3 Key Differences You NEED to Know: Fat Loss vs Weight Loss

What is weight loss?

Weight loss is weight loss: it occurs when an individual loses fat mass AND muscle mass. Many people do end up losing some muscle as they lose weight; it's often unintentional and they may not even realize it. It is estimated that within overweight people, 20-30% of weight loss actually comes from lost muscle mass. That's A LOT!

It's important that we try and preserve as much muscle as we can. Therefore, we'll discuss ways in which we can minimize muscle loss in the "how to pursue fat loss" section below. 

How to pursue weight loss

Weight loss isn't quite as complicated as fat loss is. If you eat in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight (with the exception of a few individuals with certain health conditions).

RELATED POST: Losing Weight Calorie Deficit: What Is It & Why Is It So Important for Weight Loss?

You can achieve a calorie deficit by 1.) eating less food, 2.) exercising more, or 3.) a combination of both. I suggest a combination of both if possible. Just know that it's impossible to exercise your way to success with a crappy diet. With that said, eating in a deficit should be your first priority when pursuing weight loss. 

As for exercise, you may want to focus on cardiovascular workouts because cardio burns more calories than strength training does. HOWEVER, strength training definitely has its place in terms of weight loss. You can read more about that here:

RELATED POST: 4 Valuable Benefits of Resistance Training: Does Weight Lifting Burn Fat?

As for calorie intake, I personally love the app MyFitnessPal for tracking the amount of food I eat. Otherwise, I know of many people who have had tons of success with tracking their food intake via a food diary. I LOVE this one by PLANBERRY!

PLANBERRY Food Journal

You'll need to figure out your BMR (basal metabolic rate) to know exactly how many calories you should eat throughout the day for weight loss. BMR shows how many calories your body burns throughout the day doing absolutely nothing. Yes, your body does that. It burns calories just to carry out its basic functions.

You can try using an online calculator, or you can get your BMR using the Renpho smart scale I featured below. The scale will calculate your BMR based on your gender, age, body mass, and muscle mass. I highly recommend it. 

You'll also want to consider how active you are throughout the day. When you figure out your BMR + active calories, you can subtract 300-400 calories to figure out an optimal calorie deficit for you.

What is fat loss?

Just like it sounds, fat loss occurs when an individual solely loses fat mass. A good example of fat loss happens within the bodybuilding community. In case you aren't aware, bodybuilding is a sport in which the competitors work to put on muscle mass during their off seasons, but they cut (or lose fat) when they have a bodybuilding show approaching.

The objective of the sport is for the competitors to get as lean as possible to show off every muscle in their bodies. Bodybuilders are generally healthy weight individuals during off their off seasons, but like I said, they pursue fat loss leading up to a show. Unlike weight loss, people who pursue fat loss do whatever they can to preserve their muscle mass while losing weight.

How to pursue fat loss

If you're wondering about how to lose fat instead of weight, you should try to strength train and eat LOTS of protein. One gram per pound of body weight is suggested for most healthy-weight individuals. By weight training and eating adequate protein, you should be able to preserve most of your muscle mass. 

Having muscle mass and strength training is important for a few reasons: 

• You'll look toned (not "skinny fat")
• It'll make everyday life easier 
• Strength training strengthens our bones which is HUGELY important as we age 
• It'll improve cardiovascular fitness
• It may prevent certain diseases
• It can improve quality of life 

Keep in mind that you still NEED to eat in a calorie deficit when you pursue fat loss. But by strength training and consuming essential amino acids that are important for muscle repair, you should be able to maintain muscle mass. 

Also, it is common for the scale not to move or to barely move at all when an individual is pursuing fat loss. This is because muscle mass weighs more than fat mass does. So, when an individual is losing fat and gaining muscle, the scale may not go down. However, don't let this discourage you. Gaining muscle mass is AWESOME!

I like to track my progress with this amazing body composition scale by Renpho. It shows how much fat mass I've lost compared to the muscle I've gained. I highly recommend it to anyone who is losing fat.

Renpho Smart Scale

How to know if you are losing fat or muscle? This scale by Renpho has the answer! It will analyze your fat mass, muscle mass, and more!

Weight loss vs fat loss pictures

*These images are my own transformations.

WEIGHT LOSS:

FAT LOSS:

The takeaway

Fat loss and weight loss are very different. Weight loss means losing any kind of mass, including muscle. Whereas, fat loss occurs when we lose fat and fat only. There are slightly different ways to approach each one, and we discussed each of those, such as fat loss vs weight loss diet, in detail above. We also went over why fat loss is better than weight loss.