The Problem with Losing Weight

People are more concerned about their health and fitness than ever and when asked about their goals, losing weight is typically at or near the top of the list. Since so many people are actively trying to lose weight, you would think the percentage of overweight people would be decreasing, but this is not the case¹. There are many reasons why, but one problem is people focus too much on losing weight, when they should focus on losing fat.

Many people think losing weight and losing fat are the same thing, but while they are similar, they are definitely not the same. Losing fat means decreasing the amount of stored body fat, while losing weight means decreasing the amount of any number of substances in your body (fat, muscle, bone, water, etc.), many of which you don't want to lose. Even though people primarily use the phrase "losing weight," they almost always really mean losing fat.

It makes sense to think in terms of losing weight instead of losing fat, because weight loss is easy to keep track of using only a scale. Monitoring body fat is significantly more difficult and requires additional equipment and testing. Plus, some body fat tests are not very accurate and reliable ones can be expensive, time consuming, and/or require a trained person to administer them.

Another reason people focus on losing weight is because the concept of weight loss is simpler than the concept of fat loss. Weight loss involves an increase or decrease in a single number (weight), while fat loss is usually measured in terms of a percentage (body fat), which is not numerically as meaningful to most people. Of course, society plays a large role as well, with almost every media source mentioning weight loss more often than fat loss.

This might sound like just a minor difference in vocabulary, but this apparently small variation in terminology has a major impact on your ability to lose fat. The main problem is people understand that losing weight is different than losing fat, yet they still make the assumption that when they lose weight, most of the lost weight is from fat. As a result, it creates the mindset that weight loss equals fat loss.

This mindset is very problematic, because it causes weight loss to be used as a direct measurement of fat loss. Since the scale is used to measure weight loss, people consider decreases on the scale to mean decreases in fat loss, yet these are often far from the same thing.

Whenever your primary goal is to get a lower number on the scale, it leads to making decisions that ultimately hurt fat loss. There are many ways to lose weight and a lot of them result in losing more healthy weight (muscle, bone mass, etc.) than losing actual fat weight, but the scale can't tell the difference between them.

Approaches designed to maximize weight loss, especially quick weight loss, usually result in losing the highest amounts of the healthy types of weight. Consequently, they also result in the lowest percentage of fat loss over the long run.

By only being concerned with losing weight, people don't have to worry about having a well-rounded health and fitness program, which causes them to become overly focused on doing whatever they can to lose weight. This approach leads to following unhealthy diets that only result in short-term weight loss or yo-yo dieting, which can actually lead to increases in body fat.

Probably the most common example of this is when people eat fewer and fewer calories as a way to stimulate weight loss. It is common knowledge that you have to consume fewer calories than you burn to lose weight, so people assume the fewer calories they eat, the more weight and fat they will lose. Unfortunately, this assumption is completely wrong.

Excessively cutting calories and making other drastic changes to increase weight loss may lead to initial decreases in weight, but much of this weight loss will be from water and it will come back as soon as you start eating more. This type of weight loss also decreases muscle, especially if you do not exercise. This results in a decrease in metabolism, causing your body to burn fewer calories every day.

To maximize fat loss, your primary goal cannot be just to lose weight. There has to be a balance between cutting calories and maintaining a well-balanced nutritional program including adequate amounts of protein, healthy fats, high-quality carbs, water, and other nutrients. Then you still need to exercise, getting enough rest/sleep, and minimizing your stress level. All of these things are important for maintaining health and losing fat.

Taking this well-balanced approach may not result in fast weight loss like a program designed just to make you lose weight, but this slower approach results in losing a higher percentage and probably a higher total amount of body fat. More importantly, since this approach helps you maintain more good weight (muscle, etc.), it will be easier to maintain the fat loss and continue losing even more fat in the future.

On the other hand, programs that only focus on losing weight generally end up sacrificing elements that are critical for long-term success and general health. For instance, many weight loss programs do not provide enough calories or nutrients to maintain metabolic rate, daily physical recovery, and immune system function.

In addition, once you go off the weight loss program, you will likely gain much or all of the weight back. This happens when weight loss is not quality fat loss and these weight losses are not able to be maintained over the long run.

At the end of the day, the only weight loss that really matters is fat loss and the problem with just trying to lose weight is that it often results in losing the wrong kind of weight, which actually hurts your ability to lose fat.

Source:

1. Center for Disease Control and Prevention Website: U.S. Obesity Trends

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

Additional source:

14 years of experience and education in health and fitness