Hi Vickstar. I can understand your confusion. Firstly BMI is a method of classifying where you sit in terms of your weight in comparison to height. A BMI of 24.5 for you is the upper end of what is considered a healthy weight for someone of your height. It is important to understand that BMI measurements are a vague means of correlating body fat levels to someone's height. It doesn't take into account the amount of lean tissue you have. A thickset bodybuilder who is of the same height as you, little body fat and big muscles would also be classified as obese. So, BMI is useful in the broadest sense but unfortunately in medical circles it is still widely used as the be all and end all of classifying whether someone is overweight or not. So that's one aspect of this.
Body fat measurements follow another scale and in women, roughly anything above 31% is considered obese. Most commercial body fat measuring machines are fairly inaccurate and the readings can sometimes vary depending on the time of day, your level of hydration and in women, sometimes the time of month. They are however useful in giving you an idea of movement in your weight loss. By that I mean, regardless of whether the reading is a true indicator of your actual body fat levels, a movement up or down shows whether you are losing or gaining body fat.
Next point- converting fat to muscle. Unfortunately this doesn't happen. Fat and muscle tissue have nothing in common. You build muscle through exercise (some of which are better at doing this than others) and you lose body fat by using it up as energy. One doesn't convert to the other in either direction (muscle doesn't turn into fat if you stop exercising and fat doesn't turn into muscle if you start exercising).
Next Point - If fat levels are in a normal range, what would weight loss be? That's almost impossible to answer. As you lose body fat, you will lose weight and as you lose weight, the body fat percentage will also change alongside so you couldn't give a definite answer. It's better to look at the body fat levels (and fat loss) rather than weight loss because at a certain point, weight becomes less useful as a measure of fat loss. You may gain weight from increasing healthy lean tissue from exercise but you will still have lost body fat and still look slimmer.
Normal body fat level for women is around 25-31% so we will go with 27 as a middle ground. At 66kg and 38.4% body fat, 25.3kg of your body is body fat. (38.4% of 66). To get to 27% body fat you would have to lose 11% body fat. I think that's a better way to measure things.
It sounds to me like you have reached a plateau (your body is now so efficient at performing the exercises that you do that you don't need to burn as much energy doing it) or that your energy balance is now stable (the amount you take in is about the same as you expend). There are other issues that may be involved (hormonal issues etc).
There are several simple things that you can do:
1. Look at energy balance and consider eating less
2. Look at the types of food you're eating. It may be that your carbohydrate intake is too high
3. Increase the intensity of your exercise.
I know that's a lot to digest. I hope I've explained it well in the space that I have to respond in.
Last edited by ZCPT; 09-18-2017 at 02:51 PM.
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