What Matters When Losing Fat: Body fat vs. Body Weight

People often get on the weight scale and see that they have lost 2 pounds since the last night. That does not really mean that you have lost any fat of your body, only because you weigh less. There is a big difference between shedding of the fat of your body and just losing weight.

Things to Do to Lose Weight:

• Stop drinking water
• Stop eating
• Donate your organs

Your body weight contains bunch of different things: your bones and muscles, what is called lean body mass, your body fat, and the food and drinks in your system. When you are trying to lose weight, you could just stop drinking, and you would lose, I believe, at least 10 pounds in a couple of days. But is that what you want to achieve? Get dehydrated and die because of lack of fluids in your system? I don't think so. Therefore, stopping to drink water will not work.

Let's talk about giving up on food and starving yourself. I have heard of some monks in Russia, who say that they have stopped eating decades ago, and live because of the energy they get from the sun. Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? I don't think so - to me it sounds more like a sci-fi movie. Starving yourself will have you lose weight. Let's do the math: suppose you need 2000 calories a day to maintain your current weight, and one pound is 3500 calories. If you starve yourself, do not eat anything, for a week, you would burn 14000 calories, which is 4 pounds. However, even that is impossible, because your metabolism would slow down and you would start burning less and less calories, and, eventually, you would die.

Another way to lose weight quickly is to donate your organs. You have two kidneys, so why not to give one away? You would definitely lose a couple of pounds at least. But is it worth it?

OK, enough of stupid stuff. The only reason I was giving the examples before was to prove you that, if you lose body weight, does not automatically make you skinnier, or more shredded. When you are dieting really hard and, often, in a stupid way (eat like 1000 calories a day; eat just fruit and vegetables, etc), you will lose more weight by giving away your muscles than actually shedding the fat of your body. Do you really want to give away those hard earned muscles? I doubt it. It is also worth noticing that muscles weigh more than fat, so, if you are experiencing really sudden weight loss in high amounts, you should know that you are losing muscle, and switch it up to keep muscle there.

Body Mass Index is a measure for you to determine whether you are too skinny, regular, overweight, or obese. However, from my example above, you see that BMI would not really work well to determine where you stand. Let's take a bodybuilder who weights 250 and is 5 foot 10. His BMI would determine him to be obese, while he only has 3% body fat on his body. Ultimately, BMI is good for approximation, if you have never lifted before, and do not have large amounts of muscle. If you have plenty of muscle, do not play around with the Body Mass Index.

Here are the formulas of how to calculate your BMI:

weight (kg) / [height (m)]²

weight (lb) / [height (in)]² x 703

Body weight does matter, ultimately. Often, it is a way for most people to set goals, and track their goals just by standing on a weight scale. However, when you are trying to lose weight, you should be trying to decrease the amount of body fat you have. Body fat is the amount of fat you have on your body in relation to the total weight of your body. It is usually expressed in percentage. Average amount of body fat for men is 18-24% and for women is 25-31%. However, in my opinion, even that is pretty high. Usually, I keep my body fat at 14% and I have a four pack. Once I drop it to 10%, the six pack starts to appear - it is just to give you an approximation of how much body fat you have. Bodybuilders on the time of the show usually have around 3% or below. However, it is not recommended having less than 5% of total body fat for health reasons. It is necessary for human body to have some fat on it.

There are many ways to figure out the amount of body fat you have. You can use infrared lights, bioelectrical analysis, using your BMI, or just by measuring the thickness of the layer of fat on your body with a caliper. The last one is the easiest one and is done by most of the people. You can just buy a caliper online, and it comes with the measuring table, so you would know where you stand.

I recommend combining using body weight and body fat for your goals. You should be realistic and set your goals to lose about a pound or two a week, and then set a particular goal of body fat percentage you would want to have.

Hope it helps!