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When people start down the road to a healthier lifestyle, their first concern is most often their weight. After all, popular health news is full of warnings for the additional risks overweight people face, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure, along with numerous other diseases.

While walking the path to greater health, the dieter will begin making smarter decisions for their overall health and fitness, but their primary concern always circles back to, "How much weight have I lost?" Weight loss is a vital part of ensuring a healthier life style, but it is not the only objective: maintaining a healthy ratio of body fat is just as important.

We've been taught since we were children that people come in all shapes and sizes. A very true statement, and one that is most often forgotten when evaluating our own bodies. When people strive to lose weight, they are actually seeking to lose the extra fat their body is carrying so they can present a more attractive figure. The problem arises when people believe that they can lose that fat simply by limiting the quantity of food eaten on a daily basis. Your body needs that food so that when you work on the other half of your diet regular exercise there are calories available to burn.

A person can be at a "normal" weight and still have excessive fat, or vice versa, they can be overweight without having an excessively high ratio of body fat. When you weigh yourself, you do not take into account what your bone structure may be like or what your muscle composition is compared to your body fat. You may think that you are overweight, but you may just need to work on reducing your body fat and replacing it with healthy muscle mass.