Weight versus fat: they are not the same thing

Weight versus fat: they are not the same thing

Every tissue in your body (including muscle, body fat, your heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, bones, etc.) weighs a given amount.

We could (conceivably anyhow) take them out of your body, plop them on a scale and find out how much they weigh.

Your total body-weight is comprised of the weight of every one of those tissues. But only some percentage of your total body-weight is body fat.

Researchers and techie types frequently divide the body into two (or more)

Components including fat mass (the sum total of the body fat you have on your body) and lean body mass (everything else).

Without getting into unnecessarily technical details about different kinds of body fat, let’s just go from there.

Let’s say that we could magically determine the weight of only your fat cells.

Of course, we know your total weight by throwing you on a scale.

By dividing the total amount of fat into the total body-weight, you can determine a body fat percentage which represents the percentage of your total weight is fat.

Lean athletes might only have 5-10% body fat, meaning that only 5-10% of their total weight is fat.

So a 200 pound athlete with 10% body fat is carrying 20 lbs (200 * 0.10 = 20) of body fat.

The remaining 180 pounds (200 total pounds - 20 pounds of fat = 180 pounds) of weight is muscle, organs, bones, water, etc.

Researchers call the remaining 180 pounds lean body mass or LBM. I’ll be using

LBM a lot so make sure and remember what it means: LBM is lean body mass, the amount of your body that is not fat.

In cases of extreme obesity, a body fat percentage of 40-50% or higher is not unheard of.

Meaning that nearly 1/2 of that person’s total weight is fat. A 400 pound person with 50% body fat is carrying 200 lbs of body fat. The other 200 pounds is muscle, organs, bones, etc. Again, 200 pounds of LBM.

Most people fall somewhere between these two extremes. An average male may carry from 18-23% body fat and an average female somewhere between 25-30% body fat.

So a male at 180 lbs and 20% body fat is carrying 36 pounds of fat and the rest of his weight (144 lbs) is LBM.

A 150 pound female at 30% body fat has 50 pounds of body fat and 100 pounds of LBM.

I bring this up as many (if not most) diet books focus only on weight loss, without making the above distinction.

I should note that more current books have finally started to distinguish between fat loss and weight loss.