BODY COMPOSITION 101

Do you know what percentage of your body weight is fat, muscle, and water?

It’s called body composition

The numbers on the scale and Body Mass Index (BMI) have value, but it’s the composition of your body that tells the real story. Understanding the role body composition plays in weight loss can help you break free from the yo-yo diet cycle for good.

Why body composition matters

You should get very familiar with body composition because it’s the most accurate way to measure your weight loss success.  The science of weight loss and weight management places a specific focus on fat tissue. An excess of fat tissue can actively harm your overall health in the form of chronic disease, metabolic issues, hormonal imbalance, increased inflammation, and more. Visceral fat – the kind of fat stored deep inside the abdomen around your organs – is particularly dangerous. Medical weight loss aims to reduce the percentage of excess fat to reduce your overall health risks. That means optimizing other components, like muscle and water.

Another reason to pay attention to fat loss stems from the body’s natural response to weight loss. Our bodies are designed for basic survival. When it detects weight loss, it assumes that you’ll need to hold onto fat tissue until you’re able to find your next meal. Your metabolism also slows as part of this process, burning fewer calories. While this may have served our ancient ancestors who didn’t have access to our steady and plentiful food supply, it works against us in our modern struggles with weight.

How to optimize fat loss

To metabolically reduce your fat percentage, you must increase your lean muscle mass and water percentages. Sounds straightforward, right? Well, there’s a little more to it when you’re in the active weight loss phase. In this phase, you put your body into calorie deficit. When you lose body weight, you also lower your BMR, or basal metabolic rate. Your BMR measures the number of calories you burn when at rest. So one of your goals is to elevate your BMR as your weight goes down. And how can you achieve that goal? Build and preserve your lean muscle mass and water percentages! If you lose muscle and water when dieting, your body fat percentage actually increases. And since fat requires less energy (a.k.a. calories) to support compared to muscle, the result is a slower metabolism with each dieting cycle. Think of it as losing all the wrong kind of weight.

Before reviewing the best ways to increase muscle and water percentages, it’s worth pointing out how fad diets and even GLP-1 medications mislead customers with promises of fast weight loss. While these kinds of diets and medications may produce seemingly positive results on the bathroom scale, what’s really being lost is muscle and water along with the fat tissue. Muscle loss is especially bad because muscle tissue takes 5 to 10 times the amount of energy to maintain as fat. Once you stop those diets or medications, the lost weight – and then some – returns with a vengeance! Why? Because your body lacked the necessary lean muscle and water percentages to raise your BMR. That fat slides back on very easily.

Preserve muscle with protein and exercise

Once you embrace the importance of body composition, you should feel motivated to adopt the behaviors necessary to increase and preserve lean muscle mass. The first thing you should do is evaluate your daily diet to determine if you’re including enough lean protein in it while staying within your daily calorie limit. A general guideline might be to estimate .5 to 1 gram of protein for each pound of lean body mass (as measured by a body composition scale). However, you should discuss your specific daily protein goals with your medical provider.

In addition to your nutritional plan, you should incorporate physical activity into your weekly schedule. Strength and resistance exercises can go a long way in increasing and preserving lean muscle mass. After getting the all-clear from your medical provider, explore exercises like yoga, free weights, or circuit training to determine the kinds of physical activity you enjoy. If you don’t like it, you won’t stick with it! So make sure you do.

Also, you should know that muscle preservation is particularly important as you age. as you age. Building new muscle tissue after the age of 30 becomes increasingly difficult or even impossible. It’s a natural part of aging called sarcopenia.  So make the time and effort to preserve as much lean muscle as you can as part of a lifelong routine.

Stay hydrated

Good hydration is necessary for overall good health. But it plays an especially central role in healthy weight loss. In addition to helping with satiety and waste elimination, it facilitates lipolysis (the breakdown of fat for energy) and thermogenesis by slightly increasing metabolism in the process of warming up the body. Aim for a minimum of 32 ounces per day. Grab your favorite water bottle and carry it with you everywhere!

We’re always tracking where the weight loss is coming from in The Center for Medical Weight Loss program. Our number one goal is always to reduce overall body fat, not just pounds. That’s why we monitor body composition so closely and all of our programs are formulated to promote fat loss. Losing fat while preserving muscle and water percentage is the key to keeping the weight off for good.

So remember, it’s not just how much you lose. It’s also where that loss comes from that matters.