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Fat loss is hard

We’ve all seen those infomercials that promise us an ungodly amount of weight loss in the first week of our participation with a certain program.  The claims they make sound too good to be true: “Lose 10 pounds in a week!”, “How to lose 10-17 pounds in 7 days!”, “How to lose 10 pounds fast without any pills.”  The fact of the matter is, you can lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time.  But I’m here to tell you you don’t want to.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth mentioning again.  There’s no easy, pain-free way to achieve permanent fat loss.  You have to expend the sweat, and if you’re unlucky, the blood, and the tears.  Losing fat is hard.

Weight loss is easy

But losing weight is actually a pretty easy thing.  So when these ads tell you that you can lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time, they’re not lying.  It is possible to lose 10 pounds in a week, but the problem is, it won’t be completely from fat.  Unless you’re extremely obese, any time you lose that much weight, you’ll be losing a combination of fat, water, and worst of all, muscle.  In fact, I’d bet that a large portion of those first few ten pounds that people claim to lose is either water or muscle, probably water.  When your body is unproportionally skewed towards holding water, it’s not hard to imagine that 70-80% of the weight you lose will just be water weight.  10-15% will probably be muscle.  The rest of that weight you lose may be fat.  I’m guessing that wasn’t really your goal.

Whenever you put yourself into a situation like this, you’re sabotaging your ability to lose fat in the future.  Have you ever wondered why these programs don’t mention how much weight you can lose in the next week?  After all, most of us want to lose more than just 10 pounds – why don’t they advertise what can happen after week 1?

Quick weight loss is unhealthy

It’s because you’ve royally screwed over your ability to lose additional weight after the first week – keep in mind, I said weight, I didn’t even say fat.  After your body has given up all of that muscle and water, there’s not much more for it left to give, and chances are, if you followed a program that made you lose that much weight in the first week, you’re not gearing up to lose fat, so you’re not going to be able to lose a lot more after that first week.

Your body is conditioned to store as much fat as it can.  Remember, it all goes back to the days of the caveman.  Our ancestors didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, so they often had to survive on whatever fat stores their bodies had built up for them.  We’re accustomed to gaining fat.  The flip side to that is that we can also lose muscle fairly easily.  Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.  There may be people out there, people that actually aren’t obese, that can lose 10 pounds of fat in a week, but they aren’t in the majority.

You really have to work to achieve the goals that you want.  There are no short-term solutions, and unless you’re a fan of major surgery, there are no quick fixes, simple diets, or weight loss pills that will get you to where you want to be.  So next time you see a commercial that tells you you can lose 10 pounds in 7 days, turn off the TV, get off the couch, grab a protein shake, and hit the gym.  Your goal is fat loss, not weight loss.