Weight Loss and Fat Loss Are a Universe Apart

Fat loss should be the focus of every person wanting to lose weight. When you solve the problem of reducing fat without reducing lean muscle, you THEN solve the problem of losing weight without any drawbacks, starvation, deprivation. You can have your cake and eat it too when you target fat loss and rather than weight loss.

For most, the two are mutually dependent. You can't do one without the other. Any recommendation of mine will involve fat loss as a by product of increased cellular health.

If you are asking how to do this I have "Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss Action Steps" at the bottom of this page to help you.

One of the reasons for the avalanche of failures in weight loss is precisely because people are so focused on losing WEIGHT. The metric they are using to gauge their success is their weight. That is a sure way to go off the rails. It is a bit frustrating for me because it is very detrimental to my clients and to you to look at this weight loss number.

My clients can lose fat continuously over a long period pretty consistently but their weight will plateau every so often. This is because their weight is changing. Where before a lot of it came from excess fat, it is now coming from muscle. If you are a woman and thinking to yourself that you don't want to look muscular, please relax, you won't. When you replace your fat with muscle. Even a small fraction of muscle, the shape of your body, the way you feel, the energy you will have, the physical abilities you will attain, the mental focus and clarity, the emotional stability all come with increasing lean muscle mass. You will look and feel better then ever before. Keep reading and you will be WANTING to build muscle after this page.

What are your reasons for losing weight?

You get these by losing fat. Lose weight, you'll roll the dice. There is a universe of difference between Weight Loss and Fat Loss. When trying to lose weight you may be end up frustrated like most others.

If you just look at the weight loss industry and the weight loss statistics of a country like the United States, the number 1 killer is an obesity related disease - Heart disease. Here is a quote:

"Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and is a major cause of disability. The most common heart disease in the United States is coronary heart disease, which often appears as a heart attack. In 2009, an estimated 785,000 Americans will have a new coronary attack, and about 470,000 will have a recurrent attack. About every 25 seconds, an American will have a coronary event, and about one every minute will die from one. ^[1]"

Another quote:

"Research has shown that as weight increases to reach the levels referred to as 'overweight' and 'obesity,' the risks for the following conditions also increases:

• Coronary heart disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)
• Stroke
• Liver and Gallbladder disease
• Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
• Osteoarthritis (a degeneration of cartilage and its underlying bone within a joint)
• Gynecological problems (abnormal menses, infertility)^[2]

The point here is that "Weight Loss" has become and industry and a very powerful one. It is growing every year. There are more people searching for answers to weight loss now than ever before. I know this because I do internet marketing research. I also know this because when I advertised my services for "health and nutrition" as a nutritionist, there was very moderate interest. But when I focused on using nutrition to help people lose weight, I got a very big response. To my surprise most people who became clients, had been on several diets and "weight loss programs" before!

So something is wrong with the weight loss industry. For a country where weight loss is such big business, it should have one of the lowest rate of obesity and the main killer of Americans should not be a obesity related disease!

Focusing on weight loss rather than fat loss is one of the reasons for the failure of the weight loss industry in the US.

When trying to lose fat, you can start to get somewhere.

If you are someone who has gone on diet and exercise programs in the past to get results for a time, only to gain it back again, one of the main reasons is that you were watching your WEIGHT loss.

Here is an example,

Joe and Bill were both 220 pounds and for this illustration, everything else is the same for these two except for the diet and exercise they do in the next 90 days. Both go on a weight loss program. Joe, after 90 days is 200 pounds. Bill after 90 days on a different program weighs 160 pounds.

Who had better results? Well, if you are following all the advice out there Bill is the winner.

Bill
Original Weight:	220
Ending weight:	160
Total Weight Loss:	60 lbs
Total % weight loss:	27%

This is one of the major points where this website takes the road less traveled.

Let’s add a few more dimensions to Joe and Bill’s results. So, in addition to the above facts, let’s add these in.

Joe
Original Fat %:	38%
Ending Fat %:	12%
Total Fat Loss:	59.6 Pounds

Bill
Original Fat %:	38%
Ending Fat %:	48%
Total Fat Loss:	6.8 Pounds of fat

So, Bill lost 40 pounds more than Joe, but … Joe lost 870 % more FAT than Bill!

The next common question is that if Joe, lost 59.6 pounds of fat and lost only 20 pounds, there is 39.6 lbs unaccounted for. That 39.6 lbs is lean, healthy, life giving, energy providing, metabolism-stumulating, lean-muscle.

Let’s take Bill. If he lost 60 lbs of total-body-weight and only lost 6.8 lbs of fat. There is still 53.2 lbs unaccounted for. It is the exact opposite of Joe. Bill lost 53.2 pounds of lean, healthy, life giving, energy providing, metabolism-stumulating, lean-muscle.

Now let me ask you again, "Who had better results?"

Who is going to look better? Who will most likely have more energy? Who will most likely develop arterial plaque? Who is enjoying the way their body feels more? Who is more active? Who is able to do more things? Who’s body shape changed more? Whose body is tight and toned? Whose body has a lot of giggly parts? Who has a more flattering body shape if you just looked at a silhouette?

More important, who is going to retain their gains? If you have read all the pages in "Speed Up Your Metabolism" or more specifically, "Energy Balance", when there is more muscle and muscle cells are healthy, they automatically use your body fat as as one of their fuel sources. Also, in "Homeostasis and Natural Weight Loss", your nervous system operates like a thermostat that regulates how fuel and nutrients are used in your body. An overweight person has a thermostat that causes the food your eat to be converted to fat.

A fit, lean person has trained his or her nervous system to route nutrients to the muscle cells. The thermostat of your metabolism is more permanent. So a person who has increased lean muscle and lost fat, has actually reprogrammed how his or her body is using nutrients and food. The person who lost muscle to lose weight, did not change his or her thermostat. He or she has turned the thermostat up and made it do the wrong thing at a greater rate! They will balloon up and get fatter very fast and very easily. They also feel deprived and tired.

The Size of Muscle and Fat

One pound of muscle and one pound of fat are NOT the same size.

If I place one pound of muscle on a scale and one pound of fat on a scale, they will both weigh one pound. The difference between the two is in total volume. Another way to say this is the difference is the amount of space one pound of muscle occupies compared to one pound of fat. One pound of muscle may appear to be the size of baseball; one pound of fat will be three times the size and look like a squiggly bowl of Jell-O.

Muscle is a denser tissue and thus takes up less space than an equal weight of fat. That's why it's possible to lose inches but show little to no change in weight but still lose fat, look great and feel great! Having more muscle means you have a more desirable body composition, or fat-to-muscle ratio. Your body will look different, smaller, better and more toned.

Since muscle is smaller in size than an equal weight of fat, when you replace fat with muscle, your body will occupy less space. (ie, smaller clothes)

Look at some of these pictures of what equal weights of fat and muscle look like.

Here is another picture to help make this real to you. The picture below shows a cross section of two thighs that are relatively the same circumference. But if you look that the make up of the thigh, you will see one person has more muscle than the other.

Try to grasp the magnitude of this. If you put 5 pounds of lean muscle into a container of water and then replaced it with 5 pounds of fat, about 3 times more water will be displaced by the fat! By losing fat rather than losing weight, your body will get tighter, leaner, more toned and you will get all the benefits of a fit and healthy body! Muscle is your friend.

If the person on the right tried to "lose weight", they would not be looking at fat loss. And as such, they would not be looking at optimal health. This person gets fat easier. The other does not. This person yo-yo's with their weight. They don't keep the fat off. They gain it back faster and easier. He or she has a slower metabolism. He or she is less energetic. They also look fat. Even though both the circumferences of the two thighs are the same.This person's gains are temporary. If this person focused on fat loss, their muscle to fat ratio would look like the person on the left.

In other words, they are experiencing what most people experience with with "weight loss" - frustration and loss. So with my program, the focus is on fat loss through gaining muscle health. This is a win-win situation.

So when you even think the words weight loss, replace it in your mind with fat loss, fat loss, fat loss, fat loss through muscle health. By making your muscles healthy every other part of your body gets healthier.

Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss Action Steps!

1. Lloyd-Jones D, Adams R, Carnethon M, DeSimone G, Ferguson TB, Flegal K, Ford E, Furie K, Go A, Greenlund K, Haase N, Hailpern S, Ho M, Howard V, Kissela B, Kittner S, Lackland D, Lisabeth L, Marelli A, McDermott M, Meigs J, Mozaffarian D, Nichol G, O'Donnell C, Roger V, Rosamond W, Sacco R, Sorlie P, Stafford R, Steinberger J, Hong Y; American Heart Association Statistics Committee and Stroke Statistics Subcommittee. Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics–2009 Update. A Report from the American Heart Association Statistics Committee and Stroke Statistics Subcommittee. Circulation. 2008 Dec 15.
2. 1NIH, NHLBI Obesity Education Initiative. Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. Available online: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/ob_gdlns.pdf (PDF-1.25Mb)