Why Weight Loss is Hard | Fat: Good or Bad?| Carbs and Weight Loss | Essential of Protein |Diet and Lifestyle 

By now we all know that finding a healthier version of yourself depends on diet, exercise, and lifestyle. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten the full truth when it comes to being healthy. We are fed the narrative that weight loss depends on spending 10 hours in the gym and eliminating one source of calories in our diet while doubling down on another. Admit it, every time you try a new fad diet, or commit to an exhausting new workout routine, you lose weight initially, but then eventually lose steam and transform back into your former self. Healthy, sustainable weight loss seems like something you just don’t have the willpower to do.

But, this is simply not true. We don’t have to overcomplicate the story, or feel guilty, to find a healthier version of ourselves.

Let’s break it down into every aspect of what you can do to simplify your outlook on achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Why is Weight Loss so Difficult to Maintain? 

Maintaining a healthy body weight has always been associated with self-discipline and willpower. You count calories. Do portion control. Work out first thing in the morning three times a week.

Although weight loss may be accomplished by submitting yourself to these rigid, disciplinarian tactics, the minute you’re frustrated with your co-workers or get sick for a week, portion control goes out of the window. Exercise can easily take the backseat when you have kids ages 3 and 5, go through some financial stress, or have an aging parent to take care of.

The reality is that shedding the unwanted pounds is not the hardest part of weight loss. It’s keeping the weight off for good despite life’s occasional curveballs.

Is long-term weight loss really possible? Or should you resign yourself to the fact that you’ll eventually regain what you’ve lost?

Does it all boil down to having loads of willpower? Or is there more to self-control that’s involved in long-term weight loss sorcery?

Actually, no. Biology is at play. Dr. Michael Rosenbaum, an obesity researcher at Columbia University, says the difficulty in keeping the extra weight off reflects biology and not merely a pathological lack of willpower. Specifically, when we lose weight, leptin (the hormone responsible for food satiety) actually goes down when we lose weight.

However, all hope is not lost. We can aim for sustainable weight loss by using a few key strategies.

The Basics of Nutrition

When we think about adopting a new weight loss regimen, it’s important to remember that calories in and calories out ultimately dictate our weight loss. Therefore, diet is our best friend when it comes to finding the perfect balance to a nutrition program.

However, diet is not simply about calories. Food is where we get everything that our body cannot make for itself. The makeup of our diet keeps us from being malnourished, susceptible to illness, depressed, and unable to perform at the gym.

In order to understand exactly where our calories come from and what we need to consume to be healthy, we need to understand the basics of nutrition and the reason we need a balanced diet.

What are Macronutrients? 

What you eat can be broken down into 3 macronutrients: Proteins, Carbohydrates, and Fats. Unless you have a specific medical condition, you need all 3 to maintain proper health and functioning. Without sufficient amounts of any of these sources, your body will not operate at peak condition. And without a proper balance of these nutrients during a diet program will hinder the success you achieve in reaching your goals.

When trying to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories from these nutrients than you expend. For example, if you determine that, between your Basal Metabolic Rate and your activity (from moving, eating, and exercising), you burn 2,000 calories per day, to stay the same weight you’d have to eat roughly 2,000 calories every day. However, to lose weight, you would have to place yourself into a caloric deficit. A caloric deficit indicates that you are eating fewer calories than you burn per day — i.e., in this case, potentially restricting intake to only 1,800 calories per day.

But as we already mentioned, though calories consumed versus calories burned ultimately determines success or failure in the weight game, is it all that matters?

Well, it depends.

If your goal is simply to lose weight, regardless of whether it be fat- or muscle-weight lost, then yes, calories are all that matter.

However, if you’re attempting to improve your body composition by losing Body Fat Mass and gaining Skeletal Muscle Mass, then no, calories are not all that matters. Balancing your macronutrients properly does.

Why fats were considered bad

Released in the U.S. in 1992, the food pyramid was designed as an easy way for people to remember which foods they should be getting their calories from and the relative importance of each. Carbs were healthy and good, and so they formed the base; fats were bad and placed at the top.

The fat category lumped everything together from healthy fats like Omega-3s and olive oil to saturated fats and sugar. This concept helped trigger the fat-free craze. Although this concept seems pretty normal to us now, at the time in the late 1970s it was actually considered quite radical – so much so that then-president of the National Academy of Sciences, Philip Handler, described the proposed shift as a “vast nutritional experiment.”

Essentially, the Dietary Guidelines suggested that people eat less fat and get more calories from bread, grains, rice, pasta, etc. This was intended to protect Americans from weight gain and heart disease. This is why the “high carb, low fat” diet seems familiar and normal to you, and probably why you think eating fat makes you fat.

What was the result of this recommendation?

Beginning at around the time when the guidelines were first recommended in 1977 and their release to the public in 1980, the percentage of Americans classified as obese increase by almost 20% as they followed the government’s advice to cut fat and increase carbs. Why have obesity rates in the United States skyrocketed over the last 18 years? Because the idea that “fat makes you fat” is wrong. Fat is just another nutrient source, the same as carbohydrates and protein.

What makes you fat is taking in more energy (calories) in a day than you use. That’s called being in a caloric surplus.

Can Eating Fat Make You Gain Weight?

Part of the reason people get confused and think that the fat they eat makes their body store fat is that we use them interchangeably to describe both body fat and dietary fat.

The fat that is stored by our bodies is more accurately called “adipose tissue.” Adipose tissue stores are made up of primary adipocytes or fat cells and are responsible, among other things, with storing excess energy for times when you’re not able to give your body the energy it needs on a given day. It is necessary for survival, and losing too much of it is bad for your health, as is explained in this 2013 study.

The fat you eat is dietary fat and is one of the three essential macronutrients your body can get energy from. Would you believe that people actually used to eat more fat than they do now and at the time obesity rates that were much lower? It’s true, they did, and it’s true – obesity rates used to be much lower.  So if increased fat isn’t making you fat, what is?

Eating more calories than your body uses and needs in a day causes you to gain weight, and Americans continue to eat more and more calories with each passing year.

According to the USDA, from 1970 to 2000, the total number of daily calories that Americans ate increased by 530 calories, an increase of 24.5%. During the same time period, the percentage of Americans categorized as obese increased dramatically.

What happened?

Americans started to eat more calories.  This is surprising when you consider that carbohydrates contain less than half the calories (4 Cal) that fat (9 Cal) does, gram for gram. Shouldn’t shifting away from fats and towards carbs just reduce overall caloric intake, just by simple math? It doesn’t work that way if you just eat more carbohydrates. You see, consumption of a high carbohydrate diet can trigger something called “reactive hypoglycemia.” This is a condition experienced by people who do not have diabetes and are otherwise healthy. Among its symptoms is a feeling of hunger.

Guess what’s the best way to make that hunger go away? Eat more carbs – your body will be craving them.  And since carbs were supposed to be the largest macronutrient source anyway, most people didn’t think twice about having a snack that consisted of bread, rice, or something else carb-heavy.

By advising people to eat less fat and eat more carbohydrates, the government actually made the obesity problem far worse. Recognizing the sharp increase in obesity, the food pyramid was revised in 2005 and ultimately retired in 2011 in favor of what the USDA now calls “My Plate,” which gives people a much better visualization of the relative importance of each food category by showing roughly how much space each should take up on a plate.

So I can eat start eating “fat” now?

If you’re smart about it, yes, but you still have to be careful.

Remember, it’s not the fat itself that’s making you fat; it’s the extra calories that you don’t need that makes you fat.  While it’s very easy to eat extra calories on a carbohydrate-based diet, it’s also very easy to add on extra calories from a fat diet too.

At 9 calories, fat is the most calorie-dense macronutrient by far.  This means that if you’re looking to lose fat, the low-fat options are still fine choices – not because of their low-fat content, mind you, but because of their lower caloric content.

The fat isn’t making you fat due to just being fat; it’s the extra calories from fat (as well as all the macronutrients) that is causing you to gain weight.

What this means is, if you are responsible for your diet, you can choose foods that contain fat, guilt-free.  You just need to be smart about your caloric intake throughout the entire day.

What Are Carbs and Why is it Important?

We just discussed that emphasis on high carb intact made American’s gain more weight. So, carbohydrates are bad, right?

While carbohydrates have gotten a bad rap lately because they are presumably fattening and unhealthy, some cultures with high-carb intake don’t have the same high obesity rates as the U.S. – where one-third of adults (and 17 percent of children) are obese. This is in contrast to Japan where white rice and noodles are dietary staples.

What are we to make of this? Are carbs truly evil? Or should you embrace more carbs in your life?

Of the three macronutrients, carbohydrates act as the main source of energy because they are easily broken down into sugar (glucose to be specific) once they reach your bloodstream and are then transported to cells, tissues, and organs. Think of glucose as fuel.

Carbohydrates are classified into two types:

• Simple carbohydrates

Simple carbohydrates are quickly absorbed into your bloodstream for instant energy because of their simple molecular structure. Think milk, honey, fruit juices, and table sugar.

• Complex carbohydrates

These carbs take longer for the body to break down into glucose because of their more complex molecular composition. Grains such as bread, rice, quinoa, and pasta are examples of complex carbs. Starchy vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, corn, and winter squash fall in the same category.

Not all carbs are created equal, and some have a greater effect on your insulin levels than others. For people with diabetes or insulin resistance, this is particularly important.

A food’s Glycemic Index (ranging from 0 to 100) indicates how a certain carbohydrate will affect your blood sugar and insulin levels. Foods that digest quickly are high on the index, while those that digest slowly are lower on the index.

Foods that are high on the GI scale, like potatoes and white bread, are quickly broken down. This is what happens when you go through an abrupt sugar rush but eventually crash down minutes later. Foods with a low GI, like sweet potatoes and whole oats, are digested gradually, resulting in a more predictable, steady rise in blood sugar levels.

The Verdict on Carbohydrates

Although low-carb diets were found out to be more effective than low-fat diets for weight loss, there are also conflicting research findings describing the existence of metabolically benign obesity — obese individuals who are not insulin resistant, have normal levels of circulating insulin, and have zero signs of early atherosclerosis.

The main point is you don’t have to go low-carb, zero-carb, or high-carb to accomplish long term weight loss.

Based on recent research findings and established facts, it makes more sense to be more mindful of the specific types and amount of carbohydrates (and the other macronutrients!) that make up the bulk of your daily diet.

It’s very hard to deny the role carbs play in keeping you full, energized, and feeling good overall.  To a large extent, humans were designed to consume carbohydrates as an energy source, and when that source is limited and/or cut off, your body will not appreciate it – and it will let you know.

Should you cut carbs out of your diet? If it’s part of a general overall caloric reduction to lose body fat – which does work – combined with increased exercise, then yes. But simply hacking out an entire macronutrient source – any source – is not only going to be incredibly demanding on you but also ineffective and unsustainable over the long-term.

Protein and Weight Loss

So how does protein fit into the picture? Well, as mentioned above, protein is one of the 3 basic macronutrients you find in your food.

To break it down further, proteins are made up of smaller units called amino acids. There are 22 amino acids, however, 9 of these amino acids are called “essential” — meaning you need to eat them because the body can’t produce them on its own. You can get these essential amino acids by eating protein-rich foods like eggs, meat, and fish, as well as vegetarian/vegan options, like nuts, seeds, beans, and tofu. Generally, you cannot get all the essential amino acids from just one food item, so eating a variety of animal and plant-based proteins is recommended.

But that’s not all.

Besides being something you eat, protein has its fingers in just about every structure and function of your body. For example:

• Antibodies: these proteins fight foreign “invaders” of your body, like in allergic reactions.
• Repair, maintenance, and structure: proteins are the main building blocks of your muscles, bones, skin, and hair.
• Hormones: chemical messenger proteins allow cells and organs to communicate. For example, Growth Hormone — which can affect your muscle gain and fat loss results — and Follicle Stimulating Hormone — a hormone important to your sexual health — are both protein hormones.
• Enzymes: while all proteins are not enzymes, all enzymes are proteins — and proteins are catalysts (“kickstarters”) for chemical reactions in your body.
• Transportation and storage: some proteins carry important molecules where they’re needed — think hemoglobin (red blood cells) carrying oxygen to cells, then carrying carbon dioxide away.

Clearly, protein serves many roles within the body. Therefore, not getting enough protein in your diet can have serious consequences for your health. Without enough protein, your muscles may begin to atrophy (waste)– taking Lean Body Mass (LBM), strength, and energy with them.

Any injuries you suffer will take longer to heal, as well. This is because wound healing relies on good nutrition, and good nutrition includes adequate protein. A strong connection between protein deficiency and slow wound healing has been shown.

Finally, not eating enough protein impairs your immune system, placing you at a greater risk of infections while reducing your ability to fend off disease once it takes hold.

Now that you know everything you never wanted to know about protein’s roles in the body, take a look at a few of the positive effects of increasing your protein intake and how that can relate to your body composition goals.

• Appetite

Eating more protein helps suppress hunger and appetite for longer than eating the same amounts of the other macros (fats and carbs). This means that eating 100 calories from protein will leave you more satiated than 100 calories from either carbohydrate or fat sources.

• Metabolic Rate

Eating more protein has also been shown to increase your Energy Expenditure — i.e., the number of calories you burn each day. Several studies found that people eating high protein diets ended up burning more calories for several hours after eating.

• Body Composition

In addition to the points made above, eating higher amounts of protein can have positive effects on your body composition through more direct pathways. As alluded to earlier, protein is a far-spread component of your body. Consuming higher amounts helps protect your non-fat (read: muscle) body mass.

The Protein Verdict

To maintain your current muscle mass — or improve it — you need to eat enough protein. But you also need to eat fewer calories than you expend — and that’s not always easy.

The good news is, getting a higher percentage of your daily calories from protein can make all of that a little bit easier. It can help you reduce your appetite, improve your metabolism, and change your body composition, but don’t overdo it. Consuming 2 grams of protein per kg of body weight can cause adverse health problems in the long run. The best advice is to find your daily protein recommendation, and then bump it up slightly, while reducing the calories you take in from non-nutritive foods, such as processed foods or sugary drinks.

What’s the Best Diet for Weight Loss? 

Life is all about balance, and it is important to remember that you need all three macronutrients to function properly. As we learned, protein does not just pack on muscle, it also acts as hormones, enzymes, and antibodies. Carbs are essentially the only energy source that our red blood cells can use, and without enough fat in our diets, we might gain weight by eating more filler foods!

Our bodies are well-refined machines that do not thrive on fad diets. They thrive when we obtain balance and variety in our diet. Ultimately, the best diet for weight loss is not complicated or high-tech. Focus on whole, unrefined foods, reduce red meat consumption, and eat plenty of vegetables. But, your food doesn’t have to taste boring. In fact, a rigid diet full of boring salads may make you more likely to rebound into unhealthy eating. Try a salad with leafy greens, quinoa or brown rice, sweet potatoes, avocado, black beans, and a homemade cilantro lime Greek yogurt dressing. You may be surprised how good healthy eating can taste!

What About Lifestyle? 

Of course, there are other components than a diet that may hinder your weight-loss goals. In order to help you turn your weight loss story into a success story, you should consider the following:

Build a Community of Accountability: 

Think Jenny Craig, Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS), and Weight Watchers. Or even that health and wellness spa near your workplace.

Not convinced?

In a presentation at the 2016 Society of General Internal Medicine Annual Meeting, researchers at the Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus revealed their findings after monitoring 65,000 overweight or obese people who joined Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS) between 2005 to 2010. They found out that consistent participation in the program motivated overweight participants to sustain their new healthy weight after a year of massive weight loss.

These findings demonstrate that spending more time with a community who supports each other even after you reach your weight loss goals is one of the best ways to keep the weight off. The American Psychological Association even agrees.

Getting Enough Sleep

Have you noticed how you’re hungrier than usual when you only slept for five hours the night before? Before you know it, you’re reaching out the pint of ice cream in the fridge.

It turns out that being sleep-deprived  leads to higher ghrelin (the hunger hormone) levels and lower leptin. Plus, there’s already an association between lack of sleep and obesity.

In addition, not getting enough shut-eye also makes your immune system go haywire. When you’re sick, you don’t feel like exercising, right?

Prioritize getting enough sleep for a week and notice how you feel and think about food intake, exercise, and your energy levels in general.

Consider HIIT if you’re pressed for time

Too busy to do your morning run or the usual hour-long swimming session? Enter the short, explosive moves of high-intensity interval training (HIIT).

The reason why HIIT has become so popular is that it’s been proven to really work by improving VO2max and body composition in subjects of both genders across all levels of fitness. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Here’s a neat HIIT guide by the American College of Sports Medicine. If you’re not motivated enough to take a break away from your workstation (browsing Reddit on your phone doesn’t count!), this short video will!

The Takeaway

Long-term weight loss is definitely possible if you rethink the way you view what healthy weight loss truly means. Instead of fretting over calorie counts and the number of jumping jacks you’ve done, pay special attention to the quality of your food intake and physical activity. Balance is always better when it comes to sustainability.

Remember, it is not about willpower, it’s about finding something that makes you feel good. Working out and eating food that fuels our body shouldn’t be done out of guilt. Love yourself and love your body, no matter where you are on your journey to health.

Editor’s Note: This post was updated on January 11, 2021, for accuracy and comprehensiveness. It was originally published on February 17, 2016.

• Fat gain or loss is determined by how many calories you take in and how many calories you use in a day
• Water weight can come from increased glycogen, an energy source that is produced primarily from carbohydrates
• A cheat day every once in a while will not erase weeks and months of hard work

Your hard work is paying off with your diet and workouts, and you keep making progress. The weight loss goal is in reach, and you decide to treat yourself. It might be a snack, a cheat meal, a cheat day, or even a weekend. When Monday comes, you weigh yourself for your weekly weigh-in, and you can’t believe it: you’ve gained 5 pounds.

First, the bad news: no the scale isn’t lying to you, you’ve gained 5 five pounds. Here the good news: it is not 5 pounds of fat.

If it is not fat, what is it? Are cheat days a good idea for your diet and fitness plan?

What are cheat days?

First, a quick overview. What exactly is a cheat day?  “Cheat days”, despite the negative connotation, are planned breaks from your diet plan. Rewarding yourself with scheduled breaks from your diet plan, may help you stick to your diet plan, build better habits, and achieve long-term success.

What you plan to indulge in on your cheat day depends on the individual’s tastes and appetite, but the key idea is to let loose and enjoy yourself with something that isn’t on your diet plan.

Not every diet will allow for “cheat days”. The Paleo diet, for example, eliminates entire food groups and doesn’t allow for any breaks from the diet plan. But no matter what diet plan you are on, incorporate meals that you can look forward to helping make the diet plan sustainable.

What are the benefits of a cheat day?

Cheat days can be a great tool to help motivate you to stick to your diet plan. Use cheat days to build a positive relationship with food. View your favorite dessert or comfort food as a reward rather than a coping mechanism.

Something that you should keep in mind is that a cheat day isn’t a license to binge eat. Binge eating on your cheat day may lead to eating-related issues and hurt your ability to self-regulate.

Contrary to popular belief, binge eating does not boost your metabolism. It may have the opposite effect. Just like your diet, it is best to approach it with a plan and the focus on the long-term.

How often should you have cheat days?

There is no hard and fast rule on how many cheat days you should have. Or even if you decide between a cheat meal or day. Ultimately, it depends on how well you self-regulate and what your goals are.

It’s so easy for your cheat day to become a cheat weekend, and then a cheat week. Before you know it, you are back to your old eating habits. It is important to understand what will help you stay motivated.

The goal is to develop a sustainable, long-term plan. What you should consider are your body composition goal, and how fast you want to reach them. Think about how the extra calories (if any) from your cheat meals will impact your goal.

Why does a cheat day cause you to gain weight?

A cheat day causes some large weight increases, but weight because of water, not fat. Depending on what kind of diet you were on, loading up on carbs on a cheat day can increase your weight noticeably.

If you were trying to lose fat, you likely were trying to cut carbohydrates out of your diet. It’s a very popular technique, and diets structured around low carbohydrate and low caloric intake are about as basic a diet as they come. The Mayo Clinic notes that a diet targeting low carbohydrate intake makes up about 60-130 grams of carbs a day. Some popular diets—such as the Atkins Diet—target extremely low levels of carbohydrates, as low as 18 grams a day. This will help you lose weight and some of it.

But once you increase your consumption of carbs, you may see a subsequent increase in water weight.

How much water weight can you gain from cheat day?

If you’re consuming 60 grams of carbs a day, you’re holding onto approximately 210 grams of water. That’s about half a pound of water.

But if on a cheat day, you decide to eat and drink whatever you want and load up to 300 grams of carbohydrates (the average number of carbs eaten by men, according to the US Department of Agriculture), you would retain around 1kg of water or 2.2 pounds. If you were on a 60 carbs/day diet, you could be a pound and a half heavier already. If you went up to 400 grams of carbs, you could add on 2 ½ pounds of water.

Why do carbs cause you to retain water weight?

The reason your body retains water after you consume carbs involves your body’s favorite energy source: a molecule called glycogen. Glycogen is an energy source that is produced primarily from carbohydrates. Your body loves glycogen because it’s an easily accessible energy source that provides a lot of energy. Glycogen also has an interesting attribute: it bonds well with water. In fact, for every gram of carbohydrate in your body, there are about 3 to 4 molecules of water bonded to it.

But glycogen is far from the only substance or factor that can cause your body to retain extra water. Excess sodium can also cause your body to hold on to the water on top of the water held onto by your glycogen. Once you factor in the effects of food, your hormones, and your unique body composition, it is easy to see why your weight fluctuates so much.

But once you return to eating a low carb, low-sodium diet, your body should naturally shed the extra water weight you gained.

Can you gain pounds of fat overnight?

You can’t gain a pound of fat in a day, or even 5 pounds in one weekend. Biologically, it would amaze us if you did. You are very much aware of how difficult it is to lose fat quickly, but don’t laugh when I tell you, in theory, it is as “difficult” to gain fat.

Fat gain or loss has a lot to do with your energy/caloric balance–how many calories you take in vs. how many calories you use during the day. If you are using more energy than you take in, your body gets some energy it needs from your fat stores. If you’re taking in more energy–eating beyond your body’s needs–then the opposite happens: you build fat stores.

A common theory in the health and fitness world is that there are around 3,500 calories stored in a pound of fat. The theory goes that if you reduce your daily caloric intake by 500 every day of the week, in 7 days you’ll lose a pound of fat. Conversely, if you overeat by 500 calories a day, you can gain a pound of fat in a week.

500 Calories x 7 Days = 3,500 calories/week or 1 lb/ week

The point is, it TAKES TIME to gain or lose fat. (Of course, it is much easier than you think to overeat 500 calories a day. A large blended coffee-flavored drink once a day will do it.)

To gain a pound of fat, you would need to add about 500 calories a day on top of your normal diet, every day, for about 7 days. This makes gaining any significant amount of fat from even the craziest, all-out cheat days unlikely. To gain 5 pounds of fat in a day, you’d have to eat about 17,500 calories on top of your daily caloric limit. Not even Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson can consume that many calories!

If you are curious to see the effects of your cheat day, take a body composition test before and after your cheat day to see the changes to your body water levels.

Do cheat days ruin your progress?

A cheat day every once in a while will not erase weeks and months of consistent workouts and healthy eating.

Cheat days can help keep you stay motivated long-term if you practice mindful eating. But remember, this doesn’t mean you can get carried away on cheat days. It is important to always stay within reason and it will go a long way to help you develop healthy eating habits that you can sustain.

Do not stress about any sudden weight gain after a cheat day; it’s not fat but just water weight. Just make sure after you’ve had your fun, you get back on your fitness journey and keep working towards your goals. Changing your body composition and losing weight is a long-term process, but if you do it right, you’ll have long-term results!

Bottom line: it’s OK to indulge once in a while!

If you’re trying to lose weight, the chances are that you have a “goal weight” in mind.

With so many of our conversations about health centering around factors like obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and overall fitness, it seems that we’re always looking for ways to get healthy and reach what we believe is our ideal weight.

After all, the best way to make sure that you actually reach a goal is by making it measurable in the first place, and your weight is a great way to see how much progress you’re making.

But what’s going on beyond the scale?

There’s a lot more to being healthy than just knowing how much you weigh. Your weight can be a crucial indicator of your health, but that final number might not show you the whole picture.

If you want to talk about weight (or weight loss), it’s vital to have a solid understanding of the two most significant contributors to your weight: muscle and fat tissue.

The Two Different Tissues Contributing to Your Weight

There are a couple of components that make up your body weight, but the two types of tissue that can be the biggest indicators of your health and fitness: muscle and fat.

Let’s Talk About Muscle

Your muscles are the tissues in your body that are responsible for strength and movement. They also help to support your bones and contribute to your energy metabolism.

There are three different kinds of muscle:

• Cardiac
• Smooth
• Skeletal

When it comes to body composition and body weight, we’re mostly talking about Skeletal Muscle Mass. These are the muscles that you can typically change through a combination of a healthy diet and exercise. Traditionally, we work out and grow these muscles (or neglect them and let them atrophy). Think biceps, triceps, abdominals, glutes, etc.

What About Fat?

Fat, also known as adipose tissue, is another major contributor to your overall body weight – and it’s often the one that people are looking to get rid of when they talk about weight loss.

There are two different kinds of fat:

• Subcutaneous fat, or the fat that lies beneath the skin
• Visceral fat, which lies deep in your abdominal cavity and surrounds your organs

Despite the negative connotation, having a certain amount of fat tissue is actually necessary. Your body stores unused energy from your food as fat, so it can provide a reliable source of fuel when you need it. Fat tissue also acts as insulation to keep you warm and as a “cushion” to protect your vital organs.

Finally, fat is an endocrine organ, which means that it plays a role in releasing hormones and regulating your blood sugar.

The visible problem is excess body fat, which can lead to higher body weight and altered hormone release that can make the condition worse.

How Muscle And Fat Contribute To Your Body Weight

When it comes to weight, most of the focus is on body fat and muscle because they can both be controlled (and changed!) by your lifestyle.

Your Body Fat Mass (or the amount of fat you have in your body) is highly variable based on your diet and exercise. Since one of its primary functions is energy storage, your Body Fat Mass can change depending on whether you’re eating at a caloric deficit or caloric surplus.

This means that if you are at a caloric surplus, or eating more than what your body uses, the excess energy can be stored as fat, which leads to weight gain.

You also have a lot of control over how your Skeletal Muscle Mass contributes to your weight since these are the muscles that can grow with exercise. Because of this, the amount of muscle mass you have can be an indication of your fitness.

Does Muscle Weigh More Than Fat?

Not only do these two tissues have different functions, but they also take up space in your body in very different ways.

You may have heard the phrase “muscle weighs more than fat” before. What this means is that, while a pound of fat is going to weigh the same as a pound of muscle, they’re going to look very different.

Muscle tissue is denser than fat tissue, so a pound of muscle tissue takes up much less space than a pound of body fat. This means you can be the same height and weight as someone else but look completely different and have different body composition because of the different body fat-to-muscle ratios—and this can also mean that the healthiness of your weight can vary.

Why Knowing Your Body Composition Is Just As Important As Your Weight

When it comes to determining their “healthy weight range,” a lot of people put the focus on their BMI, or Body Mass Index, which uses a general formula to decide how your weight compares with your height. But these two numbers don’t necessarily give you the whole picture of your health since it doesn’t show exactly how your muscle and fat contribute to that weight.

Take this study, for example: while evaluating the weight and body composition of college athletes, researchers found that 38 of the subjects had BMIs indicating that they were overweight, but only 4 of those subjects actually had excess body fat. This means that a higher Skeletal Muscle Mass may classify you as overweight on the scale!

There is more to your health and fitness than your body weight alone.

Understanding Your Body Composition

To understand how the weight on the scale relates to your body composition, you have to understand that your weight is broken down into Body Fat Mass and Lean Body Mass and where Skeletal Muscle Mass fits into that mix.

The definition of Lean Body Mass is your total body weight minus your Body Fat Mass, which leaves your Skeletal Muscle Mass as well as the weight of your organs, skin, bones, and body water. This measurement can give you an idea of how much of your body weight is made up of fat and muscle.

Not only is this important for having a grasp of how healthy you are, but it can also help with your metabolism, which can then go on to help you with any body composition or weight loss goals you may have. People who have more Lean Body Mass use more calories every day when they’re at rest to maintain those muscle tissues, so having a higher muscle mass is actually beneficial for using more calories daily and burning fat.

And on the flip side, excess body fat can pose health risks like heart disease, high cholesterol, and metabolic syndrome, even if you have a normal BMI!

You Can Improve Your Health Regardless of Your Weight

The right balance of Lean Body Mass and Body Fat Mass can help you to maintain your health and your capacity for functional movement outside of weight alone and is generally a better indication of your overall fitness.

The really good news about this is that it means weight loss on its own isn’t always the end-all-be-all of improving your health and quality of life.

For example, one study found that patients improved their knee pain by lowering their body fat percentage and increasing their activity, even when their body weight didn’t change significantly.

Key Insights for Goal-Planning

Knowing your body composition can give you vital insights into just how healthy you are—and that can mean a more clear path for making the right decisions for your health and fitness.

Having a “snapshot” of your Body Fat Mass and Skeletal Muscle Mass—and how both of those components contribute to the final number on the scale—can help you determine what steps you should be taking to improve your overall body composition and health.

For example, if you find that your Body Fat Mass is high, but your Skeletal Muscle Mass seems to be in a normal range, you can focus more on cutting your fat through a combination of exercise and diet rather than just resistance training to build muscle.

This can also help you see that your progress doesn’t always show on the scale! If you’ve been hitting the gym hard and are feeling a lot more fit, but the scale hasn’t moved, you might be building muscle. Again, muscle takes up less space in your body than fat tissue, so this progress won’t necessarily show on the scale, but it doesn’t mean that you aren’t making any progress.

Getting a body composition test lets you learn more about your body composition and can show that you’re building muscle to keep you motivated to continue.

How To Maintain Muscle Mass While Losing Fat

If you want to lose weight, you should lose excess fat tissue, not muscle mass. Studies have indicated that it’s important to focus on diet and exercise if you want to preserve your Skeletal Muscle Mass while losing weight.

To do this, you need to make sure you’re losing weight “the healthy way:”

• Include a healthy balance of cardio and resistance training in your workout routine to burn calories and build muscle
• Eat at a caloric deficit to burn through your extra fat stores
• Make sure you’re getting enough protein in your diet to support and maintain healthy muscle mass

Conclusion

There’s more to your body weight than what meets the eye—although having a healthy body composition can definitely help with that! Knowing how your fat and muscle contribute to your weight can give you key insights into your health and help you plan out a more specific diet and exercise routine for your goals.

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Erica Digap is a freelance writer specializing in nutrition science, fitness, and health. After receiving her BSc in Clinical Nutrition and working in the corporate diet industry, she decided to set forth and use her experience to inspire readers to make lasting, healthy lifestyle changes, one healthy meal and workout at a time.

Counting the number of calories you eat in a day is no longer effective for improving your fitness potential.

Eating healthy is often a more involved process than simply tallying the number of calories you eat in a day. There are also the actual nutrients in those calories that need to be considered, like your protein, fat, and, most infamously, carbohydrates. Low-carb dieting is highly popular for weight management, but many people find that it’s too restrictive to be a realistic,  long-term solution. Enter: carb cycling.

Here’s everything you need to know about carb cycling and how it can help you achieve your fitness goals.

What is Macro Counting?

“Macro counting” is an eating strategy in which you keep track of the number of grams of each macronutrient you eat per day. Macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) are all metabolized differently in your body. As such, each macronutrient also has a different calorie value per gram.

• Carbohydrates: 4 calories/gram
• Proteins: 4 calories/gram
• Fats: 9 calories/gram

The three major macronutrients and their equivalent calories per gram. 

Not all calories are created equally, and several studies show that the macronutrient contents of your diet can alter your end results. Macro counting addresses the importance of understanding how food affects your body beyond simple calories in/calories out approach. While counting your macros tends to be more involved than simply adding up your total calories for the day, this method can give you better insights into how the food you eat is affecting your workouts and your body composition.

One of the most popular examples of a macro counting diet is IIFYM, aka the “If It Fits Your Macros” diet. This type of eating pattern generally allows for more flexibility in your daily eating plan, rather than strict restriction and elimination that go hand-in-hand with more regimented diets.

What is Carb Cycling?

Carbohydrates have historically been villainized as the culprits behind unwanted weight gain and fitness plateaus. However, the relationship between carbs and your fitness is a little more nuanced than that. Carbohydrates are your body’s main energy source so your body needs a certain amount of carbohydrates that it can use to fuel your daily activities.  While weight loss is a benefit of low-carb diets, like the Keto Diet, they’ve also been linked to some concerning side effects like nausea, fatigue, dehydration, and limited exercise capacity.

This is where carb cycling comes in. This more advanced eating pattern has traditionally been used by athletes to optimize their athletic performance, and now it’s also being used as a method for weight loss.

Rather than slashing your carbohydrate intake to a minimum, as you would with a traditional low-carb diet, carb cycling involves switching off between lower-carb intake days and moderate-carb intake days. Carb cycling can look different for everyone, but the most popular option is to save your higher-carb days for the days that you are going to be participating in higher-intensity workouts. This way, you can make sure that you’re giving your body enough carbohydrates to fuel you through your most active days.

How Carb Cycling Affects Your Body Composition

So why try carb cycling in the first place? One major reason lies in its potential to help you build muscle while losing fat.

Low-carb diets are a successful method for weight loss (at least in the short term) for a couple of different reasons, including their potential to help improve insulin sensitivity, lower your calorie intake, and put you into a state of ketosis, or “fat burn.”

But low-carbohydrate diets can also lead to a loss of muscle mass during intense exercise. When you eat carbohydrates, they’re broken down into glucose, which then circulates through your bloodstream (aka “blood sugar”) to be used for quick energy. And, they can also be stored in your muscles and liver in another form called glycogen. But when you’re eating a limited amount of carbs, you have much less circulating glucose that can be used for energy to complete a high-intensity workout. Instead, your body has to use your stored glycogen for energy, depleting your muscles in the process.

By cycling your carb intake, you can prevent this muscle degradation by refueling your muscle glycogen stores with an adequate amount of carbohydrates on those extra-active days.

It’s also interesting to note how low-carb diets can impact some of the hormones that influence your weight management behaviors. Take leptin, a hormone that regulates your energy and hunger cues. There’s evidence that eating a low-carb diet is linked to lower leptin levels, which can notify your body that it needs to eat more, throwing a wrench into your otherwise carefully-planned diet. For many people, this means that they need to experiment with different amounts of carbohydrates to find the intake that will best support their fitness goals. Because of this, carb cycling can be a potential solution for many.

Is Carb Cycling Good for Your Fitness Goals?

Carbs provide quick, easy-to-use fuel when you need it most. So a downside to low-carb diets is they are not very well-suited for people who work out. However, with carb cycling, you can use higher-carbohydrate days to give your body enough fuel to finish those longer,  harder workouts that might be more difficult to complete when you’re taking in fewer carbohydrates.

Carb cycling could also be a useful tool for weight loss simply because of the low-carb element. Low-carb diets are proven to help you lose fat, making them similar to other calorie-restricted approaches. But, because carb cycling allows you to eat some carbohydrates when factored wisely into your eating plan, it could be a more sustainable approach. By carb cycling, you can approach nutrition from a more sustainable angle, and you won’t have to be as restrictive. Successful diets are the ones that you can follow for the long run, so carb cycling could be a viable option for anyone who wants to take advantage of better insulin sensitivity without eliminating carbs completely.

Are There Any Downsides to Carb Cycling?

Carb cycling could be an effective way to help you reach your fitness goals, especially when compared to stricter diets that do away with many carbohydrates. But on the flip side, this method is more complicated and involved than simply adding up the number of calories you ate in a  day. It requires thorough planning to ensure that you’re meeting the correct amount of carbohydrates (in grams) for your body while ensuring your exercise plan is working with your nutrition to get you the results you desire. This type of eating plan could feel overwhelming if you’re looking for a simpler way to monitor your food intake.

Another thing to consider is  carb cycling can come with some unpleasant side effects on low-carb days like fatigue, sleep problems, gastrointestinal distress, and mood issues. Carb cycling is not suitable for just anyone, either. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding should avoid it, as should anyone who is underweight, managing an eating disorder, or dealing with any adrenal issues.

People with diabetes should also consult with their doctor before determining if carb cycling could be a fit for their lifestyles. Evidence for its use among those with diabetes is somewhat conflicting, though. While low-carb diets seem to be helpful for managing blood sugar, some experts believe people with diabetes and hypoglycemia should not try carb cycling.

Also, there is very little evidence as of now to suggest how well carb cycling actually works. More evidence-based research is needed to determine the effects of carb cycling on your health and fitness goals.

How to Start Carb Cycling

Familiarize Yourself With Different Kinds of Carbs

If you’re going to start watching your carb intake, it pays to understand the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates.

Your body can break down and absorb simple carbohydrates very quickly, so they can cause rapid spikes in blood sugar. Simple carbohydrates also tend to be processed more heavily than complex carbohydrates, which can strip them of other healthy nutrients like fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Therefore, having too many simple carbohydrates in your diet can increase your susceptibility to conditions like weight gain, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes.

On the other hand, complex carbohydrates contain healthy fiber, vitamins, and minerals. They take longer for your body to break down and absorb, and they won’t trigger massive blood sugar fluctuations in the same ways that simple carbs will.

When it comes to carb cycling, it’s usually better to stick to more complex carbohydrates, both on low-carb and more moderate-carb days, to ensure you’re getting enough nutrients. Some examples of healthy  complex carbohydrates you might want to add to your carb cycling rotation include:

• Beans
• Legumes
• Whole grains
• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Nuts
• Seeds

It’s also important to note that these recommendations are general and not all-encompassing. It’s always a good idea to speak with a  registered dietitian or certified nutritionist to better understand your individual needs.

Experiment With What Works Best for You

There is no hard-and-fast definition of carb cycling, which means that what works best for you may not work for someone else Generally speaking, a typical low-carb day might mean restricting your carb intake to roughly 20-57 grams of carbohydrates (about one cup of brown rice). In contrast, a more moderate-carbohydrate day might see about 225-325 grams per day based on a 2,000 calorie diet. But again, this can vary.

The frequency of low-carb to moderate-carb days also matters. Many people who carb cycle schedule their moderate carbohydrate days on the days when they are exercising intensely. But there isn’t currently enough research to suggest that there’s an “optimum” number of days per week that one should eat low-carb versus higher-carb.

Ultimately, your macronutrient needs can vary widely based on the number of calories you eat per day, the frequency and intensity at which you exercise, and your current health status. You might need to do some experimentation to find the right cycle that fits your goals.

Use a Nutrition Tracker

One of the biggest considerations to keep in mind before you start carb cycling is the amount of math it can involve. Not only do you have to determine how many carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are in each food you eat during the day, but you also need to tailor your meal plan according to whether you’re following a high-carb or low-carb meal plan for that particular day.

 So nutrition trackers can be invaluable tools for anyone interested in carb cycling. . Plugging your daily food intake into a smartphone app reduces the amount of math you need to do and simplifies macro counting while ensuring you are eating the right number of calories for weight loss, maintenance, or gain (depending on your goals). Popular apps include:

• MyFitnessPal 
• MyPlate 
• My Macros+

Track Your Measurements and Body Composition in Addition to Weight

Because carb cycling seems to affect your body composition and weight in various ways, it’s important to track more than just your weight to get an accurate picture of your progress.

To better understand how carb cycling is affecting your body fat versus your muscle mass, take regular measurements. Start by measuring your biceps, waist, abdomen, hips, and chest to use as a baseline for tracking healthy progress. You might also be able to track changes to body composition outputs like  Body Fat Percentage, Skeletal Muscle Mass, Lean Muscle Mass, and Body Fat Mass—all of which can more accurately show you how your diet is changing your body more than a single number on the scale.

On a related note, it’s important to understand that changes to your body composition and weight can also lead to changes in your energy requirements. To avoid plateaus during your fitness journey, reevaluate your macronutrient intake every 8-12 weeks, as instructed by your dietitian, especially if you start to notice stagnation in your progress.

Conclusion

Carb cycling has been used as an energy optimization strategy by endurance athletes for years. But more and more people have recently begun to use this advanced strategy to take advantage of the fat-burning benefits of low-carb diets without burning out too quickly. It’s a fairly complicated diet that requires more research to understand its long-term effects, but it seems to be a promising method for weight management. Before you hop onto the carb cycling bandwagon, take some time to educate yourself on the types of carbohydrates and their individual benefits, and be sure to speak with a professional to ensure you can fuel your body properly using this method.