There is a big difference between losing weight and losing fat.
Your goal should never be to lose weight, but instead should always be to lose fat.
When you lose weight, you lose a little bit of everything; fat, muscle, fluids, organ size. You want the majority of your weight loss to come from fat, not the other stuff. If you are only concerned with seeing a smaller number on the scale, you may be losing valuable muscle instead, which will result in long-term weight, meaning fat gain.
Don’t try to lose weight simply by performing cardio. The pounds you lose through cardio will come right back if you stop the cardio, without muscle mass to keep the weight off. Don’t worry about bulking up or gaining too much muscle. For the majority of the population, it’s simply not a concern. When you add muscle, you improve the body fat composition ratio, which is the main goal.
Losing muscle mass will cause a rebound effect that leads to weight gain.
Muscle is metabolically active and lights your furnace, keeping your metabolism brisk and burning calories. Even when you’re sitting on the couch, you burn more calories if you have more muscle mass on your frame. So, losing muscle means your furnace slows down, your metabolism gets sluggish and the weight keeps on coming.
Losing weight can leave you looking like a smaller version of a fat person because you have no muscle tone underneath your skin. To look like a fit, healthy person, losing fat and gaining muscle is absolutely necessary.
Most people who lose weight become less healthy as a result. People who want to become thinner and stay healthy are best off doing that in the bodybuilding way, according to an epidemiological study in which 26625 Danes took part. Your aim should not be a lower bodyweight, but rather a higher bodyweight – with a lower fat percentage.
We are all getting too fat and should eat less, going by what experts say in the media. Left at that, though, it’s a dangerous message, because studies in which researchers have followed people who have lost weight over a longer period suggest that weight loss increases your chance of dying. The study that epidemiologists at Copenhagen University and Aarhus University comes to the same conclusion.
The researchers measured the BMI and the waist measurement of their subjects on two occasions in the 1990s and at the start of the 21st century. After that the researchers monitored them for an average of 6.7 years.
That enabled the researchers to calculate how an increase or decrease in BMI affected the likelihood of dying [HR, or mortality]. A decrease in BMI INCREASES the likelihood of dying, but this actually goes down if your BMI INCREASES! Indeed. According to these figures it’s healthier to be heavy than to lose weight.
On the other hand, there is a relationship between waist measurement and chance of dying. The smaller the measurement, the less likely you are to die. The bigger the waist measurement, the more likely you are to die.
The researchers think that muscle is healthy. The more muscle mass you have, the better. But what’s really unhealthy is the fat in your abdominal area that surrounds your organs. Unguided weight loss probably costs you muscle mass, and therefore increases your mortality risk.
So, if you want to look amazing and live to be 100, try to put on weight while at the same time reducing your fat percentage as much as possible. By the way, that’s exactly what bodybuilders do.
Now we want to add a big warning: if you contact us for fat loss, we will not accept you if you are not prepared to train 4 to 7 times a week (combining personal training session and workouts on your own) and follow a strict nutrition plan for an extended period of time (at least 6 months). Why? Because significant and visible fat loss requires a lot of work. You are free to go and see someone promising results with little effort, but our experience taught us that those persons lie.