When you lose weight, your overall body size shrinks. Initially, this is due to a loss of water weight, but as you drop more pounds, you will both lose fat and gain muscle, leading to a sleeker, thinner physique. How quickly and how much your body shrinks will depend on several factors, including your current weight and diet and exercise regimen. A health care provider can help you set goals for dropping those excess pounds.
Water Weight
When you first start losing weight, you may notice the number on the scale going down drastically, and you may also feel less bloated and a bit slimmer. This is because during the initial weight-loss phase, those extra pounds are coming from water. By cutting calories, you force your body to get energy by releasing stored glycogen, which is a carbohydrate found in your muscles and liver. When glycogen is released, so is water, and this can lead to a significant loss of weight. However, after a few weeks, your body will begin to lose weight from fat, and the rapidity of weight loss will slow.
Lose Fat, Gain Muscle
Once you begin losing weight from fatty tissue, you will start to notice your body shrinking. This will be gradual, as it takes more effort for your body to lose weight from fat than water. However, exercising regularly can aid this process. Working out not only helps you burn calories, but it also replaces fat with muscle. This will cause your body to become trimmer and more toned. Additionally, muscle cells use more calories than fatty cells do, and adding more muscle can enhance your metabolism, further helping your body to shrink.
Determing Factors
Many factors determine the rate at which your body will shrink. If you are very overweight, you may lose weight more rapidly than someone who is only a few pounds overweight. This is because the higher your current weight is, the higher your metabolism is as well. How often you exercise and the intensity and types of your workouts also play a role. Your diet has an impact as well, since you will never lose weight if you are eating more than you burn off.
Additional Considerations
Try not to get discouraged if your body is not shrinking as quickly as you would like. A slow, steady weight loss is best, and it will both ensure that you are losing pounds from fat and that you will be better able to keep the weight off for good. Also keep in mind that, since muscle weighs more than fat, the number on the scale may go up the more you work out. But your clothes will most likely be looser and you will look sleeker.
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