How To Lose Weight

In this article I will make it clear why your goal should be not merely losing weight but specifically losing fat. Along the way I will address some misconceptions about healthy weight loss and fat loss.

Most people don't think twice when talking about losing weight. Losing weight is implicitly assumed to be the same as losing fat and therefore a good and desirable thing, and the faster one can lose weight the better! In reality, that is very far from the truth. Weight loss comes from losing any one of three things:

• Fat
• Muscle Tissue
• Water

Let me go through these three things and explain how they are different, starting with losing water.

This is actually the most common kind of weight loss for most dieters, especially those following numerous low-calorie diets that claim to lose you a lot of weight in a short amount of time. What happens in our bodies is that along with the solid food we daily ingest a large amount of water, whether by itself or as part of other foods. Although sooner or later we eliminate this water, there's always a large amount of water in our intestines as well as in our tissues. The thing most people don't realize is that the more food we have in our system the more extra water is retained along with that food! In fact, a gram of solid food may carry with it several grams of water! So, if a typical person consumes a pound or two of solid food daily, that means he or she is also retaining as much as six or eight or even more pounds of water in their system!

So what happens when such a person goes on a low-calorie diet which cuts daily solid food consumption to less than half a pound? What happens is that immediately that person also quickly loses all that extra retained water, thereby instantly "losing" several pounds. Is that a good thing? Not really! It's exactly the same kind of "weight loss" as urinating or having bowel movements! All you did is temporarily lost some water weight that will come back once your diet gets back to regular calorie level.

To conclude: Water weight loss is IRRELEVANT. It is neither good nor bad. And you should certainly not judge the success of any diet based on the first few pounds you lose.

This is the "stealth" weight loss that few people know about. It's very possible to lose muscle just like it's possible to lose fat! Muscle loss happens when your body is faced with not getting enough calories to maintain its mass. In such an event your body will burn both fat and muscle for energy. It burns fat for energy because that's the whole purpose of body's fat reserves -- to provide a source of energy in times of need. But it also can burn muscle tissue! Muscle tissue can be converted to energy, just like fat tissue can. And, by reducing its muscle mass your body actually decreases the amount of calories it needs -- muscle requires calories to maintain itself, so the less muscle, the fewer calories are required. When your body is faced with severe calorie deficit it will start burning muscle and can potentially burn more muscle than fat! This situation is exacerbated if you do not present any stimulus for your body to hang on to its muscle mass -- in other words if you don't exercise, your body will consider your muscle expendable.

OK, so now you know that muscle loss happens alongside fat loss. Why should you care about it? You should care about it because muscle loss is very undesirable when you are trying to lose fat. Your muscle tissue is your best natural fat burner, especially when you exercise it! The more muscle you lose the harder it will be to keep burning fat and the harder it will be to keep fat from coming back.

Some people think that all that muscle is making them bulky and unattractive -- what about that? Well, the truth is that unless you spent many years dedicated to building muscle it's very very unlikely that you have significant excess muscle mass. What is much more likely is that it's actually fat that makes you look bulky and not muscle. If it's soft and can't be flexed, then it's fat.

To conclude: Muscle weight loss is BAD! And if you think you have "too much" muscle, you better make really sure that it's muscle and not just extra fat.

This finally brings us to fat loss -- the kind of weight loss you actually want. When you hear "I want to lose weight", in 99.9% of the cases what the person really should be saying is "I want to lose fat"! Now that you realize what losing weight really means, please read my How To Lose Fat article to learn the most effective way to lose fat and to keep it from coming back afterwards.