I went to have my monthly fitness assessment done today, at my gym. It was just my 2nd one, my last one was May 8th, so exactly a month.

I lost 13.8 pounds (), but my body fat was only down 1/2% (from 33.8% to 33.2%). This seems impossible to me.

Now, it was a different guy that did the fitness assessment, so my theory is that the 1st measurement wasn't exactly accurate. It's a 7 point caliper test, and the 1st guy took several of my measurements through my clothes, I felt like maybe he didn't get a hold of all the fat he could've.

At 203.6 lbs on May 8th I find it hard to believe my body fat was *only* 33.8%, I was expecting around 40% give or take a percent or 2. In fact, I was utterly shocked when he told me what it was.

I weight train 3 to 4 times a week. In fact, the last 2 weeks that's all I've been doing, because of my ankle sprain cardio has been sidelined. I eat 120 to 140 grams of protein per day, and ALWAYS eat or drink protein after weight training workouts.

I've been trying not to dwell on it, and focus on that improvements I DID make, but it is bothering the crap out of me that I could be losing that much muscle with all that I'm doing.

Truth please!!!

This sounds deeply dodgy to me. I wouldn't trust the results of either test at this point. Schedule another one for 6 weeks and ask to see the same guy as last time (though not the guy who measured through your clothes!!!)

They do it once a month, and I guess the original guy doesn't do it anymore so it supposedly will be the same guy from now on.

So just ignore it all together? I can handle that. Just wanted to know if I am in denial or if it sounds rather off.

He used calipers THROUGH your clothes???

Most people have no idea how to use calipers and that assumes they have good calipers to begin with.

The truth is 14lbs of lost weight in a month is amazingly great work on your part and you shouldn't get hung up at all on the body fat percentage which in both cases is probably wrong.

As to if you lost muscle, or not. Are your lifts going down? If so then you might be losing muscle. If your strength is the same or increasing you haven't lost any muscle.

My strength definitely has improved. I can either do more reps or more weight every single time, even if it's just one extra rep I always improve. Definitely NOT going down.

And thank you!

Ya I thought through the clothes was really weird too. Even this time he did one of the measurements through my clothes. Whatever. Dumb gym guys.


Even though I know the hand held body fat thingie is pretty darn inaccurate, I have one and I have been using it since a few weeks after I started losing. I was at (according the the thingie) 41.8% at 212 pounds, and now at 189.8 am at 36.8%. While I know it has a margin of error of +/- like 8% or something like that, I actually think that it's more accurate than what they did. I find it hard to believe I'm 33% body fat! I have a LOT of fat left to lose.

If I had lost 13+ pounds in a month I wouldn't be quibbling about the details. Congratulations!

F.

Thank you. I KNOW! I'm being a jerk aren't I? Ug. I guess it's because the trainer kind of made me feel bad about it, insinuating that I wasn't doing enough weight training wise. I realize fully that he/the gym have a financial stake in me training more (I already meet with a trainer twice a month). And I know that's what he was angling for, and in fact said I needed to train more with my trainer, even though I'm following her plan to a T between meetings.

I WAS super excited about the pounds lost, and I let that little punk with his stupid tongue piercing make me feel inadequate because my body fat % barely went down.

In one of my classes in university, we got to test out the different ways of measuring body fat % (dexa, impedance, and calipers). There was a HUGE range in accuracy with the calipers (I underestimated by almost 10% on the girl I was measuring!), and it also varied by the number of sites you used to measure, which makes sense because people carry fat differently. Unless you're really experienced and awesome with the calipers, the hand-held impedance device is probably more accurate, and definitely is more accurate than readings by two different people!

Really, calipers are only useful when used by the SAME person, and then only to see changes over time rather than to assess absolute values. Too bad the guy at the gym didn't understand as well as you did how all over the place it can be, since you're obviously making awesomely substantial changes to your fitness and body composition! Telling you to train harder was a very unprofessional assumption on his part - hope you don't have to deal with that again.

I agree that the through the clothes thing is so stupid I can hardly even grasp it. Why even bother? I would trust my body fat scale over that! I would have an underwater weighing done, and the next time the creep inaccurately measures you, tell him your last real result. That should floor him. And you are definitely not losing that much muscle per month unless you are in outer space. Just keep lifting and tell these people to shut up. You obviously know what you are doing.