[Scotsgal]

So I have been on my new healthy journey since this January and I have slowly lost 36.4lbs and I am feeling pretty great! I started at 323 and I am now down to 286.6, I have not been near 280 since 2010.

Sadly I have been quite big throughout my teens and this means that I don't know what my adult body resembles. I have always looked much lighter than I actually am which is why my weight was such a shock to most of my family and friends when I started my journey.

Yesterday I went onto my health app on my iphone just to make sure everything was in sync with my fitness pal app. One of the inputs could be your Lean Body Mass% so I wondered what that actually was. I read up online and It says that it is basically your body weight minus your body fat %. So I took my body fat % and my weight and entered the details....... My own body mass without fat is still technically overweight?? how is that even possible? is it just because I have a lot of muscle?

Does anyone know if when you lose weight, you also reduce your LBM? surely that's not what you want to be losing? But for me my LBM is 160.5 so if I had zero body fat I would still be technically for my height, overweight.

[MatchaPocky]

That shouldn't be right as it's very difficult to be overweight by lbm even for men. You would be hitting professional bodybuilder levels at that point. Online calculators and apps are awful at guessing lean body mass and bf%. Calipers, dexa scans, and water displacement tests have much better estimates. Someone at a gym or Doctor for can probably do a caliper test for free.

As you lose weight, you will lose some muscle. If you lift weights and eat high protein it will reduce the amount of muscle you lose, so more of your weight loss will be in the form of body fat. You can build lean body mass while losing weight but it can only be done so much if you're cutting calories because you need maintenance to a slight surplus when you lift to get better muscle gain (that's if you don't want to bulk/cut). But you can get results while cutting, but it will probably plateau at some level until you eat at maintenance or cycle calories.

Lowering your body fat percent is just as important as losing weight because being obese or overweight by body fat percent even if your bmi is normal (I.e. Skinny fat) can have the same increased risk as someone who is overweight or obese by bmi especially if your weight is around your stomach.

[Scotsgal]

Awesome, that was very informational. My gym used to measure my body fat % and when I bought new scales, they also measure body fat% and it was pretty equal to the results in the gym. I am 286 just now with 44.6% body fat, so doing the math calculation, I can see where they got 160lbs from. I do carry quite a bit of muscle, which I may not need as much as I lose weight, because I am not carrying as much. I do plan on lifting and doing strength training so that I can build and tone as I lose, But to be basically told (through 5 or 6 websites) that at 190lbs I may only have 20% body fat sounds a bit ridic does it not?

[shcirerf]

Apps are really bad at figuring that kind of thing out. In fact, so are insurance companies, and gyms, and so on.

The only real way is to get an expensive, medical test.

Several cases in point.

According to our health insurance company, my husband who is 6' tall and is 175, falls in the same obese category as his boss, who is 5'8", and weighs 300 pounds.

According to my son's employer, he is a state trooper, at 5'11", 180, he is also obese. You could wash you clothes on his abs, knock out elephants with his thighs, if you held them as a club, and at 35 he can still run a 5 second 40.

Me, our insurance, I am 58, 140 pounds, lift a lot, work for a veterinarian, a physical job, they told me I was fat. After I held their little gizmo.

Quit worrying about focusing on that stuff, focus on good health, embrace what you have, love it, and make the best you, you can be!

[Scotsgal]

thank you lol. I think U.S insurance companies go by BMI which is the same over here for the UK NHS, BMI is ridiculous, it doesn't count muscle, and this is where it would differentiate your family from the others.

My body fat should be like 60% for my weight, but its not because I'm strong and pretty fit. Just need to keep working on that and lose the fat%