Do you want to know why most diets never work?
Almost all of them are focused on just one thing and that is to lower the
number on the scale or to get you into those slim jeans that you have locked in
the deepest part of your wardrobe. But, as I’m about to explain to you in a
little while, lowering your body weight in the right way is much trickier than
lowering it in the right one. But before I say anything more on this subject,
you need to understand how our bodies are built.
Our bodies are made out four different “compartments”.
Body water, bone mass, lean mass and fat mass. Our weight is nothing more than
the added mass of all of the compartments masses.
Body water is all of the water that we have in
our body. It’s in every cell, intracellular space, bloodstream, in our brains (70%
water), lungs (90% water), joints… The amount of body water can vary greatly
during the day from being dehydrated or even chronically dehydrated to
retaining water. It also varies during your life.
Like
body water, bone mass also varies greatly during your lifetime. It is believed
that we reach our maximum between 30 to 40 years. After that, our bones start
to lose the minerals in them and the risk of osteopenia, osteoporosis and arthritis
rise greatly. The average bone mass for men is 15 and 12%
for women.
Lean mass is nothing more than our very own
little metabolic furnace – muscles. Muscles enable our bodies to move, they
produce heat and they allow our internal organs to contract. It is believed,
that the bodies of men are 35 – 55% made out of lean mass. Female bodies, on
the other hand, have a lower percentage of muscle mass (25 – 40%). It might
seem a bit unfair to all the ladies reading this, but just keep in mind, that
during evolution, men were the ones that needed more muscles, because they were
the hunters. Women were gatherers and they didn’t need all that wasteful muscle
tissue for their activities.
Fat mass is more dominant in women. Let me
explain why, before the ladies rip me to pieces. Men have more muscles because
in the past, they were hunters and provided protein from animal sources for
their families. Women were predominantly gatherers and on top of that, they
needed a better isolation for themselves, because they gave birth to children.
Women needed to be more protected from the weather for those reasons. Average
percentage of fat mass is around 16% for men and about 25-27% for women. Everyone
has 2 types of fat in their bodies: visceral fat (it surrounds our organs and
it protects them) and subcutaneous fat (underneath our skin. It serves primarily
as isolation). Subcutaneous fat is the one that accumulates under our skin and
it is the one, that makes us look fat and losing it is the real key to weight
loss.
Like I’ve said before, most of the diets out
there are just setting you up to fail. While you’re on them you will lose body
weight, but most of the weight will come from water and lean muscle loss. The
real goal in success in weight loss lies in the loss of fat mass while increasing
or at the very least sustaining your lean mass. This can easily be done if you follow
a healthy and nutrient dense diet on a daily basis and incorporate aerobic and
anaerobic fitness into your daily routine.
No two individuals have the same ratios of
these four compartments and that’s why no two people are alike.
Until next time, stay strong and be kind.
Picture taken from: http://tiny.cc/aa3mhw
References:
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