Thats all true no matter your body size.

But youcanlose weight if you really want to.

Maybe a health professional has recommended that you do, or maybe you have your own reasons.

Your mental health is more important than the size of your body.

Your body contains different tissues.

Fat is one; muscle is another.

Then you have your bones and organs, and throughout all these tissues you have water.

People in the fitness world like to talk about body fat percentage.

The lower it is, the less fat you have on your body.

You cant do anything useful with those numbers.

Its a useful tool, but check that you arent only chasing the number on the scale.

So lets go over the basics of changing your weight.

If you eat enough protein to support your training, youll get slightly bigger muscles.

Its not easy to gain much muscle mass, at least once youre past your beginner stage.

If yourenotresistance training, weight gained is usually mostly fat.

The trouble is that muscle often gets lost along with it.

So when you lose weight, youll want to see to it you lose as little muscle as possible.

To accomplish that, do some resistance training and check that youeat enough proteinto support it.

The other important factor is that youll retain the most muscle when you lose weight slowly.

Can you lose fat without losing weight?

Yes, with some caveats.

The catch is that building muscle and losing fat are asymmetric processes.

Recomp happens to a lot of us (especially people who are new to exercising) by accident.

If you dont have specific weight goals, you could go ahead and just let this happen.

So lets talk about how you lose weight (with a goal of losing fat).

The end result is the same: You eat less food.

(You dont have tocountcalories to be eating less.)

Eat slightly less than that amount.

See if your weight changes.

(We recommend an app calledCronometerfor tracking.)

The average number of calories that you ate per day during that time can be considered your weight-maintenance calories.

But youre in a rush.

We all are, for some reason.

Look up a TDEE calculator (notBMR or RMR) likethis one.

No calculator is going to be totally accurate, but this one seems to work pretty well.

(It also comes highly recommended by several fitness forums.

This doesnt guarantee accuracy, but remember, were looking for a very rough starting estimate.)

From there, subtract a few.

If youre a bigger person with more to lose, youd be on the higher end.

Even so, I would go more conservative, especially at first.

Subtracting 500 calories from your daily intake will lose you about a pound a week, in theory.

A deficit of 250 calories will be more like half a pound a week.

Keep tabs on whether youre losing weight at the rate you expect.

After a while, the weight loss will slow down, and thats normal.

Heres the thing: Its overrated.

Cardio is important for your health for many reasons.

Second,calorie counts on gym equipmentandfrom activity trackersare rarely anywhere close to accurate.

Youre just a sack of meat, standing in front of a bathroom scale.

You dont need to get into the details.

To be clear, exercisedoesburn calories, even if we can never be sure exactly how many.

(Thats, like, a single Chipotle burrito.)

This is, of course, bullshit.

If youre eating to lose weight, you are dieting.

You might do thisat the same time asadopting healthier habits likeeating more vegetablesand getting more exercise.

You cant lose weight forever, and you wouldnt want to.

Take a break to eat at maintenance.

Then decide if you still want to lose weight, or if youre done.

This story was originally published in October 2021 and was updated on January 5, 2022.