How long does it take to drop how much body fat percentage?

loubidy
loubidy Posts: 440 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I had a BFP test on the 7th of February and it said I had 36% fat. I am now working with a trainer to lower that.

When your losing WEIGHT its relatively easy to set goals for example at a rate of 1lb a week I could aim to lose 11lb by May 24th.

However I literally have no idea what rate to expect with BFP, my question is not what to do to lower it as my trainer has designed my program for this, but what rate do I expect it to lower at?

My next test is probably going to be around the 29th of April - the end of my 12 week program. What number can I mentally be aiming for?

(If it helps I'm 20 years old, 5'3 and was 155lbs at the first test [07/02/14] but currently 150lbs [04/03/14] )

Replies

  • loubidy
    loubidy Posts: 440 Member
    [Shameless bump]
  • SKME2013
    SKME2013 Posts: 704 Member
    O.K., this is an unqualified answer as I assume it completely depends on how much weight you have to lose and so on.

    I was not really over- weight when I started my losing weight journey. 5'6 @65kg and now after 12 weeks 57kg.

    I started with a body fat of 29.8% and am now after twelve weeks down to 17.9%.

    Hope this helps a bit?
    Stef.
  • loubidy
    loubidy Posts: 440 Member
    Wowee!! That's amazing! What were you doing?
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    This is very difficult to answer because it's difficult to tell how much of a scale loss is fat and how much is water and/or other lean mass. Typically, you can count on a reduction of 2 Lbs of fat to be roughly 1% drop in BF...but a 2 Lb loss on the scale is likely not going to be all fat.

    Example, last Monday I weight in at 185 and on Saturday I weighed in at 181 and I didn't lose any BF at all...but according to that 2 lbs per point rule, I should have lost 2%. Reality is that I'm usually around 181/182 on average...I just happened to have a heavy day the Monday before with some really full up glycogen stores and also beer bloat.
  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
    It's really difficult to estimate, because you can't reliably predict what ratio of fat, water and LBM you're going to lose. There are things you can do, like lifting, to try to retain your LBM and lose more fat, percentage-wise, but you can't predict that with accuracy.

    If you are 150 lbs @ 36% body fat, that means you have 54 pounds of fat. If you lose two pounds next week, those two pounds aren't going to be 100% fat. In a perfect world, if you could guarantee that those two pounds were just fat, that would mean you weighed 148 pounds, 52 of which were fat, so you'd have a body fat percentage of 35.1%. In reality, if you lose two pounds next week, some of that will be fat and some will be not fat, so you won't quite get to 35.1%. The best thing for you to do it to keep losing, eat your protein and lift weights so you keep as much LBM as possible, and don't stress too much about exact body fat percentages.
  • SKME2013
    SKME2013 Posts: 704 Member
    Alternatively you can buy a scale that measures body fat or get your body fat checked in the gym. Whether the number is 100% accurate is perhaps not so important as long as you use the same scale each time and watch the trend.

    How did I do this?

    I went on the 5:2 fast diet, combined with 4:3, ADF and 16:8.

    For more info, I have explained this here:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1216840-5-2-fasting-diet-doubts

    Stef.

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