Hi it's me again and here is the next chapter of my Get Fit tips and tricks to help you live the fitness of your dreams.
It all seems so simple, you're trying to lose weight, you jump on the scale, you see you dropped two pounds, and you feel good about yourself. Two days later you jump on the same scale, you see you've gained a pounds, and this trigger an emotional crisis! What if the entire process of weighing yourself was one big practical joke? Well in a way, it is!
Let me explain, In the first scenario, let's say you lost four pounds of water, gained three pounds of fat and lost a pound of muscle. When you jump on the scale, it would read that you lost two pounds. The chances are that you feel good about yourself, even though the reality is you gained three pounds of fat and gained five pounds of water. The scale read that you gained a pound when the truth is you lost four pounds of unwanted body fat. Your reaction would be one of disappointment.
By understanding the shortcomings of the bathroom scale as well as a little bit of the science behind how your body gains and loses weight, you can avoid the emotional roller coaster that weighing yourself can put you through. In fact, frustration from the lack of result and erratic fluctuations in the weight are very common causes for the people to give up their weight loss goal. This is why we need to learn everything we need to know about body weight so we can avoid frustration.
Let's start at the beginning.
The first type of body weight is water weight. This refers to the weight of all the water in your body. including the water within your bloodstream, your digestive tract, as well as the water that is within all of the cells found in the various types of tissue that make up your body.
The second type of weight is fat weight. This refers to the weight of all the fat that is found within your body. Fat is not only found in fat deposit sites (such as your thighs, the back of your arms, or your abdomen). It also surrounds and is within the vital organs of your body. It is found in your muscle and unfortunately within the walls of your arteries and veins, as well as within the heart muscle itself. Lipids, which are basic building blocks of fat, are found within virtually every cell of your body. Fat is the one tissue in the body that contains very little water.
Lastly, there's lean weight. This refers to the weight of everything that is not water or fat, such as your muscles hair bone, cartilage and other tissues.
When you lose weight, you can lose either water, fat, or lean weight. The loss of lean weight is definitely you don't want to happen. One of the side effects of the loss of lean weight (usually muscle) is a decreased metabolism. The loss of lean weight occurs when you are inactive. It also occurs when you severely restrict the number of calories that you consume, such as when you are dieting. The loss of a lean weight can also be an occurrence of the aging process, with the most pronounced losses coming from your muscles and your bone mass, the latter is known as osteoporosis. Exercise, in general, is effective, but strength training, in particular, has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to prevent the loss of muscle as well as bone mass. Gains in muscle weight can occur at almost any age with the use of strength training exercises.
The loss of water weight occurs constantly through the metabolic process of sweating and urination. When you lose excessive amounts of water weight, you become dehydrated. This is also something that you don't want to happen. Dehydration is very subtle and common problem. When you're dehydrated, most of the important process of your body becomes less effective, including the metabolism of fat. Believe it or not, most people are walking around dehydrated to some degree.
Your body has the ability to store a lot of extra water, especially when you drink a lot of it and are very active. You will need to be prepared to gains in your water weight when you first begin. In the first four or five weeks, the increase in your water weight will probably hide the fact that you are losing fat. Please don't be frustrated. Be patient. This means that good thing is happening.
When you say that you want to lose weight, that you really mean is that you want to lose fat. The loss and gain of body fat occur continually. In general, when your total energy requirements (calories expended) exceed your total energy consumed (calories eaten), your body breaks down body fat for energy, which, in turn, leads to fat weight loss. The reverse is also true. If you consume more energy(calories) than you expend, you'll store this excess energy as body fat.
You may not realize it but automatically protects itself against losing too much fat too quickly. This protection mechanism exists to guard your stored energy (fat) and to protect you against starvation, what you might not be aware of is that even if you are absolutely diligent with your eating and exercise habits and have a favorable metabolism, the greatest amount of fat weight that you can lose in a week is about three pounds.
Now, if you've ever been in a severely calorie-restricted diet, you might remember losing up ten pounds in a given week or maybe even more. This lost weight is a combination of water, lean weight, and mo more than three pounds of fat -- which most of the loss coming from your water weight. This is especially true if your diet was of the high-protein, low-carbohydrate type.
Losing weight through dieting often leads to dehydration, which, ironically, lowers your body the ability to burn fat. This is not you want it to happen and is just one more reason that you should not restrict your calories too much, especially in lieu of exercising. It is also the reason why a slower weight loss is to your advantage.
You can start to see why jumping on a scale certainly doesn't give you the whole picture. You will soon learn about erratic fluctuations and plateaus in your weight that are due to a variety of factors, which will further complicate matters.
Stick firmly to our goals, continue what we have started and we can do this!!