Weight loss has always been one of the most talked about topics in the field of Health and Fitness. Most of the people look for weight loss. But ideally, we should be aiming at fat loss and not weight loss. Yes, there’s a difference between the two.
Body composition:
Our weight comprises of several body components. Based on our fitness level, our weight comes from:
· Muscle: 30-55% of body weight
· Fat: 10-30% of body weight
· Water (not in muscle or fat): 10-25%
· Bone: 15% of body weight
· Organs, other tissues: 10-15%
If we aim at losing weight, we may end up losing any of the above components, most of which are the vital components that our body can’t afford to lose. However, if we are aiming at losing fat, then we ensure we keep the other body components intact while losing just the fat.
Weighing scales or BMIs do not give us an accurate measure of our health. The weight on the weighing scale is the weight of all your body components, including water, fat, muscle mass, bone mass and organs. Reduction in weight means reduction of any of these components, it may happen that you are reducing your muscle mass and your body water (which is not ideal) and thus number on the scale looks lesser. On the contrary, if we have higher muscle mass, the number on the weighing scale may look higher as muscles weigh more than fat. But this is good.
