Code Chef problem COOKMACH

Firstly, I got the solution for this question in CodeChef, but I noticed one thing which still confuses me. This was the code which was accepted as correct.

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int main(){
    int testCases,count=0;
    cin>>testCases;
    unsigned long int a,b;
    while(testCases--){
            count=0;        
            cin>>a>>b;
            while(a&(a-1)){ 
                    a>>=1;
                    count++;
            }
            while(a>b){
                    a>>=1;
                    count++;
            }
            while(a != b){
                    a<<=1;
                    count++;
            }       

            cout<<count<<"\n";
    }
   return 0;
}

And this is the solution which was getting TLE:

 #include<iostream>
 using namespace std;
 int main(){
    int testCases,count=0;
    cin>>testCases;
    unsigned long int a,b;
    while(testCases--){
            count=0;        
            cin>>a>>b;
            while(a&(a-1) != 0 || a>b){     
                    a>>=1;
                    count++;
            }
            while(a != b){
                    a<<=1;
                    count++;
            }       

            cout<<count<<"\n";
    }
 return 0;
}

Both the solutions are almost same. What I have just modified in the first is that I have put a separate while loop

1. for checking if a is the power of 2
2. for making value of a less than b

Now what I understood was that keeping separate while loop saves me time by NOT having to do two conditions check for each iteration.

Am I correct with this understanding, or I am missing something. If I am correct, is it good practice (as per optimization) to write separate loops.

I would like to know how I can write this code in a better way or what other good practice I can follow.