[Sheila53]

I'm just curious as to how long it takes to reduce your bodyfat percentage. When I started with a trainer, she took my bodyfat measurements (calipers), and in the 11 months I've been working with her, my bodyfat has only gone down about 2%. How do I get that number to move faster? What are others experience with bodyfat reduction? I guess I'm not totally clear on how one actually reduces bodyfat. If you have weight to lose, is it a combination of weight loss plus muscle building? Once you get to your weight loss goal what happens then? At 29%, my bodyfat is in the healthy range for my age, but I'd like to get it down to 25% or below.

Thanks!

[Meg]

Hi Sheila! As you probably already know, your BF% tells you what your body composition is - how much is fat and how much is lean body mass (LBM). LBM is everything in your body that ISN'T fat, so it's hair, skin, bone, water, and muscle. Muscle is the biggie, of course, and what we want to increase while we decrease fat.

So if your BF is 29% at 175 pounds, it means that right now you have 50.75 pounds of fat on your body and 124.25 pounds of LBM. I don't know what your weight was when you were 31%, but you can calculate your fat pounds by multiplying your then weight by .31 and then figuring LBM by subtracting the pounds of fat from your total weight. That's the way anyone can figure out what they're losing - is it pounds of fat or pounds of muscle?

Have you lost much scale weight over the past year? Have you figured out whether you lost fat or muscle or both?

The way to make your BF% go down is to lose fat while maintaining or increasing your LBM. That changes the ratio of fat to LBM in your body. Let's say your weight stays the same - 175 - but you lose five pounds of fat and add five pounds of muscle. No change on the scale, but your BF% has dropped to 26% (175 x .26 = 129.5# LBM). Or you lose ten pounds of fat and simply maintain your LBM. You now weigh 165 and your BF% is approximately 25% (165 x .25 = 123.75# LBM).

I don't know of any guidelines about how long it takes to drop a % of body fat - I'm thinking that's really individualized, depending on how much you weigh and what your BF currently is. Try to just focus on losing fat through cardio and diet while you maintain your current LBM with weightlifting - it's in a good place already. If you can add a few pounds of muscle, that's even better.

I hope this kind of makes sense - I'm not the most mathematical person in the world and don't a great job explaining the math behind the whole BF concept. Feel free to ask me to clarify!!

As to my experiences, I reached my goal of 135 at about 16% bodyfat. Over the next six months, I dropped to 12.5% but only lost 2.5 more pounds of scale weight (my all-time low is 132.5). Your body can continue to make huge changes even if the scale stays the same, which is why the scale isn't a very good gauge of progress, especially as we get close to goal! For me, 12.5% really wasn't sustainable, so I try to stay somewhere in the upper teens. But I haven't had my BF% checked since I had shoulder surgery in January and definitely don't want to because I know I've lost tons of muscle during my enforced lay-off from lifting!!

[leanbodyfitness]

one thing to consider when having your body fat % checked is keeping to the same time of day under the same circumstances each time. for example, if the first time you got it checked it was in the morning before you ate or drank anything, and then the second time it was later in the day after you had some food in your body, drank liquids, etcs, then you're not testing it under the same conditions and more than likely will not give you an accurate comparison from the first time you had it checked.

Michael Navin, CSCS

[northernbelle]

A piece of trivia: in the Body For Life challenge, the average % lost is 3%. That's from all the competitors who send in their packages.

Again, each person is different. Some are prone to put on muscle and lose fat quickly. Some are not. I fall into the latter category. So I have learned patience. It also doesn't help that I take breaks and overeat the wrong foods at times. The trick is to keep at it.