Everyone seems to be trying to lose weight these days and this is why weight loss is one of the most talked about topics on the Internet. However, a lot of people don’t seem to know the difference between weight loss and fat loss and these two terms are often used interchangeably.
In this article, you’ll understand the difference between fat loss and weight loss and find out which of them is the best.
Weight Loss versus Fat Loss
To figure out the difference between weight loss and fat loss, let’s start by defining each of them:
• Weight loss – the process of lowering your overall body weight. This may include your body fluid, muscle, fat and bone minerals.
• Fat loss – the process of lowering your body fats or the total amount of fats in your body.
From the definitions above, it’s clear to see the difference between the two. In fact, there’s a huge difference between losing weight and losing fat. When you lose weight, depending on the diet you choose you may to lose a little bit of everything in your body, including your muscles, fluids, fats and possibly organ size if it’s become fatty like the liver. On the other hand, fat loss is merely about losing your body fats.
Which Is The Best?
Losing fat is actually better than losing weight. A lot of times, a weighing scale can mislead you. It cannot tell if your clothes fit you better or if your body fat percentage has gone down. Two people may have the same weight but the other may have 30% more body fat, while the other has only 10% body fat. To the weighing scale, they are both the same although both look totally different.
If you’re only concerned about seeing a smaller number on the scale every time you weigh yourself, you will not know that you’re already losing some of your valuable muscles and this could result in weight gain in the long term.
Problems With Weight Loss
One of the reasons why people want to lose weight is because they carry too much fat. In this case, you might as well focus on losing fat. However, if you’re an athlete and you need to achieve a certain weight before a competition, then that’s when you need to lose weight. Here are two of the main problems of weight loss:
• Unreliable – your body weight could fluctuate daily because it’s influenced by a lot of factors, such as water loss and retention, stomach content, muscle loss, etc. You really have no idea what’s going on in your body that causes your weight to fluctuate.
• Irrelevant – as mentioned above, two people can have the same weight but look totally different since one has higher body fat than the other.
If you focus on losing fats, you’ll be able to maintain a lean body mass and keep your metabolism running at an optimal level.
How to Prioritize Fat Loss
So now that you know that fat loss is better, here’s how you can prioritize fat loss:
• Eat as many healthy foods as you can because depriving yourself will only make you lose muscle mass. Moreover, your body needs essential nutrients for it to function more effectively.
• Follow a low-carb, moderate-protein, higher healthy fat diet like the keto diet. The diet requires eating a higher amount of healthy fat and good quality protein which is necessary for burning fats while helping to preserve the calorie-burning lean muscles.
• Don’t lose weight too fast – rapid weight loss will only make you lose more muscle weight.
Hopefully, this article has given you the right perspective for your weight loss journey. You may not be anywhere near your ideal body weight, but by losing a lot of body fats, you’ll be leaner, healthier, stronger, and in a much better mental state.
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