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Are Losing Weight and Losing Fat the Same Thing?
If you ask 10 people who walk into a gym on January 1st of any given year about their goals, chances are that 7 out of 10 will answer: losing weight. In this article, we’ll delve deeper into the definitions of losing weight and losing fat. Additionally, we want to clarify the differences between the two and help you understand which of the two goals may suit your personal situation.
What is Losing Weight?
Losing weight is undoubtedly the most commonly heard goal of many people. Losing weight often refers to the systematic reduction of body weight, often through a diet. A deeper look at this definition is provided below.
Body Weight
The total body weight of a person is composed of more than just fat mass. Your bones, muscles, amount of fluids, and fat mass together determine the number that appears on the scale. When you want to lose weight and only focus on your body weight, it’s a rather limited way of measuring. After all, you can gain weight without increasing your fat mass. Conversely, you can lose weight without losing fat mass. This means that body weight and the kilograms displayed on your scale only tell part of the story. And a significant part of the story remains untold.
Diet
The word “diet.” A word that quickly makes many people uncomfortable because of its negative connotation. Often in colloquial terms, the word “diet” implies that you are not allowed to eat certain types of food for a period. One definition reads as follows [1]:
diet (the; plural: diets) 1 living rule regarding food and drink, e.g., for medical reasons or to lose weight
However, there are multiple definitions. In most cases, however, the emphasis is on adhering to certain rules for your diet, whatever purpose those rules may serve.
Whether you adjust your diet to reduce your fat mass or to increase your muscle mass, both forms are forms of a diet. A common saying among nutritionists is: Dieting is prohibited! The message they try to convey with this is that you need to adjust your lifestyle. In essence, this is the same, in the definition of the word “diet.” So whether you want to lose weight, reduce fat mass, or build muscles; If you consciously adjust your diet according to certain rules, then you are on a diet.
Losing Fat
Okay, so weight consists of more than just your fat mass and is a sum of all the components in your body that weigh a gram and are influenced by gravity. When you want to lose fat, measuring your weight in kilograms is not the right unit of measurement. Fat loss is measured by determining your fat percentage at the start, and then measuring progress during your diet. Your fat percentage is an estimate of the total amount of fat mass on your body based on measuring your skin folds at various locations on your body. Based on the thickness of the skinfold measurements, an extrapolation can be made for the total fat mass of your body. Not only can you calculate your fat mass in this way, but you can also determine your fat-free muscle mass from the estimate. The skin folds on which the estimation is based depend on the type of measurement on your biceps, triceps, shoulder blade, thigh, and abdomen.
By lowering your fat percentage, you measure the impact your diet or exercise activities have on your total fat mass. A lower fat percentage makes your figure look slimmer and brings out your muscles more. This is desirable when you want to walk confidently on the beach in the summer. If your fat percentage is higher, you may have the same muscle mass, but everything is covered by a thicker layer of fat. A too-high fat percentage can also have harmful effects on your health. Various studies show that particularly fat around the abdominal area can significantly increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Successfully Losing Fat
Above, we have hopefully clarified the differences between losing weight and losing fat. When losing weight, you lower your overall weight, including muscle mass. In the case of fat loss, you only focus on fat. If you have now decided that you want to lose fat and not just lose weight, it is good to know how to proceed. Because how can you successfully lose fat?
To answer that question, we first need to look at how fat is stored in your body. Your body needs a certain amount of energy daily to function. This is called the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Even if you were to do nothing all day, your body still needs energy for your breathing, heartbeat, and other processes. In addition to your BMR, you also engage in daily activities that also require energy. Finally, your body needs energy to digest, process, and absorb your food, the so-called thermal effect. The sum of these 3 energy requirements is called your daily energy requirement.
Your body gets the required energy from your daily diet. Everything you eat provides energy, and with that, you can meet your daily energy needs. If you eat more than you need daily, we call that a calorie surplus. If you eat less than you need daily, we call that a calorie deficit. When generating a calorie surplus, your body stores the excess energy in the form of fat. So if you want to lower your fat percentage, you need to create a calorie deficit.
A calorie deficit will thus lead to weight loss and can be created in 2 ways:
– You can exercise more, causing you to burn more calories daily
– You can eat less, resulting in fewer calories consumed
Healthy Fat Percentage
Now that we have explained the difference between losing weight and losing fat, we want to tell you a little more about body fat percentage and its relationship to health. As mentioned earlier, a too-high body fat percentage can lead to health risks, but the same applies to a too-low body fat percentage. For men, a healthy body fat percentage ranges from 12% to 20%. For women, who naturally have a higher body fat percentage, this percentage is higher, ranging from 20% to 30%. Many bodybuilders aim to drastically reduce their body fat percentage on competition days, making their muscles more prominent. As a result, they often have a body fat percentage well below 10%.
References
- vandale.nl
- Poirier P, Eckel RH. Obesity and cardiovascular disease. Curr Atheroscler Rep. 2002 Nov;4(6):448-53. Review. PubMed PMID: 12361492.
- Poirier P, Giles TD, Bray GA, Hong Y, Stern JS, Pi-Sunyer FX, Eckel RH. Obesity and cardiovascular disease: pathophysiology, evaluation, and effect of weight loss. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2006 May;26(5):968-76. Review. PubMed PMID: 16627822.
- PoirierP, Giles TD, Bray GA, Hong Y, Stern JS, Pi-Sunyer FX, Eckel RH;American Heart Association; Obesity Committee of the Council on Nutrition,Physical Activity, and Metabolism. Obesity and cardiovascular disease:pathophysiology, evaluation, and effect of weight loss: an update of the 1997 American Heart Association Scientific Statement on Obesity and Heart Disease fromthe Obesity Committee of the Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Metabolism. Circulation. 2006 Feb 14;113(6):898-918. Epub 2005 Dec 27. Review. PubMed PMID: 16380542.
