Lose weight or lose fat

Anyone who has followed a low calorie diet knows that losing weight quickly at first, then becomes increasingly difficult to lose weight, until, after several weeks or months, often the weight loss stops.
In this article, we will understand the difference between losing weight or losing fat and losing weight and simply, without distinction regarding the origin of its weight loss.

Our body weight consists of:
- Bones;
- Origan internal (heart, liver, spleen, etc.);
- Muscles;
- Water;
- Fat;
- Muscle glycogen;
- Contents of the stomach and intestines.

Bone mass and that of organs, in normal health, do not change quickly, so the variation of short-term weight change depends on how the body fluids, muscle glycogen, the content of the intestine, muscle and body fat.

If our desire is to lose weight, then we only lose weight through fat loss, but we cannot prevent the other parameters change 'and so it is important to understand how they can vary and depend on what, to correctly evaluate the data provided from the scale.

Muscle glycogen

Is the basis of carbohydrates in our body: the muscles they contain about 500 g and 80 g liver Each gram of glycogen binds about 3 grams of water so if you consume all the muscle and liver glycogen (for example, prolonged physical activity or a very low carbohydrate diet) lose much weight, as much as 1.5 kg. When we start a diet inventories are full, but after a few days dwindle, and make us read a fictitious weight loss of about 1 kg, recovered at the end of the period of food restriction.

The body fluids

Many diets that relies on those who want to lose weight are based on fluid loss rather than fat. The level of extracellular fluid (those outside the cells) depend on the amount of sodium in our body, which depends on how much sodium assume. If we usually eat salty bodily fluids will always be close to the maximum value, eliminating salt in a few days the weight loss dummy exceed 2 kg, which are promptly resumed after a meal of salt.

Muscles

The muscles are cannibalized by the body if the diet is very restrictive and not supported by sufficient exercise. The loss of muscle goes along with that fat, so it can distort the results achieved with a diet. If a proper diet is associated with physical activity, can gain muscle and lose fat, especially if the subject was sedentary.

A diet that is very slim and sedentary for a long time a subject is surely a good part of cannibalizing muscle. At the end of the diet, weight loss in the form of muscle you pay with a lower metabolism. However, the sedentary slimming faster athlete, which may imply that his method to lose weight is better when it is actually much worse!

The intestinal contents

If you eat 1 kg of food, gain weight exactly 1 kg. Trivial, but we all think when they climb on the scale. The same applies after a meal of fish: the wastes are not removed immediately, and then verify that the kg in the next day is not real, to understand what has cost us except food must weigh two days later. For the same reason, you should weigh yourself at fixed hours, preferably in the morning, when conditions are more standardized (we have 8-10 hours of fasting behind.

Fat

We come finally to weight loss that interests us. To lose weight, that is, losing fat, eat less calories than you consume.
One kg fat contains 9000 kcal. However, adipose tissue also contains water, if we take the fat fresh pork, for example, and the chefs, cooking it loses volume and weight, because it also contains water and it does not provide 9000 kcal, but about 6500. When thinner, then, we lose not only fat but also linked it to the water.

But this is not the only variable: when the body is subjected to caloric restriction, metabolism decreases, and when fat, increases metabolism. and the rate of change is subjective, the details of this mechanism will find them in "what counts calories?
For simplicity, suppose that the two phenomena compensate each other, then we should eat to lose weight 1 kg 9000 kcal less than our calories.

To understand, we're talking about a couple of Christmas dinner consisting of appetizer, trio of first, second encore, trio of desserts, wine, coffee . So, you can grease 1 kg per day, but you concatenate a wedding after another! This means that in normal weight gain is so slow, however if you consider eating only 100 calories more than the amount owed, a year fatten 4 kg, 20 kg in 5 years!

The same applies to weight loss, with no aggravating recently: food intake is limited only by digestive capacity, then one day you can also take 3000 calories more than your calorie consumption. Caloric restriction, however, is limited by the fact that our calories varies from 1500 to 3000 kcal per day, on average, then the restriction is limited to 500-1500 kcal per day. Whereas an average of 600-1000 kcal, weight loss induced by physiological proper diet, for a person overweight (not obese), indicates values ranging from 0.5 to 1 kg per week.