Weight Loss vs Fat Loss

It seems everyone these day's is trying to lose weight. There is always a new diet, new workout program or new fat burning supplement promising you that you can have a bikini body in 30 days. But is losing weight the same as losing fat? People seem to use both terms interchangeably and it can get confusing. By the end of this post you’ll understand the difference between weight loss & fat loss, but also which one you should aim for and how.

Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss. What’s the difference? Let’s start by defining weight loss & fat loss so you know what I mean here.
Weight Loss: You want to lower your body-weight, the weight you see on the scale. The weight of your bones, muscles, organs and body fat.
Fat Loss: You want to lower your body fat, the amount of fat you have on your body, while retaining as much muscle as possible.

Reverse Dieting

See my previous posts on Metabolic Damage and IIFYM.

What is reverse dieting?

Reverse dieting is a very slow increase in calories after extended periods of caloric restriction, essentially you have reached your goal and and want to maintain it. The goal of reverse dieting is to slowly add as many calories as possible (mainly from carbohydrates) without gaining any weight or whilst gaining as little weight as possible. The slow increase of calories allows your body to adapt to the increases each week and prevent any significant fat gain.

Why reverse diet?

If you have been on a calorie restricted diet for a long period of time, especially when combined with excessive cardio, your metabolism will start to slow down and weight loss will become difficult. If you have been dieting on say 1400 calories for a while and have noticed no weight loss so decided to jump back up to maintenance calories (which would likely be around 2000 calories) you would most likely gain a significant amount of body fat.  This is because your metabolism has been somewhat damaged and is therefore sluggish and is not equipped to handle the large increase in calories. Reverse dieting aims to prevent this from happening by maximizing your metabolic capacity so that when you reach the maximum amount of calories you can eat without weight gain, you will start to lose fat far more efficiently.

 

Metabolic Damage

'You should be eating the maximum amount of calories possible and doing the least amount of cardio necessary while still losing fat.'
You start working out and cutting your calories to ensure that you have a calorie deficit. The weight is coming off at a steady pace, then all of a sudden you hit a plateau. No matter what you do the weight won’t budge, so you lower your calories and up your cardio yet again until you are doing 1-2 hours of cardio a day and eating 1200 calories. Then after a while, your weight loss stops. You still haven’t reached your goal, you are frustrated and tired and your metabolism is damaged. Now what?

Many people think that they have to drastically reduce calories and perform lots of cardio in order to lose weight, but could this actually be detrimental to our fat loss efforts? If you someone who has stopped losing weight no matter how much you exercise or cut calories  then you could be suffering from metabolic damage.