Lose or gain what?

When looking at your weekly results, it is not always easy to really understand what is happening within your body. Take out your calculator and a piece of paper, it is going to be easier for you to calculate your own values.

With an advanced scale, that many on the team have, which give you fat% and muscle %, it becomes easier to understand what is shifting in your body, as you are losing or gaining weight.

An ideal BMI (body mass index) for a women is between 18,5 and 25, according to bone structure and other factors. It is simply calculated: your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared.

However, a more precise the weight movement is whether you are loosing fat or you are building muscle. You may have heard that for the same volume, fat is lighter in weight than lean muscle. This is why, certain scales give you a good indication of your % of body fat and your % of lean muscle mass. However, your scale is giving you a percentage, which you should convert into actual kilos or pounds to see where you really stand. In terms of fat%, the manufacturers of the scale are giving between 21 and 35.9% of fat (depending on the age) for a women is normal. For a men, normal levels are between 8 and 24.9% according to age.

Let me give you an example. Last week, my weight was 131.4 lbs with 27.2 % of fat and 31.9% of lean muscle. I need to convert those to actual weight values. So last week, I had 35.75lbs of fat (lbs of fat = total weight *fat %) and 41.92 lbs of muscle. This week, although my weight is 132.8 lbs, my body fat went down to 25.7% and muscle mass to 32.9%. In absolute values it means that this week, I have 34.13 lbs of fat and 43.69 lbs of muscle.

The result of this analysis is that although my weight went up by a little over a pound, I actually lost 1.6 pounds of fat and created 1.77 pounds of lean muscle mass, therefore my basic metabolic rate increased by 14 calories. This means that this extra pound of muscle is burning for me everyday 14 more calories, not doing anything. I hope this makes sense for you. My engineer partner said it cannot be, it does not add up. There are other factors, in our body we have water, foods in the process of being digested, urine, bones and many other types of tissues, and there is movement in all of these aspects, therefore, not all fat is automatically converted into muscle and vice-versa.

I suggest that if you have such a scale, you start recording the actual values and calculate the weight of fat and muscle in your body every week so you know where you are, and you can see a progression.

Go! )
MM