Week six: Muscle weighs more...

I'm still letting the scales dictate my mood. If they're dropping, I'm smiling. If they're not dropping, I'm gloomy and defeat-ist. Even Ashley, my Korezone trainer, noticed: "The only thing stopping you is your head," she said. "It's all up here." And she tapped her skull.
And, of course, she's right. But besides the pep talk, Ashley also gave me some extraodinary information about muscle, the stuff I'm building by pumping those #$%^&;* weights and doing those terrible reps and those $%^&&;**(!@ crunches and those horrid machines, which, by the way, always make me feel better about myself and my day.
So here's what she said.
Muscle weights more than fat. Yes, I've been told that before but Ashley really explained it. It takes more calories to make a muscled body move than it does to make a fat body move. So, if you have muscles and you move -- just everyday movement, walking talking sleeping (the easy stuff) -- it takes more energy to do and therefore more calories. If you are muscled your metabolism speeds up but your weight dosen't go down as fast as it would if you weren't building muscle.
I have a lot to learn. I know that I'm not doing enough cardio work, the actual fat burning stuff like running and sweating but I'm enjoying the muscle stuff and the yogo stretching stuff, too. I'm contemplating joining weightwatchers when I get back from my holiday (which I'm also a bit worried about) but we'll see how it all goes. To date, in six weeks I think I have lost somewhere between six-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half pounds. It's up and down, like that, day by day. Sometime my muscles weigh more, sometimes less.
Am I discouraged? The answer is sort of the same, sometimes yes, sometimes not. To be perfectly honest (and what else is there?) I thought the weight would fall off faster. I thought the thrice weekly workouts and twice weekly yoga classe would do the trick. Count 'em, that's five workouts a week as compared to maybe one post fifty workout. In someways, it has done the trick. My clothes are fitting looser, my double chin is less wobbly. Something is shifting but I'm not quite sure what it is yet. It could be my attitude or my sense of self. Will I still loose 50 pounds in 50 weeks? Well, so far, I'm right on course and that's the way I intend to stay...
Stay tuned

More muscled Margaret