You rarely hear someone say “I want to lose body fat”. More often, what you hear is “I want to lose weight”. Do they mean “body fat” or body weight “? Many dieters probably don’t understand the difference and only measure success or failure with the scale. These dieters end up disappointed and frustrated in the long run. I’m going to help you avoid that frustration.
Losing “weight” versus Losing “fat”
Suppose you weigh 150 pounds at the start of your weight loss program. Your weight loss goal is to lose 20 pounds (goal weight is thus 130 lbs). You join Weight Watchers and meticulously count your “points”. Perhaps you go to the gym every day and run an hour on the treadmill.
Four months later you have reached your goal. Congratulations! Well Weight Watchers will certainly be congratulating you, but me, I will analyze your body fat before I commend you on reaching your goal.
Because of the food choices you may have made, you possibly lost mostly muscle and water – which yes, is “weight.” You now weigh 130 but you may actually have increased your body fat percentage as compared to when you weighed 150. (this means you are literally “fatter” at 130 lbs than at 150 lbs) How can that be, you ask?
You started your weight loss journey at a body fat percentage of 26% fat. That is your body had 39 pounds of fat and 111 pounds of non-fat tissue (bones, muscle and water.) If you concentrated on dramatically cutting back your calories, without regard to WHAT you ate and without a goal oriented physical activity program, your weight loss would more than likely be mostly muscle and water weight (your muscles hold water, so when you lose muscle you also lose water.) You might now weigh 130 but your body fat percentage is now 28%..
Your body fat percentage actually increased when you lost that muscle. You lost that muscle mostly because your food choices were not optimal for the training you were doing, and possibly too, your training was not optimal for the amount of food you were eating. This is what we call the “skinny fat”. And friends, it really does not look good, it is not healthy, and it is not sustainable.
A study in Hong Kong in 2001 noted the relatively high body fat percentages in Hong Kong women. Yet, a casual observer would surely not describe the general population of Hong Kong as “fat”. Again, the explanation boils down to “skinny fat”.
What amazes me, as a dietitian, is that even after hearing this explanation, our dieter will probably still be happy with the number on the scale. The scale was down after all so they believe to be at what they have claimed as their “goal weight”. My challenge to that dieter is to see if they are able to maintain that goal weight for more than 2 or so months. I bet if we checked back with him/ her a few months later we would find they are right back where they started. Or worse, he/she is back to 150 pounds but their body fat percentage will probably have increased AGAIN. This is the sad and unhealthy situation of the all too familiar yo-yo dieting phenomenon that once and for all, I want to help you avoid.
In our Metabolic Boost program one of the first things we learn about is Body Composition.
Goal : Improve Your Body Composition
When you start your program, we are going to calculate your body fat percentage. Yes, you may hate me for this but… what gets measured gets improved. (Do you know how much improving your body composition will improve your marathon times?)
To analyze your body composition, we divide your body weight into two components: body fat and lean body mass. We measure your body fat and the rest is lean body mass.
Your total body weight is about 60-70% water. This is a fairly high amount of water, the reason is that muscle tissue itself has about 70-75% water and fat tissue has 10-15% water. When you lose muscle or fat, you also lose water weight.
When you are dehydrated, you can appear to lose “weight”, but you have not actually improved your body composition at all, you have just lost that weight in water. Conversely when you eat a bag of potato chips, you might appear to “gain weight” the next morning but all that has happened is that the salty chips have encouraged your body tissue to hold onto more water. Your body is determined to keep it’s supply of salt and water in balance. (Another lesson for another day, just know for now not to panic over a sudden increase in “weight”, particularly when eating salty foods.)
Ideal Body Fat Percentages
Having some body fat on your body is necessary. ,Approximately 3% of total body weight, is required to maintain normal body functioning. This is called “essential body fat”. Women have an additional 9-12% essential fat that is associated with normal sex hormone functioning.
What then is a healthy amount of body fat? This depends on who you are and what you do. Athletes on strict training and diet regimens may have as little as 6% – 10% body fat. The healthy, fit range is for women is around 18% – 20% and from 10 – 14% for men. Having over 30% body fat for women and 20% body fat for men increases the risk of disease and is considered obese.
Lean Body Mass
Lean body mass includes everything in your body but fat – muscle, bones, organs, fluids, etc.. Weight training can increase muscle mass, which increases your lean body mass. In fact, the only way to increase muscle mass is to physically exert your muscles and to eat enough for the muscle to grow.
Another benefit of building muscle is that muscle can help your body become a better calorie-burning machine! It is true – by increasing muscle mass, you will increase your metabolism (also known as your resting metabolic rate (RMR)) and a higher metabolism burns more calories continuously!
How does this work? Muscle tissue contains little organelles called mitochondria, which put simply, are little energy producing machines. The more muscle tissue you have, the more mitochondria you have. And the more mitochondria you have, the more calories you are able to burn!
Fat cells, on the other hand, have no ability to burn calories. In fact, body fat above the level of essential fat is considered storage fat. A certain amount of storage fat is important for cushioning and protecting the bones, muscles and organs, and for temperature regulation. But above that minimal amount of storage fat, your only gain is a larger size pair of pants.
Hopefully you now understand the 101 of about body composition. Understanding this concept is key to applying what I teach you in the Metabolic Boost program.
The Metabolic Boost program is designed to raise your metabolism, to train your body to keep itself lean. Nobody should be satisfied with merely dropping the number on the scale and I hope after reading this blog post, you won’t be either.
You may remember my article in Runner’s World (International), April 2009 that brought lots of glory to Optimal Nutrition for Life (aka “me”, “Ilana”) … That article was so well received that the same journalist asked me to be on this panel. I am extremely proud to report that she really admires and respects my work ethic with respect to answering her requests right away; my credentials; my sense of humour and candor for recreational journalism like this ;-). She has used my expertize for many articles that make up my current portfolio.