WEIGHT LOSS VS FAT LOSS

Weight loss is obviously how many pounds of body weight we lose, and it is the only thing a scale can tell us. It includes weight lost from fat reduction, muscle atrophy, decreased water and nutrient retention, and decreased contents of the digestive tract. This is not really what most of us want to focus on. Instead, we want to focus on “fat loss,” which improves our health, and in the minds of some, changes our aesthetic appeal.

A significant change in diet definitely results in both faster fat loss and weight loss, as it is easier for most of us to cut a few hundred calories from our daily intake than to run a few extra miles. However, some of what we see on the scale comes from a reduction in muscle mass and water weight- two things that make the numbers look better but make us feel worse. Thus, the weight loss from diet alone can be very deceiving.

When we add exercise to a healthy diet, we get to keep our muscle mass and even increase it over time. We delay the reduction in metabolism that comes as we lose weight (carrying extra weight around all day burns calories, after all). We increase our energy instead of lose it as our bodies struggle to preserve our stores of fat. Plus, we get bodies that are more capable, making daily tasks easier to accomplish and opening up recreational opportunities we might not have had before.

In many ways, diet and exercise are like our left and right feet. We all had to learn how to walk, but once we got used to it, it sure made getting to where we wanted to go a whole lot easier.

It’s OK to start with either changes to your diet or your activity level, but you have to add the other component before long. Otherwise, you might just find yourself circling back to where you started

:flowerforyou: THIS ARTICLE HELPED ME, SO I WANTED TO SHARE:flowerforyou:

Keep it up everyone and remember you are worth it!