Are Weight Loss & Fat Loss The Same Thing?

Yesterday, we spoke about weight loss and the various theories that underpin how to do it successfully. However, there was one key point that we neglected to mention – the distinction between losing weight and losing fat.

What? You mean you didn’t know there was a distinction?

Well, there is. And it’s a big one.

Why The Number on The Scale Can Be A Big Fat Lie

The problem that a lot of people experience when it comes to getting in shape is that they focus almost exclusively on losing pounds, not on improving their body by losing fat. Worse yet, they mistakenly think that they’re the same thing.

I’m here to tell you, they’re not.

Looks vs Stats

Let’s get the whole matter straight but defining the two different sides.

Losing pounds involves simply reducing the number that you see on the scale. It means that your body weighs less now than it did yesterday. The reason for this difference in value is ignored, even though it could be coming from many sources. By this measure, if someone lost some toned muscle and retained fat, they would still have lost weight overall on the scale, and so someone looking to lose weight would still consider this change a success.

Losing fat, on the other hand, involves making sure that when your body burns up some its stored excess energy sources, the sources that are used are fat sources and not muscle sources. In practice this could mean that the weight on the scale doesn’t change at all, or perhaps even goes up a little. However, the person will be able to see noticeable results in the mirror and with the tape measure and will look and feel better. According to this approach, scale weight is irrelevant – improving the way you look and feel is all that matters.

Ask Yourself…

Looking at the difference between losing weight and losing fat with the above distinction in mind, which of the two do you think is better? Would you rather weigh less even though you look worse and appear flabbier and softer than ever, or would you rather weight the same or more but look thinner and have a smaller waist?

It’s obvious to anyone with any common sense that fat loss is the goal, not weight loss. If you’re losing inches and getting lean and hard, does scale weight really matter? One word: no.

One Thing You MUST Understand If You Want To Succeed At Getting The Body You’ve Always Desired

One of the first things you need to come to terms with in your quest to lose fat is that in order to do so effectively, you need to build some muscle. This applies to both men and women. Due to the pumped up steroid freaks of the bodybuilding world, many people (women especially) have adopted the attitude that anyone who works out with weights will instantly become a hulking mass of muscle, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Firstly, even if you work out regularly with heavy weights, packing on muscle is not easy to do. Ask any skinny teenager who is desparate to put on some muscle and he’ll tell you – it’s HARD. So it’s nice that many people flatter themselves by thinking it will come easy to them but the truth is that just ain’t gonna happen.

Secondly, you need to realize that Men and women have different physiological and hormonal compositions, and so the same exercises are going to result in very different transformations to their bodies. Additionally, weights are simply a method to stress your body in a way that makes it burn fat and look better. That change results in a nicer looking body, whether you’re a woman or a woman. For men, that change will take shape in the form of a lean, strong, muscular physique. For women, that change will take shape in the form of a lean, toned and sculpted physique.

Think of male and female professional athletes who play the same sport. They train the same way, eat the same way, do the same exercises and movements, but yet they don’t look alike because one of them is a man and one is a woman. Here’s an example: tennis. Maria Sharapova and Roger Federer are both world class players. Do they have the same body? No way!

How To Lose Fat Instead Of Weight

Alright, now that we’ve got you comfortable with the idea of building lean muscle using resistance based weight training, we can go back to discussing how to make sure that you lose fat instead of weight.

Essentially, when you put your body in a caloric deficit, by consuming fewer calories than you burn, your body is going to respond by eating up some of its stored tissue. That tissue can come from one of two sources – either fat or muscle. It’s got to be one of the two (we’re forgetting things like water retention and such for now because they’re beside the point).

Therefore, if you lose muscle, you’re going to still have a bunch of fat left behind. Additionally, since muscle weighs more than fat, what will sometimes happen is that you will actually lose weight, but not look any skinnier or smaller. This is commonly known as the ‘skinny fat’ phenomena, where someone has a generally weedy overall look but still has saggy fat in all the wrong places. If you’ve ever found that you’ve lost weight only to have even more loose skin and flab than ever before, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This is a great example of why focusing on losing weight can be counterproductive.

Conversely, if you lose fat, what you’ll be left with is toned, lean muscle instead. In real life, this will take the form of a ‘hard’ body that looks better in the mirror and has lost inches in all the right places. Of course, since muscle weighs more than fat, you may not have actually seen much of a change on the scale, but you’ll look noticeably better to both yourself and others.

So, with that all said, it’s obvious that the key to getting a great body is to focus on losing fat and building muscle. Now, many people will tell you that you can’t do both of these at once but I’m here to tell you that that’s wrong. If you’re eating well and exercising well, you absolutely can improve your body dramatically by both putting on lean muscle and dropping fat at the same time, especially if you’re a beginner.

Losing Fat And Building Muscle: The 4 Step Process

Making this all happen is much simpler than it sounds. All you have to do is follow these easy steps:

1) Maintain a negative energy balance every day so that your body has to tap into its fat stores for energy.

• Eat healthy, calorie light foods like lean proteins and veggies for your meals so that your meals are less calorie dense.
• Move around as much as you can during the day and make sure to get in your micro workouts and regular workouts in order to burn more energy.
• Put these two together and you’ll soon be burning more energy than you’re eating, creating a negative energy balance.

2) Ensure that your diet includes plenty of protein.

• Protein is the building block for lean muscle. In order to build muscle, you need to ensure that you’re getting lean proteins like chicken, fish, eggs and soy at every meal.

3) Use resistance-based exercise to ensure that you build and maintain your lean muscle.

• In order to build and maintain muscle, you have to be using it by doing resistance exercises. These can either be weighted or bodyweight exercises – the key is that you overload your body through putting progressive ‘stress’ on it.
• Resistance training will also ensure that your body maintains its lean muscle and uses your fat stores for energy, instead of the other way around.

4) Use interval training and micro workouts to keep your workouts short and focused on burning fat, not muscle.

• Long workouts, especially traditional cardio workouts can be counterproductive when it comes to building muscle and losing fat. Ditch them and use high intensity interval training and micro workouts instead to make sure that your body burns away stored fat, not muscle.

That’s it! Simply maintaining these good exercise and nutrition habits over the long term will result in losing fat, gaining lean muscle, building a fantastic body and ensuring your health and wellbeing.

Summing it All Up

Well, this blog post has been quite a journey. We skipped from one rant to another, debunking various fitness myths along the way. And we ended up with not only a solid rationale for why eating and exercising right are so important for fat loss, but also with an easy to follow 4 step blueprint that can be followed every single day to ensure that you meet your long term fat loss goals.

Let’s put it all together with a few axioms, shall we?

1) Fat loss and weight loss – definitely NOT the same thing.

2) Losing fat should always be our goal, losing weight is irrelevant.

3) Training with weights and adding lean muscle will make your body look better, whether you’re a man or a woman.

4) Being lean and toned is the goal, NOT being skinny fat.

5) To build muscle and burn fat, you need to eat well and exercise the right way – both of those are inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other.

Clear? I hope so! As always, if you have any questions or thoughts of your own that you’d like to add, feel free to do so in the comments below.

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