Thread by @AJA_Cortes

5 Odd Facts about Fat Loss:

1. Even if you are disciplined with your diet, your weight loss will NOT be linear

One interesting trend Ive seen in the data from my clients is that weight will always drop sharply every 10-14 days

You'll get squiggly downward line where weight goes down, up, down, up, down a bit more, up

And then right around 10-14 days, there will be a significant drop thats a new Low

2. Hunger is not the challenge when strictly dieting, its the CRAVINGS

I shall explain:

If you are follow a serious calorie deficit, yes, you'll be hungry, that will 100% happen

But the hunger can be dealt with

What drives people crazy is specific CRAVINGS

Cravings for what? Anything

People will start dreaming about food: pizza, lemon drop sugar cookies, fried sushi, fried chicken and ranch dressing, apple pie

It will be some specific food that they suddenly want, and if they happen to smell it they go crazy

The way to "handle this" is simply to not expose yourself to your cravings AT ALL

One of the strategies to diet successfully is to simply stay out of the environment where the cravings might happen

Dont go near the bakery in the supermarket. Stay away

3. Water Retention is REAL

There's something called the "whoosh" effect in fitness literature, its not really well understood

Basically, its commonly scene where people's weight loss will stall out, even with a proven calorie deficit

And then suddenly it drops, but why?

The culprit is water retention. Your body can be burning excess bodyfat, but with stress hormones being elevated, its also retaining more water

As a result, this masks the fat loss

Until eventually the water "releases", and you have a day where your weight drops dramatically

4. Peeing a lot is the best sign you are losing bodyfat

Fun fact within a fun fact:

Most of the fat loss happens during SLEEP

Fat is metabolized into carbon dioxide, which your BREATHE OUT while sleeping

And as water, the waste product

So if you are losing fat, you should be urinating a lot, especially in the morning when you wake up

5. The first place you gain fat is the LAST place you lose it

This one is not weird so much as it headtrips people:

Wherever you gain fat FIRST, thats where you fat stores will be thickest

When you start losing fat, you lose it from secondary storage sites...

So if you gain weight in your stomach, and then legs, chest, arms, and face

Your face will get thinner, then arms, then chest, then legs, then finally your core,

The problem is that most people focus mentally on where they store the most fat...

For most people, thats stomach, and that can seemingly take forever to be burned off

There is a reason for that as well, which leads to the next fact...

6. STUBBORN FAT

So this is entirely real. Not all fat cells are created equal

Fat cells have receptor sites on them that respond to different hormones (adrenaline/noradrenaline
is the main fat burning hormone), these are divided into alpha and beta receptor sites

Your body will always try to store some bodyfat, and stubborn fat cells wont open up when adrenaline/noradrenaline tries to unlock them, rather they "shut off"

Basically they wont allow themselves to be burned

FYI-This does NOT mean all your fat stores are stubborn fat

Stubborn fat is most common in women, and is predominantly found on the lower body

Its less common in men.

And you wont realize you have it until you've lost a significant amount of bodyfat to begin with and are getting LEAN, not just "healthy"

But it if you wondering why is so difficult to get lean in the abs or lower body or lower back, stubborn fat storage might by partly responsible