The Difference Between Weight Loss And Fat Loss

The question is: Do you wanna lose weight or do you wanna lose fat? Into many people those terms are interchangeable, there’s no difference between weight loss and fat loss. That’s because most people think when they start exercising they’re going to automatically lose fat. But it’s just not true! Weight loss and fat loss are two very different things.

Weight Loss And Fat Loss:

In general, people who talk about weight loss really start from a place that is unknown to them. They may know how much they weigh, but they don’t know their lean body mass (how much muscle they actually carry) and they don’t know their body fat percentage (what percentage of their weight is fat).

So they may just go by the scale number and say “Well… I just need to lose weight. I’m 200 pounds, so I wanna get down to 150. So I just have to lose 50 pounds.” And what you’ll just see them do (especially women), is they’ll do a lot of cardio and they will start to diet and severely cut back their calories.

To lose weight, women will eat anywhere from 1000 to 2000 calories, and many women consider 2000 calories being way too much for them to eat. So they’ll cut out a food group entirely, or somehow they’re just trying things. Because all they want is just to lose weight, no matter whether it’s fat, no matter whether it’s muscle.

If You Want To Lose Fat…

But if you ask many people “Do you wanna lose fat or do you want to lose weight?” they’ll say “Well, isn’t that the same thing? Of course I wanna lose fat!”. Or if you ask them if they want to lose muscle or if they wanna lose fat, of course they’ll say they wanna lose the fat from their body.

So what happens is that they’ll end up maybe losing weight, and they’ll maybe get down to the goal weight, get close to it, and they look smaller, but their body doesn’t look better or different. They will end up looking more skinny fat, which is still having a high percentage of body fat and low muscle. The reason for this is because they were focused on losing weight and not losing fat.

…Do Heavy Resistance Training

If you want to be smaller or in better shape, to be healthier, to cut excess fat of your body and to look toned, you have to incorporate some heavy resistance training with your weight loss journey. You can not just do cardio, because cardio will help you burn fat, but you’re going to have to build up the muscle, you’re going to have to increase your muscle size.

Toned is revealing the muscle under your skin. So the less fat and the less water you have between your skin and your muscle, the more the muscle is gonna pop up and show. And some fast ways to create heavy resistance are calisthenics, heavyweight training or using resistance bands.

…And Eat Enough Calories

You also need to pay attention to your diet in this process. Like I said, a lot of times women will cut out huge food groups or just lower their calories dramatically, so they could be hindering their fat loss. You could be eating as such a low calorie amount and doing so much cardio that you’re actually wasting away muscle. You’re eating away your muscle through that because you’re not feeding the muscle, you’re not giving the muscle anything to build itself on.

You need to transform “I want to lose weight” into “I want to lose fat”, not focusing on what the scale says. Who cares what the scale says?! You have to understand that the scale matters somewhat but your body fat percentage is much more important. Your lean body mass is much more important!

So when you’re starting a weight loss journey, think about how can you improve your muscle and lose fat. You’ve got to add resistance training, cut back on cardio and eat a balanced macro diet (your fat, your carbs and your protein are balanced).

I hope you learnt the difference between weight loss and fat loss, and I also hope that this article helped you to interchange the word weight with fat in the statement “I want to lose weight!”. After all, losing fat is what it’s gonna give you the nice toned body that you want. ..