Rapid weight loss  is associated with extreme dieting.  It is generally considered a risk to health and is highly discouraged.

Body fat provides insulation against loss of heat. Some body fat is stored immediately below the skin reducing the amount of heat lost to the environment. In rapid weight loss, this insulation is lost very quickly. During rapid weight loss, there is no exra muscle tissue yet to generate more heat to keep as warm. The body signals your muscle tissues  to produce more heat to cover the gap. This fast and repetitive contraction and relaxation of muscles is meant to generate more heat. This leads to shivering. Not good at all!

The other side-effects are hair-loss, gall-stones and hanging body skin. In short, an attempt for super-fast weight loss will produce an unhealthy individual, not the one with toned muscles like they show on the advertisements.

When we lose weight we don’t just lose fat. We lose a combination of body fat, and muscle tissue. For example, studies show that when we diet, the weight we lose is on average 75 percent fat and 25 percent muscle. Furthermore, a relatively high percentage of this weight loss is likely to be water loss. Water accounts for about 70 percent of the total body weight of an average person, with muscle tissue containing roughly 75 percent water (plus 20 percent protein and 5 percent minerals).

It is possible to lose anything up to about 20 pounds of weight per week, but most of this is likely to be water. It will therefore be regained as soon as normal eating resumes. The maximum amount of body fat a healthy person can lose is about 3-4 pounds per week. Anything more than this is bound to have some side-effects, not the good ones!  I’ll describe in my next post.

It all adds up to a cool 2202 calories. Now, my BMR has been calculated as 2591 calories. I’ll tell you why the BMR calculation was a great achievement. If I follow the above diet regimen, I will lose 2591 minus 2202 = 389 calories per day for free, by doing nothing! Plus, if I can cut down the banana from my AM snack and peanut butter from my PM snack, I can lose another 105 + 190 = 295 calories more.

Now, isn’t that something? It is an eye-opener for those who think that they have been exercising all day long but don’t lose weight. It may be that we’re just eating a wee bit more since we’ve exercised. But the reality is that we’re ending up gaining the extra calories that we lost when working out, plus a few more! The moral of the story is: Regardless how much you walk and how many calories you burn from fat, if you increase your calorie intake to replace all the calories you burned, you will not lose any body fat. Then, if I eat as much less food as possible per day, I can lose a lot many calories in a single day. Correct? Looks like a good proposition but definitely not a healthy one. Why? Let me describe in my next post.

Let’s see what we’ve got here. OK, I’ll be an example. My weight in kilograms is 78. My height in centimeters is 170.

Now, my BMR equals [66 + (13.75 x 78) + (5 x 170)] –  (6.8 x 30).

This equals 1988.5 minus 204 = 1884.5 calories

So, my BMR is 1884.5 calories.  But is this the actual amount if energy needed to keep me alive if I’m doing nothing (but breathing!) all day? Yes, but with a little correction. It depends on my lifestyle.

Now, all of us don’t lead the same kind of lifestyle, do we?  Definitely not. On a broad scale, we can classify as sedentary (like parking yourself and blogging), light, moderate and heavy activity lifestyles. This is the correction that we’ll be introducing into our BMR calculation.

Let’s see… Since I lead a light activity lifestyle, my corrected BMR will be: Current BMR x 1.375

So, my actual BMR = 1884.5 x 1.375 = 2591.18 calories.

This is the actual number of calories that I need per day in order to survive.

Oh, by the way, here is the BMR correction for different lifestyles by introducing a fancy new term:

TOTAL DAILY ENERGY EXPENDITURE (TDEE)

Sedentary individual, little or no exercise, office work TDEE = BMR x 1.2
Light activity, exercise or sport 1-3 days per week TDEE = BMR x 1.375
Moderate activity, exercise or sport 3-5 days per week TDEE = BMR x 1.55
High activity, exercise or sport 6-7 days per week TDEE = BMR x 1.725
Very heavy activity, physical job, exercise or sport 2 x times each day TDEE = BMR x 1.9

Why is this calculation a great achievement? I’ll explain in my next post…

What is BMR?

The basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the base rate at which your body consumes calories for basic metabolic functions like breathing, maintaining internal temperature, repairing cells, pumping blood, powering muscles at rest, etc. In simple terms, it is the rate at which your body consumes calories when at rest. This means: even if you are being a couch potato for a complete 24 hours, you still need energy to survive; your body still burns calories. Got it? It is as simple as that. Now, how do you calculate your BMR. Here is how you do it.

Whip up your calculator!. If you know your weight in pounds, convert your weight into kilograms like this:

Bodyweight in pounds (lbs) / 2.2 = Bodyweight in kilograms (kg)

For Males: BMR = 66 + (13.75 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age in yrs)
For Females: BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age in Yrs).

Let’s take a look at an example in my next post.

To recap: If we consume more calories than what our bodies burn up in a day we gain weight (usually fat!), if we eat the same we maintain our weight, and if we eat less calories than what our bodies use, we lose weight.

How do we find the magic “just enough” calorie count that each one of us needs so we don’t accumulate excess calories?  Actually, it is no magic. It can be approximately calculated by using a formula. Before we get there, we need to understand what BMR (Basal Metabolic rate). Read on…

When you digest your food, the majority of the calories in the food you eat are absorbed through the wall of your intestines where they pass into your blood stream to the rest of your body. The calories in the food you eat are used to run your body: they are needed to build your tissues, make blood cells and other types of cells, heat your body, pump your blood – something similar to what electricity does to your home. The calories are needed to help your body do work or play. The calories are used up or “burned” when your muscles contract and extend as you walk, skip, jump, run or just wave your arms around in the air. The calories are even needed to digest food. Almost everything going on in your body and everything your body does require energy, and that energy comes from the food you eat.

Any excess calories you eat beyond what your body needs will be stored, primarily in the form of fat!

If you consistently eat more calories than you use, you will continue to store more and more calories as fat. When you diet, by definition, you are eating fewer calories than your body needs to run itself. Since your body has to get the energy it needs from somewhere, it has been designed to call up the calories stored in your body as fat. When you diet, the calories stored in your body in the form of fat will be broken down and used by your body to provide the energy needed to do the work (and play) that you do.

Calories are like money – sometimes you don’t have enough and sometimes you have more than you need!

When it comes to calories, most of us have consumed more than we need, which is how we wound up with too much body fat. Whereas extra money is a good thing (to cover an emergency, or a retirement, or a college education), too much fat is a problem. So unlike money, the eventual goal is to have “just enough” calories to be in balance.  The goal is to move toward a safer level of body fat and how to eat “just enough” calories to meet your daily needs. If we had always eaten “just enough” calories to meet our daily needs, we would never have gotten fat in the first place!

Now, WE KNOW that in order to reduce body fat, we have to get rid of excess storage fat.

How do we get rid of excess storage fat? By creating enough heat in the body to burn it.  Storage fat is measurable by the amount of energy released when it is burnt. One unit of this energy is called calorie. Without getting into too much detail, a calorie  is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of a certain amount of water by one degree. The foods you eat contain energy and that energy can be carefully measured and reported in terms of calories.

I’ll be talking about calories in my next post.  Until then,  

Thanks for stopping by and reading. If you find a post useful, please feel free to drop in a comment!

Experts have determined that: 

• During the early weeks of weight loss, At least 75 percent of the weight you lose should be fat loss and not more than 25 percent should come from lean body mass. 
• As you continue to lose weight, especially if certain types of exercise are included in your weight loss plan, fat loss should be about 90 percent of the weight you lose and lean body mass should be about 10 percent.

FIVE REASONS FOR KNOWING YOUR BODY FAT

• It gives you a better measure of fitness than your weight alone.
• It will give you a better idea of your health risk.
• It prevents you from being misclassified based on your weight. The scale can label you “overweight” even if you are not “overfat” or it can label you “normal weight” even if you have too much body fat.
• It lets you know the composition of your weight loss when you are losing weight. Your health depends on losing body fat and preserving lean body mass.
• It can help you identify fad diets that promote water loss and the loss of your lean body mass, especially muscle.

Fully grown adults gain both lean body mass and storage fat when they gain weight. The amount of fat gained usually far exceeds the amount of lean body mass gained. This is when your body fat levels increase making you over-weight.

More specifically, the extra weight you gain is about 60 – 80 percent fat and 20 – 40 percent lean body mass. Therefore, if you gained 10 pounds, about 6 – 8 pounds would be fat and 2 – 4 pounds would be lean body mass. This would mean increases not only in your fat tissue but also in your muscles stomach, intestines and other organs, bone and water.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LOSE WEIGHT?   

When you lose weight, you lose water, lean body mass and storage fat. To replace lost water, it is important to maintain proper hydration. From a health standpoint and to maintain your metabolic rate, it is better to preserve as much lean body mass as possible as you reduce your body fat.