Attempting to Lose Weight Quickly? Is It Smart
Staying power is a quality that folks who are trying to shed weight appear to need more of. The blubber can never be lost rapidly enough to make most people happy. The implication from mainstream media is that weight loss can be successful done quickly. Weight loss shows on TV make fast weight loss look easy, it seems to be a breeze and is permanent. This mindset promoted by the media is a tad skewed from what occurs in real-life.
Fast weight loss looks like the ultimate objective of any person who is obese and needs to lose pounds, but is it smart? The truth is that it isn’t the greatest manner to approach weight loss. It is natural to want to lose weight fast, but there are a number of real problems that go with that mindset. There are many problems that can arise from losing weight too fast. What many people don’t understand is that when you lose weight, you are losing different types of tissue in your body. Generally this is fat and muscle. The faster that weight is lost, the more muscle is lost, not fat. Muscle loss can create more problems in the future than it helps. The weight will return once the metabolically active muscle is in a lower percentage in the body. In addition, the faster we lose the weight, the faster it will come back. Sounds disappointing? Lose weight deliberately and you will be successful. That is how the chess match of weight loss should be played.
Lasting weight loss should be the purpose of any person trying to lose their love handles. Trying to achieve short term weight loss too quick will encumber your weight loss efforts in the future. Two pounds is generally the recommended weight loss for individuals in a week. Go past two pounds per week, and you lose muscle mass and the percentage of fat in your body increases. Muscle is active part of your body and therefore burns more energy. Adipose tissue is less energy demanding and does not increase your metabolism. Keep in mind that you did not gain the weight in a day. Weight gain takes years of neglect to accumulate pounds of fat. That is that we why you need to slow it down in your weight loss regimen.
There are indeed exceptions to the hard and fast rule of 2 lbs. of weight loss per week. The exceptions come for the morbidly obese over 300 pounds. Above that weight, weekly weight loss can be looked at on a percentage basis. The recommended percentage is 1% weight loss per week, but there are some things you need to keep in mind.
Keep in mind that when we’re talking about “weight”, it is not the same thing as “fat”. Weight refers to the overall weight of our body which includes a lot of different tissues including muscle, fat, bone, skin, internal organs, blood, and much more. A morbid and almost funny way to think of this is if I asked you to cut off an arm, you would instantly lose “weight”. So we know that your goal is not to just lose weight, but there is something else you have in mind. You want to lose “fat”.
It is clear that it is important for you when dieting and exercising to lose weight, that you grasp the concept of “weight loss” versus “fat loss”. If you want to just lose weight, you could dehydrate yourself and lose 10 pounds of weight, but you’d be causing more problems than it is worth. If you go is to “lose fat”, then you want to maintain your muscle mass while losing weight slowly.
If you carry on with an excessive weight loss every week and you are losing more and more lean muscle tissue, once you stop dieting and exercising the ratio of fat tissue will be higher than when you started. Therefore what would you will have is a slowing down of your metabolism, and you’re setting yourself up for a future gain in weight. At the point that you have lost the weight, you are almost like a “skinny fat person”. Yeah of course you’ve lost weight but not the right kind of weight.
How do I know if I’m losing fat instead of muscle?
Good question. Nowadays, there are a number of home tasting kits that can test body fat ratio. You can either go to your medical supplies store locally or just search online. One of those is the Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis scale, but the best tool that you can utilize is body fat calipers. We will not go into the formula of how you determine body fat ratio using calipers measurements, but what you do is pinch a loose portion of your skin on your different parts of your body and evaluate the depth in millimeters. From this you will get the best accurate reading for body fat ratio. The calculation that you apply will account for height and weight and sex. Websites that perform the calculations for you can be found very effortlessly on Google. Just enter the data and you’ll get back your fat ratio percentage.
In general just reflect about the way that you gained your weight. You didn’t gain it overnight, it was a process of over the years at the fat cells accumulated in your body and grew larger. Lose weight but don’t over do it by going too fast, have fun, and become healthier!
For complete guide and tips on losing weight visit Fast Weight Loss Systems.