Healthy weightloss: losing weight vs. losing fat

Very often people I know talk about losing weight vs. losing fat. Here is the truth!

I’ve always said that the scale is not so important when it comes to healthy weightloss and the process of losing fat in a healthy way. Fat is stored energy. It’s not wrong and it’s not bad. It’s there by design and will always be there, unless we don’t want to live anymore. It’s very simple: we eat so we can live. A part of everything we eat is used for thinking, moving, breathing and a part is stored in fat cells for later.

When we reach adulthood the number of fat cells in our body remains the same and we can think of them as pockets. We can fill or empty these pockets, but we can’t get rid of them. So, the fat cells can get smaller or bigger, but they cannot disappear.

Fat is basically the fuel that we use to keep our feet on the gorund when we need it the most. Think of the human body as an organic machine which works due to the food we consume. When there is a shortage, our body enters the reserves created in the stored fat. Once the body starts consuming this fat, it only remains the carbon dioxide which we exhale.

To speed up this process and make the body enter into stored reserves, there are two options: diet and exercise.

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DIET

Just dieting will do nothing more than to deprive the body of nutrients and it will force it to enter the reserve we talked about. Yes, you’ll lose weight very fast, but your body will be shocked. This means that all the weight you lost will be back on your hips faster than it went off. This fact was proven and I’ve seen many people I’ve worked with making this mistake and regretting it later. This happens because of the body’s safe system and self-preservation. It takes precautions so this will not happen again and the organs will function properly.

Any type of diet will help you lose weight on short term and every time you’ll try a new diet, the way your body responds to it will change and it will become harder to lose that fat. Losing weight too quickly is not healthy at all.

EXERCISE

Overweight is a serious problem. Many years ago people who had this problem thought they can solve it fast by dieting, but now we know more. Dieting is not enough if we want to lose weight in a healthy way, so we need physical exercise. Exercise forces the body to acces the fat reserves and also helps you build muscle.

Until now we could use the term “weightloss”, but now that we also work our muscle, it’s very possible that the scale won’t show any difference. This is why I tell to my clients to not use the scale, but to observ if the clothes look better on them or if they feel better.

Of course you’ll continue to lose weight because you’ll empty the fat cells. The difference is that you don’t now the exact number of kg you lost, because in all this time the muscle mass will grow.. If you have a balanced diet and you train at least 3 times a week, you can measure your results in many other ways.

On the other hand, just the exercise won’t help you very much. To burn the fat and increase the metabolism, the body also needs a calorie deficit. So the best combination is diet + execise. Make sure you follow a well balanced diet and train hard at least 3 times a week if you want real results!