Your body won't take your muscles away instead of your fat

I’m currently on a weight loss journey—I’ll tell more about that in a future post. But I just heard a statement once again that confused me for a long time: When you’re losing weight, you need to be careful that your body doesn’t burn your muscles instead of your fat. This is very misleading and oversimplified. It can sound as though you’ll stay fat while your body consumes only your muscles. It sounds daunting and makes it seem more difficult. In reality, your body does not choose exclusively between burning fat and losing muscle. Weight loss usually consists of body fat together with some fat-free mass (water, glycogen, muscle, etc). A frequently cited rule of thumb is that roughly 75% of weight loss is fat and 25% is this other fat-free mass. This is only a very rough average because the actual proportions vary between people and diets. Another common rule says that saving 7,700 calories means losing roughly 1 kg of body fat. In reality, if you have a deficit of 1,100 calories per…