Weight Loss Information

You're familiar with all the ads, I'm sure. "LOSE 18 POUNDS IN TWO WEEKS!"

Or maybe you've just had it with people thinking you're pregnant, you can't bear to put on a swimsuit, you dread mirrors and you think "I'll just go on a starvation diet and by the time vacation rolls around, everything will be okay!"

So you go on the diet and you actually lose 25 pounds. Time to celebrate and break out the champagne, right? Not necessarily.

FAT OR MUSCLE

What if the weight loss was mostly muscle? A study done at Tufts University showed that low calorie diets done without strength training result in loss of lean muscle mass as well as fat (Combined Exercise and Dietary Intervention to Optimize Body Composition in Aging, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., November 20, 1998; 854(1): 378 - 393). That was even true of subjects that were engaging in aerobic exercise. In contrast, subjects that engaged in resistance training increased their lean muscle mass as well as decreasing losing fat.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Why should you care? Weight loss is weight loss, right? Wrong. Muscle burns more calories than fat does. One of the reasons people tend to gain weight as they get older is because people tend to lose lean muscle mass. As they lose muscle mass, their metabolism drops and it becomes easier to put on weight.

This is one of the reasons for yo-yo dieting. When someone loses weight rapidly, without the benefit of strength building exercises, they tend to lose lean muscle mass and their metabolism drops, setting them up to regain all of the weight and then some, only this time, it will ALL be fat, dropping your metabolism still lower and making it that much more difficult to lose weight the next time around. It's a vicious cycle.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

What can you do about it? Well, if you work out at a gym, you can get one of the trainers to measure your body fat percentage with calipers. Try testing every couple of weeks or even once a month. Also, try to get the same person to measure your body fat percentage each time to minimize operator error variations. Notice I said operator error. The measurement could be off by 2 or 3 percent in either direction, depending on who's doing the measuring. So, what good does the measurement do you if it's not even all that accurate?

Well, the point is, you want to tell if you are moving in the right direction. Say, for example, on the 1st of June a trainer measures your body fat percentage at 20% and you weight 180 pounds. That would mean that you have 36 pounds of fat in your body and 144 pounds of lean mass (which would include bones). A month later, the same trainer measures your body fat percentage at 18% and you weigh 182 pounds.

Before, you might have thought, what a disaster! I've been working hard and I'm actually gaining weight! But actually, you would be on the right track because now you have 33 pounds of fat and 147 pounds of lean mass. You've lost 3 pounds of fat and gained 3 pounds of muscle, and increased your metabolism in the bargain.

IF YOU EXERCISE AT HOME

But what if you don't work out at a gym? Well, first of all, if you aren't working out at a gym, I hope you're doing strength exercises at home. (For more information about strength exercises, see my posts Strength Training to Promote Weight Loss and Putting Together a Home Gym.)

Fortunately, there are scales now that test for fat percentage. They are called bioelectrical impedance scales. The scale works by sending a small and completely harmless electrical current through the body. The current passes more quickly through muscle than fat. Based on the impedance reading, the scale makes a calculation and spits out the body fat percentage.

CONCLUSION

Again, it matters little if the percentage reading is 100% accurate. What's important is that the percentage reading is getting better as your diet and workout program progress.

It doesn't really matter how many pounds you lose. What matters is body composition -- how much fat you have relative to how much lean muscle mass, and the best way this is expressed is in body fat percentage.