like a bikini model. The difference is your body composition.

If you're not morbidly obese and just trying to improve your physique, stop worrying about the scale. In the end it's not about how much you weigh, it's about how lean you are. It's about how your body looks in the mirror. The next time you want to step on that scale, try this instead: Take measurements of your waist and hips. Work on increasing the difference between them. Your waist-to-hip ratio is an excellent indicator of progress, and coincidentally, a primary characteristic that men find highly attractive.