FeaturedHealth and FitnessMedical

Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss: What’s the Difference, and Why Should You Care?

The two terms often used interchangeably, weight loss and fat loss, are often considered the same but have huge differences. Spotting the differences between the two can help you on your fitness quest. Weight loss includes reducing weight from muscle, water, and fat to help you drop the overall pounds. However, fat loss only reduces weight from body fat. 

To reach the desired weight or achieve a weight goal, people should typically aim to reduce body fat. However, this is not the case every time as the fat loss is not always reflected as the lower number on the weight scale. Additionally, the strategies people use when they are looking to lose fat generally end up failing.

Fat loss is a more particular and beneficial goal than weight loss. But, it can be difficult to figure out whether you are losing weight from fats or muscle and water.

What is Weight Loss?

The overall drop in weight due to a body constituent that may include water, muscle, or fat is called weight loss. This is because these components play a significant role in weight loss. However, weight loss can also occur due to external factors such as glycogen stores or bone minerals.

What is Fat Loss? 

The weight lost from fats present in the body is called fat loss. It is considered a more particular and beneficial goal than weight loss. A specific proportion of drop in body fat levels such as triglycerides and cholesterol is fat loss. 

Fat loss contains weight loss while preserving the muscle mass as much as possible, allowing people to look extra fit. You need to prioritize strength training to primarily lose fat so that you build muscles with appropriate nutrition and diet. 

Adverse Health Consequences

The adverse health consequences of a loss of body mass are: 

  • A failure in neuromuscular functionality
  • Fatigue 
  • Possible effects on emotion and psychological conditions
  • Bigger risk of injury
  • Lowered metabolism

Emphasize on Losing Fat, Not Weight

Several weight loss plans claim to help lose weight easily and swiftly. However, it is important to understand that a substantial amount of the weight that can be lost following those plans may include water and muscle mass losses. Losing muscle mass can be dangerous and harmful, as muscle is a fundamental component of your overall fitness. 

Retaining a strong percentage of muscle has many benefits, like regulating composed blood glucose levels, maintaining cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood, and controlling tenderness. 

Certainly, many studies have related a higher fat muscle ratio to prolonged diseases like metabolic disorder, cardiac disease, and high diabetes. However, preserving your muscle mass can also lower the danger of muscle loss related to age, resulting in weakness and possibly disability. 

In addition, the more muscle mass your body possesses, the more calories you burn at ease. This is the foremost reason for women having lower calorie needs than men. 

How to know if you are Losing Weight or Fat?

The common practice to monitor your weight loss progress is checking your weight every now and then on a scale. Though this can be accommodating and helpful, most scales don’t track fat loss. 

The majority of the scales cannot differentiate between muscle mass loss and fat loss. This is why keeping an eye on your weight may sometimes not be a reliable way to find out whether you are losing muscles and water or fats. 

Simultaneously, you cannot figure out what amounts you are losing muscles or fats. Alternatively, a body fat scale can yield a clearer picture of your body structure by calculating the proportion of muscle and fat you have. 

In addition, you can use a skinfold caliper, a more practical technique to estimate your body fat percentage and ensure accuracy. You can also go for a DEXA Scan to measure bone and muscle density through diagnostic imaging. Some common ways to measure fat loss are:

  • Waist Circumference
  • Body Fat Scales
  • Body Mass Index (BMI)
  • Tape Measure
  • Calipers
  • Waist-To-Hip Ratio

Difference between Weight Loss and Fat Loss 

Weight loss occurs by crash dieting and improper training and includes the loss of water and muscle mass in the body, which may harm overall health. Alternatively, fat loss occurs by the intake of correct nutrients and proper training. It can help reduce the risk associated with prolonged diseases tenderness and help you preserve the harm. 

Moreover, body fat can be lost by reducing the intake of calories like weight loss. For this, the quality of meals you consume for fat loss is more essential. It is difficult to achieve fat loss with diet, but diet can achieve weight loss. Additionally, it is impossible to calculate fat loss using a weighing scale, unlike weight loss.

Consequences of Weight Loss

  • Decreased fitness
  • Early aging
  • Decreased strength
  • Poor performance
  • Reduced immunity

Benefits of Fat Loss

  • Improved fitness
  • Greater strength
  • Peak performance
  • Delayed aging
  • Reduced risk of diseases

How to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle

There are several ways to make sure that you will lose fats from your body and gain muscle mass or maintain it. These include eating plenty of protein, exercising regularly, and following a nutrient-dense diet that puts you in a slight calorie deficit.

Protein Consumption

The most important nutrient for a variety of body functions is protein. Therefore, it is significant to develop photolytic enzymes that can help digest food, produce energy, standardize fluid balance, and maintain healthy immunity, among other functions. 

Protein is also vital to maintain the muscles you already possess and support new muscle development, especially while losing weight.

Exercise 

The most efficient way to boost fat loss instead of muscle loss is exercise. A study found that adults with obesity who are engaged in physical fitness, cardiovascular fitness, and weight training follow a calorie-restricted diet at least thrice a week. 

The study further stated that they retained 93% more of their muscle and only lost fat than those who did not pursue exercise.

Shadow a Calorie-Restricted Diet 

Another important factor in losing weight is creating and following a calorie-restricted diet. Of course, the most preferred way is to consume fewer calories and exercise, but you can also follow one of them. 

However, reducing the calorie count can create a greater loss of muscle instead of fat. Therefore, you shall aim to modestly cut the calorie count you consume by 400 to 500 on a daily basis to curtail muscle loss while still enabling fat loss.

Conclusion

To summarize, the major difference between weight loss and fat loss is a decrease in your overall body weight or a decrease in the body’s fat mass. The fat loss can be easily monitored by a body fat scale or skinfold caliper, and tracking your bodyweight alone could be of less help. 

The priority should be fat loss, and that could occur by consuming plenty of protein, exercising, and modestly limiting your calories. Fat loss is a more specific and worthwhile goal than weight loss.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button