Wellness Journey 4: muscle mass and fat mass

As shared in the earlier post, our

Total weight = bone + muscle + fat.

Sometimes, the bodyweight without fat is also called Lean Body Mass.

Lean Body Mass = Total weight - fat weight

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The reason i have split this program into two parts is that both fat and muscles contribute to the overall body weight. A healthy weight loss is when you lose fat and gain muscle.

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In phase 1, we will focus ONLY on FAT loss (and not worry too much about the muscle gain or loss). This is the phase where your weighting machine will show less weight but you will not be leaner (visually). In phase 1, we will focus only on the diet for fat loss.

• I don't recommend going to the gym in this phase but a 45 min post-dinner walk is recommended.

• Going to the gym will not hurt in this phase but don't expect any results. Doing hundreds of sits up will not reduce your tummy fat, running hours on the thread-mill will not be effective if the body fat percentage is too high.

• In this phase, you will be happy to see your weight loss on the weighing scale but it might not get noticed by others :-)

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In phase 2, we will focus on building Muscles (and try to retain the fat % as low as possible). This is the time when you will realize that body weight loss is not important. All that you were looking for was fat loss. This is the phase when your body will get into recomposition; you will get leaner.

In this phase, you should do weights and you will see the immediate results!

This is the phase where everyone will notice the weight loss and you will hear a lot of "Hey, are you doing something", "What are you doing, you look so fit now", "you seem to have lost a lot of weight" :-)

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Important: Weight loss pattern

During the program, we should track your bodyweight closely. Remember - the last time when you lost weight and it soon appeared back - this is why fat loss should be accompanied by a little muscle gain to make the weight loss permanent.

A huge part of losing weight is believing you can do it and realising it's not going to happen overnight. 

Now with this understanding of basic concepts, let's learn more about body fuel stores.

- Saurabh