What exactly are you losing?

This is the question you should ask yourself whenever you step on the scale to check your body weight.

The mere fact that your weight goes down does not mean progress, likewise your weight rising or remaining the same may not be a bad sign.

Relax, I will explain.

Changes in body weight can be due to reduction or increment in water content, muscle mass or fat content of the body.

Your ideal weight loss should be as a result of fat reduction.

If your weight loss is as a result of reduction in the body water content, it’s just an illusion and the weight is coming right back.

This is why you may check your weight and discover that it has gone down and you start to dancing, only to find out it has increased few days later and you start singing “disappointment lyrics”

Such weight loss is due to water content not fat.

The worst case scenario is when you lose muscle mass and unknowingly get duped mentally, thinking that your weight loss is authentic not realising that you’ve lost some of your fat burning soldiers.

It is crucial that you preserve your muscle mass while trying to lose fat. Your body muscle mass is like an army of soldiers that speed up metabolism and help facilitate fat loss. However, once you start starving yourself (unhealthy dieting), some of these soldiers will die and the survivors will turn to rebels on a vengeful mission to deal with you. This is when you start gaining weight even though you are still consuming less food.

By the time you realise and beg the soldiers by giving them food, they will no longer trust you the way they did before because you have “messed up”. They will start hiding some of the food by storing them as fat in your body. Your metabolism always make the proper survival-driven adjustments.

The only true permanent weight loss is the one that happens via loss of fat. Hence, your exercises and meal plans should be toward ensuring that only little water content is lost and totally avoiding the loss of muscle mass. Always remember that hormones play a major role in fat loss. Also, smart workout regimen and proper lifestyle adjustments are important and necessary.

Obviously, 1 kg of muscle is the same as 1 kg of fat but fat is fluffy whereas muscle is dense and compact, therefore it occupies less space in the body than fat. So in a situation whereby you actually lost some fat and gained some muscle, you may think there ain’t no progress because your body weight may remain the same or increase slightly depending on the amount of muscle mass gained.

So not all things are what they seem.

Progress may be concealed and retrogression can seem very appealing.

Stay true to real workouts and a nutrition plan.