28.8 to 17% body fat

clarinets21

I’m 6 feet tall and at 227 pounds. I want to drop the 11.8% of the body fat. How long will that take me if I eat healthy and exercise regularly? I’m a male at 44 years old.

sgt1372

Too many varisbles involved to edtimate w/any accuracy how long that might take.

What you need to decide 1st is how much weight you want to lose or, in other words, what your goal wt at 17% BF will be.

If you indeed have 28.8% BF at 227, that equates to sbout 65# BF and 162# bone, muscle snd other tissue.

If your goal wt is 177# at 17% BF, wc would be a 50# wt loss, that would equate to 30# BF and 147# bone, muscle and othe tissue or a loss of 35# BF and 15# muscle (since the wt of bone, ligaments, tendons and other bofily tissue is relatively constant).

In order to achieve this, you would have to eat at a caloric deficit to lose the wt/fat and do some lifting and other exercise to build/preserve as much muscle in the process, given the understanding that it is almost inevirsble that you will lose some muscle mass as you lose wt.

How quckly you can achieve this depends on how much of a caloric deficit you choose, how disciplined you are in eating in accordance with that plan and how effective your lifting/exercise progrsm is in building/maintaining muscle and how well your dietsry plan suits that need and on how disciplined you are in carrying out your exercise and dietary program.

Only you can answer these questions but as a basis of comparison, it took me about 6 months to lose 40# from 200 to 160 and to drop my BF from around 25 to 15%, based on a reduction of caloric intake from 2000 to 1500 cal/day on a high protein diet while engaged in a progressive lifting program every other day but doing very little cardio in the procesd.

I have been maintaining my wt at or below 160 for the past 5 yrs and my BF, as meadured by DEXA and hydro, has been as low as 8% but has mostly been around 12%.OBTW, I'm 70 now and was 65 when I last started this process.

Of course, your experience will almost certainly vary

Good luck!

AnnPT77

To add a minor comment to sgt1372's excellent answer: There's a potential tradeoff between keeping/adding muscle and losing fat. The faster you lose fat, the harder it is to keep/build muscle mass, even with excellent nutrition and a good progressive program.

I'm not trying to be a downer, but I think there are some serious implications to consider: Someone who's morbidly obese may want to lose fat fast for health reasons, even at the risk of some muscle. Someone with excess pounds but not at a serious health risk, and with strength/muscularity goals, might want to lose fat slowly, but make more progress with lifting along the way. Another person at that not-extreme high weight with mostly appearance goals might go either way, in consideration of their current level of muscularity vs. fat.

FWIW, my experience doesn't translate well to you: I lost 50+ pounds at age 59-60 in just less than a year, and I don't believe I lost any large amount of mass along the way, but while I was active in challenging ways (including some lifting), I wasn't focused on muscle mass gain, more on retention. Also, probably more importantly, I'm female. 😉

age_is_just_a_number

This is a journey, not a destination. This is a lifestyle, not a diet.
Having a long term goal is great. I recommend breaking that big goal into smaller goals along the way.
Calories in vs calories out for weight loss. Target 1-2 pounds of weight loss per week.
Resistance training for muscle gain.

Consider starting with:
- make a small sustainable change eg., if you like to drink pop, then switch that out for water or sparkling water with lemon or lime in it.
- Once you’ve adjusted to that change then make another small sustainable change eg., if you like to eat rice, switch that out for brown rice
- Track what you eat
- Monitor your macros
- Monitor your metrics (weight and measurements)
- Then adjust as needed
- As you lose weight, your body is going to change, not only in appearance, but also in how it reacts to different foods.