Weight loss is one of the hottest topics ever, you cannot escape it, wether its an article in a magazine or your friend is trying out a new diet. Everyone seems to be trying to shift the pounds. But what is the difference between weight loss and fat loss? People use both of these terms as if they are the exact same thing.
The purpose of this post is to explain the difference between weight loss and fat loss, as they are 2 very different things. This topic leaves a lot of people confused and is a message that often gets lost in translation especially in the mainstream media, and even more to the people the information gets passed onto.
On a personal note, I am also getting frustrated with how people are portraying these two things as the same thing. To give you a real life example, I was recently working away at a bootcamp, a woman who was of a slim build was attending for a few days, she was a woman who honestly, didn’t have any weight to lose, but she had a figure of half a stone in her head that she wanted to lose. Back home she was a regular gym go-er and loved exercise, so the bootcamp experience wasn’t a huge shock to her system.
Come weigh in day, she hadn’t lost a pound of ‘weight’ however she had lost over 7 inches from all over her body and could comfortably fit into a pair of jeans that she brought with her, jeans that she considered too small when she arrived. However because she hadn’t lost any ‘weight’ she left disappointed. This is a common occurrence in the fitness industry, in reality, she had everything to be proud of and should have left elated, but as she was weight loss driven, she left unhappy with her results.
This story – which is one of many, points out exactly why our perception on this subject drastically needs to change.
Ideally, I would like my insight to serve 1 main purpose:
1. I think it’s a topic that a lot of people (especially women) need to hear more often, and is something I feel pretty strongly about, being a fat loss specialist.
Far too often – at least in my experience – women get overly caught up on what the scale tells them. Weight loss can be completely subjective, and the truth of matter is the scale really doesn’t tell you anything.
If I told you to not eat for eight hours, you would weigh less.
If I told you to not drink water for a day, you would weigh less.
If I told you to cut off you right leg, you would weigh less.
In all three scenarios you weigh less, but does that really mean you made any significant progress?
NO !!!!!
Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss. What's the difference? Let's start by defining weight loss and fat loss so you know what I mean here.
Weight Loss. You want to lower your body-weight, the sum weight of your bones, muscles, organs, body fat and water in the body. Aerobic exercise helps you burn off fat calories by making your muscles work harder than usual for limited periods of time. Strength training exercises, on the other hand, help you burn off fat by increasing your body's supply of muscle tissue. This works because muscle tissue burns through calories relatively quickly, and increasing the size of your muscles amplifies your body's calorie-burning capacity. Participation in either aerobics or strength training can lead to weight loss. However, muscle tissue is also quite heavy, and individuals who lose fat through resistance training can potentially gain weight despite depleting their fat reserves.(This is not a bad thing)
Fat Loss. You want to lower your body fat, the amount of fat your body carries. Each pound of fat on your body contains roughly 3,500 calories of food energy. To lose this fat, you will need to burn off more calories than you consume in your daily diet. Typically, this goal is most easily achieved by making reductions in your calorie intake and increasing the amount of exercise you get each week.
Weight is good, not bad; you do not want to lose weight, and more importantly for your health, you do not want to lose muscle. Our weight is made up of tissue, muscle, bone, blood, fat, water, and the rest of our physical bodies. Muscle, like every other component of our physical make-up, is most important. What everyone dosent realise when they take on an extreme diet is that the majority of ‘weight’ they lose is in fact muscle and water weight. NOT FAT!. Fat is also a necessary, vital part of our physical make-up. Excess fat, however, is bad news and that is what you should focus on – FAT LOSS.
Problems with Weight Loss.
Il get straight to the point here: If you want to lose weight, it's most likely because you carry too much fat. There are people who must lose weight (for health reasons, athletes before competitions etc) but most want fat loss, ive yet to meet anyone that deliberatley wants to reduce their bone density or muscle mass to decrease their overall weight. If its Fat Loss you want then be honest to yourself, aim for fat loss, not weight loss, solution - stop weighing yourself !!!
Problems with the weighing in:
Unreliable. Your body-weight can fluctuate daily since it's influenced by your stomach/bowel/bladder content, water loss/retention, muscle loss/gain, fat loss/gain, You'll have no idea what's going on.
Irrelevant. 2 people with similar height can weigh the same, but look completely different because one has lower body fat than the the other. Check the picture below for an example.
The last point shows why the BMI standard is flawed: it doesn't take your body fat into account. Both guys in the above picture have the same BMI, but one is clearly healthier: his body fat is lower.
Here's How The Weight Scale Can Mislead You.
Clothes, mirrors and pictures don't lie. Neither do body fat callipers. But the weight scale can become your worst enemy by misleading you and killing your motivation. Examples:
Carbs + Water = Weight Gain. Carbs bind to water. So eating less carbs will make you lose weight: water loss. This is why you lose so much weight on a low carb diet in the first 2 weeks: it's mostly water. Of course, increasing your carb intake will make you gain weight again: water retention.
Muscle Gains + Fat Loss. You'll gain muscle while losing fat when you get into resistance training. But on the weight scale it will look like you're not making progress: your body-weight doesn't change. Track your body fat using a fat caliper and you'll see your body fat is going down.
Coming back to an earlier point about weighing less by not eating / drinking etc.
Sure, you weigh less……….but all you’ve really accomplished is to make yourself a smaller, weaker, legless, version of your original self. There’s no shape, form, or contour to the body. How most women (and men, too) approach weight loss is wrong. Many would bode well by changing their mindset altogether and start thinking in terms of FAT loss.
More to the point: to MAINTAIN as much muscle as possible (even better, build some muscle) and focus on fat loss.
One lb of muscle weighs the EXACT same as one lb of fat – the difference, however, is that muscle is more dense than fat and takes up less space.
Looking at the above picture, it should be clear to see how you can drastically alter your body composition without losing weight. This is the difference between having love handles and having visable abs. Yet your weight wont have changed!
Here’s a great example of why it’s often a VERY good idea for women to not only to throw the scales away but to not be scared of adding a little muscle to their frame as well:
Muscle is more dense than fat, and that’s why a woman who’s been training hard and, despite losing body fat, hasn’t seen the number on the scale change much, if any, because she’s built muscle, too.
This is one reason why building muscle is a very good thing for women.
Here’s a picture to show that you can look better even if you gain weight:
As you can see, she gained 9 pounds but looks leaner, more “toned”, and more athletic because she lost body fat and built muscle.
When it DOES come to fat loss, almost always, nutrition is going to be the biggest determining factor.
Unless you have a sound nutritional plan and are willing to see it through then fat loss isn’t going to happen! You have to find a plan that works for you, using foods you enjoy and foods that you could eat day and day out and not see the need to constantly ‘cheat’. What works for some people, will not work for others, so dont assume because your friend lost fat in a certain way, it will work for you. Everyone is different.
A fat loss plan shouldn’t leave you feeling hungry, nor should it completely remove certain food groups. If you constantly ‘cheat’ on your plan (every few days) or it leaves you feeling hungry, then you need to figure out why? And change it! This should be a long term plan and a lifestyle change, not get to your goal then revert back to pizzas and chips for tea every night.
Take things step by step to ensure long term success, for example, If you don’t feel overly confident about eating protein with every meal then what about two meals? Once you start making two meals a day a habit, then we can push it to four meals per day, so on and so forth until it becomes standard procedure.
But remember: YOU CANNOT OUT TRAIN A POOR DIET
It’s just not going to happen. I can write you the most kick-ass fat loss plan in history – training 4-5 times per week, throwing in any combination of circuits, finishers, or anything else we can think of that will make you hate life – but it’s not going to matter if we don’t tackle the nutritional side of things.
If we KNOW that fat loss is (more or less) determined by calories in vs. calories out, which seems to be a more efficient use of our time:
A) Spending upwards of 45-60 minutes (maybe) burning off 350-500 calories (depending on the mode, intensity, duration) exercising ?
Note to Everyone Reading: trust me when I say this, despite the machine telling you otherwise, you DID NOT just burn 700 kcals walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes at a 5% gradient.
Think about it. Unless you’re walking with a car strapped to your back, you’re not burning that many calories.
OR
B) Electing not to eat that bowl of cereal before bed?
If we were to take the simple equation that a lb of fat equals 3500 of excess kcals, we can surmise that subtracting 500 kcals per day (whether through diet or exercise, or both!) leads to a lb of fat loss per week. Give or take.
Again, from a time efficiency standpoint, and with FAT LOSS as the goal, nutrition is going to trump exercise in terms of better use of our time no matter what.
Heres the truth though: You know that eating a boatload of highly processed carbohydrates on a day where you’re less active probably isn’t the best idea. You know eating a full tub of Ben and Jerrys before bed isn’t going to do wonders for your waistline.You know ALL of this. So what’s holding you back?
It’s all about behavior change!
We need to have some sort of default “path” to help you succeed. You know in the back of your mind what isn’t good for you, it dosent take a nutritional degree to work it out.
Small changes will make the biggest differences in the beginning, so instead of hitting Dominoes or Pizza Hut at the weekend, try making your own pizza with fresh ingredients. Whilst this Is still not the best option, it’s a hell of a lot better than ingesting a boatload of saturated fat on a Saturday night.
The same can be said for trying to include more veggies, healthy fats etc. We need to find a “spot” where you feel confident you can be successful. If the thought of eating 5 servings of Veg is making your stomach churn whilst reading this, then start at 2 or 3 servings and build up to it. Experiment with it, try new things and sooner or later it will not be a chore, you will enjoy it.
How to Track Progress Efficiently.
You don't need to track progress weekly, changes wouldn't be drastic enough. Track progress every 2 weeks.
Stop Weighing Yourself. The daily fluctuations will mess with your motivation. Weigh yourself once every 4 weeks, not more.
Stop Looking in The Mirror. Self-image issues can skew perception. Shoot full body pictures and compare them with old ones.
Track Body Fat. Get a body fat caliper and track your body fat every 2 weeks.
Take Measurements. Girth measurements of your neck, chest, arms, waist & thighs and compare with previous measurements.
Shoot Pictures. Full body pictures from ankle to neck, front/back/side, every 2 weeks. Compare with your previous pics.
Listen also to what people say. They'll notice your body change more than you will.
Hopefully this all makes some sense, and more importantly sheds some light on why I feel weight loss is not where your head should be at at the moment.
Fat loss before weight every time – make sure you tell your friends this !
Good luck :)
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