Don't
Be A Big Loser - Why You Should Say No To Quick Weight
Loss
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Patience. Its
the one thing you never seem to have when youve
got a body fat problem. You want the fat gone and you
want it gone now! And why not? It seems so do-able. Everywhere
you look, you read and hear promises of quick weight loss
and you even see people losing weight quickly. We have
reality TV shows that actually encourage people to attempt
extreme body makeovers or see who can lose
weight the fastest, and the winners (or shall we say,
the losers), are rewarded generously with fortune, fame
and congratulations.
Lets
face it. Everyone wants to get the fat off as quickly
as possible - and having that desire is not wrong
its simply human nature. However, you must become
aware of some serious problems that can occur if you try
to force it and lose weight too quickly. The faster you
lose weight, the more muscle you will lose with the fat,
and that can really mess up your metabolism. An even bigger
problem with fast weight loss is that the loss just wont
last. The faster you lose, the more likely you are to
gain it back. Think about it: We dont have a weight
loss problem today, we have a keeping the weight
off problem.
Weight loss
will be the healthiest, safest and most likely to be permanent
if you set your goal for about two pounds per week (and
even if you lose only a single pound each week, that is
healthy progress). This is the recommendation of almost
every legitimate and respected dietician, nutritionist,
exercise physiologist and personal trainer, as well as
exercise organizations such as the American College of
Sports Medicine and the American Dietetic Association.
Are there any
exceptions to this rule? Is it ever okay to lose more
than two pounds per week? The answer is yes. It may be
ok to lose slightly more than two pounds per week if you
have a lot of weight to lose because the rate of weight
loss tends to be relative to your total starting body
weight. Generally the rule is that its safe to lose
up to 1% of your total body weight per week, so if you
weigh 300 lbs to start, then 3 lbs a week is a reasonable
goal.
But there IS
a catch.
What really
matters is not how much weight you lose, but how much
FAT you lose. Where did your weight loss come from? Did
you lose body fat or lean body mass?
"Weight"
is not the same as "fat." Weight includes muscle,
bone, internal organs as well as lots and lots of water.
What you really want is fat loss, not weight loss. If
you only wanted weight loss, I could show you an easy
way to lose 20 or 25 pounds in about 5 minutes. Just come
over to my house. I have a really sharp hacksaw in my
garage, and well just slice off one of your legs,
after all its just extra weight right?
Lets
look at an example with some numbers so you can really
grasp this concept of weight versus fat and then you can
see, clearly illustrated, what will happen when you lose
weight too quickly (because I know you probably dont
believe me and you STILL want to lose weight as fast as
possible
read on and it will all become clear to
you).
As an example,
lets take a 260 pound man who has a lot of body
fat to lose - lets call it 32%. With 32% fat, a
260 pounder has 83.2 pounds of body fat and 176.8 pounds
of lean mass. Using this example, lets look at a
few possible scenarios with losses ranging from two to
four pounds per week.
Weight
Loss Scenario 1:
Suppose our
260 pound subject loses four full pounds instead of the
recommended two pounds per week. Is this bad? Well, lets
see:
If he loses
a half a percent of body fat, here are his body composition
results:
256 lbs
31.5% body fat
80.6 lbs fat
175.4 lbs lean body mass
Out of the
four pounds lost, 2.8 pounds were fat and 1.2 were lean
mass. Not a disaster, but not good either. Thirty percent
of the weight lost was lean tissue.
Weight
Loss Scenario 2:
If he loses
a half a percent of body fat and only three pounds, here
are his results:
257 lbs
31.5% body fat
80.9 lbs fat
176.1 lbs lean body mass
These results
are better. Although he lost less body weight than scenario
one, in this instance, 2.3 pounds of fat and only 0.7
lbs of lean mass were lost.
Weight
Loss Scenario 3:
What if he
only lost two pounds? Here are the results:
258 lbs
31.5% body fat
81.2 lbs fat
176.8 lbs lean body mass
These results
are perfect. Even though our subject has only lost two
pounds, which seems slow, 100% of the two pound weight
loss came from fat.
Weight
Loss Scenario 4:
Now lets
suppose he loses three pounds but he loses more body fat:
.8%
257 lbs
31.2% body fat
80.2 lbs fat
176.8 lbs lean body mass
These are the
best results of all. When the weekly fat loss is .8%,
100% of the three pounds lost is fat.
So the answer
to the question is yes - its safe to lose more than
two pounds per week
but only if the weight is all
fat or at least mostly fat with minimal lean mass losses.
If you take
example one with thirty percent lean tissue loss
and compound that over a few months, youre talking
about a massive muscle tissue loss which can dramatically
slow down your metabolism and turn you into nothing more
than a skinny fat person (a person with low
body weight because they lost so much muscle, but still
holding stubborn body fat because they shut down their
metabolism).
One thing
you should know is that water weight losses sometimes
distort the numbers, especially when you first begin a
new nutrition and training program. Its very common
to lose 3 - 5 pounds in the first week on nearly any diet
and exercise program and often even more on low carb diets.
Just remember, its NOT all fat - WATER LOSS IS NOT FAT
LOSS!
The best advice
I can give you is to focus on losing fat, not losing weight.
If you lose three to five pounds per week, and you know
its all fat, and not lean tissue, then more power
to you!
Of course the
only way to know this is with body composition testing.
For home body fat self-testing, I recommend the Accu-Measure
skinfold caliper as first choice. Even better, get a multi
site skinfold caliper test from an experienced tester
at a health club, or even a water (hydrostatic) or air
(bod pod) displacement test.
From literally
hundreds of client case studies, I can confirm that its
rare to lose more than 1.5 - 2.0 lbs of weight per week
without losing some muscle along with it. If you exceed
2.0 to 3.0 pounds per week, the probability of losing
muscle is extremely high. If you lose muscle, you are
damaging your metabolism and this will lead to a plateau
and ultimately to relapse.
Lack of patience
is one of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes
to losing body fat. If you want to lose FAT, not muscle
and you want to keep the fat off for good, then you have
to take off the pounds slowly.
This is one
of the toughest lessons that overweight men and women
have to learn - and they can be very hard learners. They
fight kicking and screaming, insisting that they CAN and
they MUST lose it faster.
Then you have
these TV shows that encourage the masses that rapid, crash
weight loss is okay. To the producers of these shows,
I say SHAME ON YOU! To the personal trainers, registered
dieticians and medical doctors who are associated with
these programs, I say DOUBLE SHAME ON YOU, because you
of all people should know better.
The rapid
weight loss being promoted today by the media for the
sake of ratings and by the weight loss companies for the
sake of profits makes it even harder for those of us who
are legitimate fitness and nutrition professionals because
our clients say, But look at so and so on TV - he
lost 26 pounds in a week!
Sure, but 26
pounds of WHAT - and do you have any idea what the long
term consequences are?
Short term
thinking, folks
foolish. There are hundreds of ways
to lose weight quickly, but only one way to lose fat and
keep it off in the long term.
Do it the right
way. Take off the pounds slowly, steadily and sensibly
with an intelligent nutrition and exercise program, measure
your body fat, not just your body weight, and make this
a new lifestyle, not a race, and you will never have to
take the pounds off again because they will be gone forever
the first time. No more yo-yoing.
If youre
interested in the healthy, sensible way to take off the
fat, while keeping all your muscle and actually increasing
your metabolism in the process, then my Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle program can teach you
how. No gimmicks or false promises. Just the truth - you
have to work at it and you have to be patient. For more
information, Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle.
About
the Author:
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Tom Venuto is a lifetime
natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal
trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning
specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling
e-book, "Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom has written
hundreds of articles and has been featured in print
magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural
Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise for
Men and Mens Exercise, as well as on hundreds
of websites worldwide. For information on Tom's
Fat Loss program, click
here.
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