[Retric]

I don't care about loosing muscle while loosing weight. Weigh 50 lb less and you don't need nearly as much muscle to do the same things. The simple truth is diets are temporary your body will adapt to any healthy steady state you provide it and eventually you end up in the same place.

[fingerprinter]

Depends on your goals. Sure, not being a fatass first is a great goal. I'm just saying, like most things in life, there are optimal ways and sub-optimal ways to go about it. Losing muscle (which is VERY hard to put on, just FYI) and fat at the same time is very sub-optimal.

And also, for those that are extremely obese?

And what if your goal was to actually lose 50 pounds of fat, but losing muscle+fat you can't achieve your goal for 1+ year, but just targeting fat reduces that to 6-8 months. That gain in time is huge.

And, lastly, chances are that if you say "I don't care about losing muscle as well", you will if you actually achieve your goal of being a certain weight b/c you won't look like you thought (or perform as well in x activity as you would have thought). Muscle is a magical thing.