Overweight or Overfat?

Lose weight or lose fat?

Is your goal to lose weight or lose fat? For most people, they are fixated on the idea of “losing weight” but in actuality, we should be more concerned about the excess fat we are carrying around. Did you know that if you gain muscle, you may actually gain weight? Gaining muscle is a desirable goal as we age since it helps our metabolism. And we all want that! Having strong leg muscles is also important as reduces stress on our bones, especially the knee joints.

While it’s easy to step on the sale and track your weight gain or loss, it isn’t the optimal way to go about tracking your progress for achieving a truly healthy lifestyle since the number doesn’t tell you if that’s fat weight, muscle weight, or even water weight, does it? Once you hone in on the fact that we actually need to lose excess fat and not weight, your entire fitness and nutrition goals will change for the better.

So why do we want to lose excess fat anyway? Well, carrying around more fat than your body really needs to perform acts of daily living or to exercise means that your heart will need to work harder and, hence, increase your blood pressure. And high blood pressure increases your risk of getting a stroke. 

Excess fat also affects your hormones as well as reproductive health. Additionally, excess fat in the abdomen area could be causing muscle imbalances leading to back pain and poor posture.

So we do want to burn off our extra fat. You’d also need to investigate how you ended up storing extra fat in the first place. Could it be a metabolic disease or a lifestyle issue? Extra fat storage is actually symptom of a deeper health and lifestyle issue. Once that becomes clear, you can make changes about your eating and exercise habits. The body is amazing and if you are patient with yourself and stick to healthy routine, you will ultimately reset your body to start utilising fat more efficiently in stead of storing it.

What is your game plan for losing fat? If you don't have one yet or have been struggling to make progress, get in touch with Coach Siree.