Weight loss and fat loss fondamentally different!!!

RihK

It seems to me that many people in this forum have a very hard time understanding the difference between fat loss and weight loss.

Weight loss can be easily achieved. It is done all the time by athletes and and different fighters and wrestlers to get into a weight category. One can easily lose up to 5% of their weight just by not drinking any water for 14-20 hours. That means that a person which weights 180 pounds can lose 9 pounds in one day. This is however just water weight and it can be easily gained back by just drinking some water.
When one starts a low carbohydrate diet and tends to go high protein, people tend to reduce their sodium intake as well. And as most people know reducing carbohydrates makes one lose water weight easily. This provokes very rapid weight loss at the beginning of most diets and later on an apparent stall. It is because in case one has a perfect diet as well as a correct calorie deficit one would expect a rapid water weight loss at the beginning due to changes in diet as well as a way slower fat loss that has been masked by fluctuations in water weight in ones body depending on what one has eaten.
Women tend to have another added problem due to their monthly cycles which produce water retention at different phases and therefore might create the illusion of a big weight loss or gain.
This all was to tell people to not freak out and not use something so highly unreliable. Especially because ones weight tends to even change depending on ones velocity. (Small science joke)

Now how are weight loss and fat loss linked?
Well to tell the truth if one were to diet at a high deficit comparatively to their TDEE (total daily energy expenditure= basal metabolic rate calories+ calories lost while exercising ) the weight you would lose would amount fat and lean body mass (LBM). Depending on your body fat percentage (how many percent of your body are made up from fat) at high deficit you might lose from the total weight lost up to 80% of LBM and only 20% of fat. LBM is actually everything that is not fat in your body. So it means that you are losing muscle and organ tissue. This is one of the main reasons why moderate calorie deficit is recommended.
Individuals at higher body fat percentages tend to lose more fat compared to leaner individuals at the same deficit.

I will use weight in this paragraph just for the sake of simplifying as well as to show how inaccurate in might be.
The leaner you get the more you have to pay attention to your macro-nutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat). At low body fat percentages if you were to have a huge deficit (30% or lower than your TDEE) then you would inevitably lose only little fat but a huge amount of LBM. So in the end imagine you lost 3.7 pounds in a month at a relatively normal deficit. It could amount to up to 95% of fat lost which would make you better looking and thinner. Now let's imagine you made of a huge 60% calorie cut from your TDEE without assuring correct protein and fat intake. You might have lost 11 pounds of weight but in the end only 30 % of that is fat (amounts to 3.3 pounds of fat lost) and most comes from your muscle and organs!!!

This is the reason why so many people tend to become skinny fat after their dieting and not looking as good as they expected they would.

So fat loss and body loss are linked but most likely not the way you though it was!!!

One sure fire way to see whether your diet is working are body callipers and photos. That would show your progress.

People having huge calorie deficits can be compared to marathon runners who would refuse to drink water because it makes them heavier and consequently makes it harder to run.
In the case of the marathon runner he would most likely never finish the marathon due to his health deterioration, same is true with huge calorie deficits.

That being said it is possible to spare LBM and lose fat at huge calorie deficits. It is however usually done under the supervision of a doctor and with the help of different supplements. (PSMF google if you want to know about it). I however do not recommend it since people struggling with calories cannot possibly manage macro and micro nutrients.

Also the higher your deficit the higher the protein intake should be.

If you consume between 800-1000 calories and you don't know how many grams of magnesium, potassium, sodium, calcium, EPA or DHA you are consuming as well as most of your calories aren't made up of protein you should up you calories as soon as possible because you have no idea what you are doing and you should stop now!!!

I would suggest most of the dieters that want to look great when reaching their target weight to pay attention to not eat under their BMR (basal metabolic rate) and not to have a higher than 20% deficit unless skinny fat is your goal. Since a bigger deficit doesn't mean a bigger fat loss.

I will maybe write a small paragraph on metabolic slowdown (also often called starvation mode by people) later on.