Why It's Difficult to Lose Weight
If you have difficulty losing weight or you've lost weight and then gained it back, you're not alone. Losing weight is difficult because our body has self-regulating mechanisms that attempt to negate weight loss. Although it may seem strange that we have mechanisms preventing weight loss, it's our body's way of preventing starvation when calories are significantly reduced.
Have you ever wondered why diets fail? When we restrict calories by dieting, our body reacts by slowing down our metabolism. Although you might lose weight temporarily, there's a very good chance that you will gain back the weight because of the slower metabolism.
Increasing Our Metabolism Is The Key
It's a well known fact that our metabolism regulates how many calories we burn. Clinical studies have confirmed that metabolism is the key to permanent weigh loss. Increasing your metabolism will burn more calories, therefore burning more body fat
Your metabolism is functioning at all times, so increasing your metabolism will increase the amount of bodyfat burnt around the clock! With your Metabolism maintained at optimal levels, you can be assured that you will not gain back the weight.
Muscle Weight v Fat Weight
You have probably heard the saying, "Muscle weighs more than fat." This is not entirely true. While a pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat, the volume is different. Muscle is denser than fat.
A pound of fat will take up about 18% more space than a pound of muscle. If squeezed into cans, you would need a can 18% bigger to contain the pound of fat.
The picture (left) is a replica of 5lbs of Fat (the yellow mass) and 5lbs of Muscle (the red mass). Since fat takes up a lot more space than muscle, you can see how you could gain 5lbs of muscle and lose 5lbs of fat and actually be smaller even though the scale says you weigh the same.
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In addition to volume differences, keep in mind that muscle wraps tightly to the skeletal structure whereas fat hangs loosely. So, you can find two people of the same build and height who weigh the same appearing vastly different based on their lean body mass (LBM).
If your goals are to improve your physical appearance, you should concern yourself more with your Lean Body Mass rather than your bodyweight.