There’s a distinction to be made between weight loss vs fat loss.You’ve probably used a weight scale to track your progress in your quest for a slimmer physique. Nonetheless, you may have done yourself a disservice.
A scale can tell you how much weight you’ve dropped, but it can’t tell you where it came from. This is the source of the problem.
When dieting, your total weight loss could be from fat loss, water loss, or muscle loss.
Clearly, the former is what we all want to achieve, while the latter two are what we should avoid and try to avoid when dieting.
Diets that are based on fads only result in the loss of muscle mass.
Unfortunately, many of the fad diets that claim to help you lose weight quickly do so at the expense of water and muscle loss.
If you lose more than two pounds per week, you’re probably losing muscle as well.
Measuring your body fat percentage and lean body mass is the most effective way to track your progress while starting a new diet. Your weight, minus fat, is your lean body mass.
Bone, muscle, and other fat-free components make up lean body mass, with muscle accounting for the majority of it. You can tell how much fat you’re losing and whether or not you’re losing muscle by measuring these two items.
Test your skinfolds
Skinfold testing is the simplest way to assess your body fat percentage. If you know a personal trainer or other fitness professional in your region, they will most likely be able to take these measurements for you.
Self-skinfold testing is, however, possible with the “Accu-Mesure,” which may be found fast online.
You may calculate your fat weight and lean body mass once you’ve identified your body fat percentage. Increase your overall weight by your body fat percentage to get your fat weight.
Body Fat Calculation
Before rising, remember to convert your body fat percentage to decimal form.
To put it another way, 11 percent body fat would be turned to.
11 After you’ve calculated your pounds of fat, subtract your pounds of fat from your overall weight in pounds to get your lean body mass.
You’ll be able to track your weight loss significantly more accurately with these basic calculations than you could with only a scale.
You’ll know exactly where your weight reduction is coming from, allowing you to quickly adjust your caloric intake to maximise your results.
Avoid a Calorie Shortage
If your body fat and lean body mass both decrease, this indicates that you are in too high of a calorie deficit and that you should increase your daily calorie intake to prevent the loss of lean body mass.
It’s difficult to avoid losing lean body mass and muscle mass while you’re on a calorie-restricted diet. This reduction in lean body mass, however, should be kept to a few tenths of a pound per week.
Due to water loss, you will most likely see a higher decline in lean body mass while starting a diet plan. This should not alarm you. A progressive decrease in your lean body mass is clearly cause for concern.
Although discussing proper nutrition and how to calculate daily caloric needs for weight loss is beyond the scope of this essay, I will give a basic method that may be used to bring you in the ballpark if you have average or much better body fat portions.
Calories Required for Fat Loss on a Daily Basis
Increase your entire weight by 12-13 pounds to calculate out your total daily calories required for fat loss. This will serve as a solid starting point.
I’ll also suggest that spreading your calories out over 5-6 meals a day, with each meal containing roughly 55 percent complex carbs, 30 percent lean protein, and 15 percent fat, will offer you the best chance of losing weight permanently.
These portions may not be suitable for everyone, but they are a great place to start. If you want to keep your hard-won muscle, you must also maintain a weight-lifting routine while dieting.
Calories Burned vs. Calories Consumed
To lose weight, your body must burn more calories than it consumes, but keep in mind that your body requires calories for energy, and when you exercise, your body requires even more calories.
Before I go into detail about energy, it’s important to note that slimming down and decreasing fat are not the same thing. Just because you lose weight doesn’t imply you lose fat, and losing fat doesn’t mean you slim down.
When people talk about reducing weight, they want to get rid of the excess fat on their bodies and achieve a beautiful figure.
When you consume calories, your body uses the majority of them for energy. If you consume more calories than your body uses, the extra calories are stored as fat. However, if you do not consume enough calories per day, you will lose weight and lose vitality.
Low Metabolism Means Fat Burning Is Minimal
When you don’t consume enough energy (calories), your body will begin to deplete your energy stores to compensate for the shortfall.
Unfortunately, the energy sources used are not your stored fat, but rather protein and carbs (carbs) (saved fat only accounts for a small percentage of total energy).
Your body will extract protein and carbohydrates from your muscle cells, causing your muscle mass to decline (say goodbye to that toned attractive appearance) and your metabolic process to slow or stop burning fat (a low metabolic process = sluggish or no fat burning).
When this happens, your body requires less energy to maintain its new lower body weight (bearing in mind that the body weight is lower due to muscle loss), therefore it conserves energy by reducing the metabolic process.
To put it another way, your body has acclimated to the new lower energy (calorie) consumption, indicating that you will no longer lose weight.
Water Weight Loss Is a Temporary Loss
Keep in mind that the weight you lost was mostly water weight, and you’ll gain it back in the form of fat, not muscle (you’ll have to rebuild your muscle mass to bring it back to where it was before).
Your body will lose water weight if the carbohydrates and protein that are already in your body are used as an energy source. Both carbs and protein hold water in the cells.
To put it another way, you’re dehydrating yourself in order to lose weight. So, yeah, the scale will go down, but the majority of it will be water rather than fat. As you can see, exercising while eating a low-calorie diet exacerbates the problem.
This is because when you exercise, you begin to burn more energy, and the more you exercise, the more energy your body requires. If you don’t give your body the energy it needs, it will feed on your muscles even faster now that you’re working out.
Consume more calories!
As a result, eat more! Furthermore, if you drastically reduce your calorie intake, your body will begin to store calories because it is unsure when you will eat again.
The calories you store will be stored as fat. To put it another way, when your body conserves energy, it is essentially storing extra fat.
To recapitulate, not eating enough calories causes muscle loss, dehydration, and slower fat loss, and your body will continually adjust to a lower calorie intake.
Bottom line: if you can’t maintain your decreased calorie consumption for the rest of your life, you’ll gain weight after you’ve had enough of starvation!
Metabolism Will Be Boosted By Weight Training And Aerobics
To lose weight properly (burn fat), you must boost your metabolism (weight training) and your need for oxygen (aerobics) while eating enough calories every day (healthy diet) to provide energy and keep protein in your muscles, as protein aids in muscle construction, which indirectly burns fat.
This brings up another benefit: when you gain muscle, your weight will go up since your muscles are mostly water, but your body fat percentage will go down because muscle building boosts your metabolism (to put it another way, muscles burn more calories than fat but take up less space).
So keep in mind that a scale can’t tell you how much body fat you’re reducing; instead, use a measuring tape and check in the mirror to see the genuine results.
If you’re losing more body fat than water, a body fat analyser is one of the most accurate ways to find out.
Make sure you’re concentrating on fat loss rather than weight loss. Your goal should be to lose weight through burning fat rather than losing water from your muscles. Keep this in mind as you choose your weight loss vs fat loss regimen.
I hope that these tidbits of information will help you achieve all of your weight-loss objectives and understand how your nutrition and diet programme is affecting your body.
