Did you know there’s a huge difference between “weight loss” and “fat loss”?
Like….HUGE.
When most people jump on the diet train, the goal is to drop weight quickly. By drastically cutting calories, you’re losing a lot of water weight and even muscle mass. Only some of it is fat. Increase your calories again and bam—the weight quickly comes back.
A healthier and long-lasting approach is targeted fat loss. It’s not quick, it’s not flashy and it requires a lot more effort. But the health benefits are superior and the effects are long lasting.
Here’s why:
Building lean muscle mass is about the only thing you can do to increase your resting metabolic rate (i.e. increase your metabolism.) Meaning—you burn more calories while at rest. Dieting and weight loss encourage the loss of muscle mass, so in time you are actually hurting your metabolism.
Targeted fat loss and lean muscle mass growth (aka body recomposition) encourages the loss of fat, while maintaining and building lean muscle mass. This gives people the desired “tone” and “lean” look a lot of folks are going for.
The result of targeted fat loss and increased muscle mass? Your metabolism burns more calories at rest. Less fat on the body results in increased health benefits. More muscle also results in increased health benefits.
Reducing fat and building muscle takes time. But on the flip side, unlike dieting, fluctuations in calorie intake won’t cause a huge jump in weight.
It’s a win-win and totally worth it in my book.
Need help making sense of it all? I gotcha. Slide on in to my DMs.