Why Loosing Weight and Loosing Fat Isn't Always The Same

Difference Between Losing Weight and Losing Fat

You can be loosing weight without losing fat and you can be losing fat without losing weight. Many people are losing weight but they are not losing fat.  The fat is still there though they appear to be gone.  How is this possible?  Fat is stored in fat cells in the body as chemical energy. When the number in your scale goes down,  the weight loss may not be fat but water and glycogen. This is the case with some people who lose weight. The body is composed of organs,  muscles, water, etc.  which all together makes up the weight of an individual. Excess glucose is usually converted to glycogen and stored in the liver and skeletal muscles.  
Glycogen functions as one of two forms of long-term energy reserves, with the other form being triglyceride stores in adipose tissue (i.e., body fat). In the liver, glycogen can make up from 5–6% of the organ's fresh weight and the liver of an adult weighing 70 kg can store roughly 100–120 grams of glycogen. In skeletal muscle, glycogen is found in a low concentration (1–2% of the muscle mass) and the skeletal muscle of an adult weighing 70 kg can store roughly 400 grams of glycogen. The amount of glycogen stored in the body—particularly within the muscles and liver—mostly depends on physical training, basal metabolic rate, and eating habits. Glycogen stores in skeletal muscle serve as a form of energy storage for the muscle itself; however, the breakdown of muscle glycogen impedes muscle glucose uptake, thereby increasing the amount of blood glucose available for use in other tissues. Liver glycogen stores serve as a store of glucose for use throughout the body, particularly the central nervous system. The human brain consumes approximately 60% of blood glucose in fasted, sedentary individuals

Glycogen is converted again to glucose if the body ever runs short of glucose.

     

Fat cells, referred to as adipocyte cells, absorb the storage form of fat, called triglycerides. Fat cells are able to store triglycerides when you are in an overfed state and need to store excess energy. Insulin, your energy storage hormone, regulates the flow of triglycerides into your fat cells. Fat cells may be shrinked but the cells themselves are not gotten rid off and because you may go back to your normal eating lifestyle, the fat cells will eventually be refilled and if you are not careful, more fat cells will be created.

    Sometimes, when people claim that they have lost weight,  they are usually misled due to the fact that the scale cannot distinguish whether the weight loss is from water, glycogen, muscle or fat.  While loosing weight, you want to be sure that majority of the weight loss is coming from fat and not the other way around. When people lose water, it is actually body dehydration and the real fat is still there. This means that although there is weight loss (though temporarily) , there is no fat loss.  Water weight is usually regained easily.
    Sometimes, people lose muscle rather  than fat . This is bad as it usually lead to slower metabolism since muscle burns more calories in the body.  Building muscle is in fact one way to burn more calories and consequently, lose body fat. Sometimes, people lose glycogen. Glycogen is the stored glucose in the body but never the real fat. When real weight loss is achieved by prolonged exercises (aerobics and muscular strength and endurance), diet control (low carbohydrate with high protein diet),  fat cells become shrinked.  However, there is tendency for fat cells to also get refilled and get increased if the patient continues habit of over feeding or eating wrongly in future.

Note: both weighs the same despite varying degrees of fat composition.