Weight v/s Fat Loss

  •   Thu, Oct 14 2021
  •   By Vinet D'Souza

October 14, 2021

Have you ever wondered why achieving your fitness goal is a never ending story? Well, there could be various reasons. Most important reason being not having a clear idea. Most people start working out with a purpose of losing weight, and may succeed as well. But the question is did you just lose weight or fat? You might have started your fitness journey to lose fat but ended up losing weight. If you are still wondering then this article will help you to understand the difference between weight loss and fat loss.

Weight loss refers to a decrease in your overall body weight from muscle, water and fat losses. Fat loss refers to weight loss from fat and it is a more specific and healthier goal than weight loss.

How to know whether you are losing fat?

What we usually do is, we tend to use a weighing scale to know our progress of weight loss. While this could be helpful, most of the weighing scales do not differentiate between fat loss and muscle loss. For this reason, tracking only weight may not be a reliable way to determine whether you are losing fat or muscle and also in what amount are you losing it. You can use a body fat scale which will provide a more accurate composition and percentage of fat and muscle you have.

Another way to know the fat loss is in the form of inch loss. Many a times it happens so that there is no progress in your weight loss, but you can see it in the mirror or when your clothing becomes loose.

Have you heard of people saying that muscle weighs more than fat? However this saying does not go good because 1 kg of muscle and 1 kg of fat technically do weigh the same (1 Kg only). But the two things weighing the same could be of different sizes. For example: one kg of muscle is harder and denser than one kg of body fat. Suppose you gain 3 kg muscle and drop 3 kg fat, your scale will show you the same weight.

What you need to focus? Fat loss or weight loss?

Many weight loss programmes claim to help you lose weight quickly and easily. However, it is important to realize that a significant amount of weight loss may include water and muscle losses. What you need to understand is losing weight does not make you fit. It’s the total body’s composition that determines how fit you are. A fit body will have lower levels of fat percentage which are 10-15% for males and 15-20% for females.

Going on a crash diet to lose weight can backfire because you will be losing your muscle instead of fat, it will put your metabolism out of its full capacity in turn, making you gain weight. That’s why the focus should be on losing fat.

How to lose fat and maintain or gain muscle?

Certainly exercise alone is an effective strategy to maintain muscle mass with dieting but combining exercise with a higher protein intake may help optimize your results. Fat loss is more specific than weight loss. We can lose body fat by reducing calories, just like with weight loss. But the quality of food we consume for fat loss is more important. We need to be more specific about our macronutrient intake i.e., protein, carbohydrate and fat intake.

I would like to emphasize here that fat loss is enhanced when it’s combined with exercise and diet. When we say diet we also refer to healthy eating. So make it a point to eat unprocessed and organic food adding more protein into the diet to ensure muscle building and fat burning and follow a regular sleep pattern.

When it comes to losing fat, you need to find a nutrition plan that’s sustainable for you. You definitely can’t lose fat overnight. To bring about a change in your fitness journey you need a plan that you can continue for a required period of time. We cannot call it as sustainable or unsustainable diet when it doesn’t work it’s not the unsustainable diet but whether or not we can stick to it!

Purpose of this article is to shift your perspective from weight loss to fat loss. I being a health enthusiast and weight loss coach want to impact the lives of many people. If you like this article and want to know more you can reach out to me at lovinet22@gmail.com.

 

 

 
By Vinet D'Souza
Vinet D’Souza resides in Manipal and works as a lecturer at St Cecily's PU College, Udupi. A lecturer, a health enthusiast, a blogger and a weight loss coach. She is passionate about writing and has been writing articles both in online and offline platforms.
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Comment on this article

  • aithappa moolya, manglaore

    Fri, Oct 15 2021

    would like to know where this scale is available to know fat and muscle?

  • mohan prabhu, mangalore/canada

    Fri, Oct 15 2021

    A very helpful explanation and suggestion that will go a long way to gain the proper weight/fat balance, especially with people who as they grow older experience both - something that usually shows around the belly. Congratulations. To moderate physical exercise a healthy diet - usually vegetarian with minimum of eggs and meat - and cooked with little or no oil/fat would produce desired results. Congratulations on this useful advice.


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