Caloric Intake & Body Fat

psuLemon

Weekend bump!

cgavin77

Happy Friday!

Age: 33 (until next week)
Female
Weight: 108
Height: 5'2
Body fat %: 22.3 (U.S. Navy Circumference Method)
Calories: -1410 (set by MFP for 'maintenence'. Ok with weight at the moment looking to lower my BF% mostly. I eat back about 1/2 my exercise cals-150-250ish- if I am hungry )
Goal bf%: 18-20%

Havent been able to lose inches OR lower my BF for a few months now.... Seems like Im at a stand still!
Not sure what the problem is.

jem728

bump

psuLemon

Happy Friday!

Age: 33 (until next week)
Female
Weight: 108
Height: 5'2
Body fat %: 22.3 (U.S. Navy Circumference Method)
Calories: -1410 (set by MFP for 'maintenence'. Ok with weight at the moment looking to lower my BF% mostly. I eat back about 1/2 my exercise cals-150-250ish- if I am hungry )
Goal bf%: 18-20%

Havent been able to lose inches OR lower my BF for a few months now.... Seems like Im at a stand still!
Not sure what the problem is.

Thanks for the info.

There could be several reasons why you can't lose any inches. If you want, hit me up and we can look at some things and maybe get that to change. I am in the same phase as you and have had some luck lately.

akjmart2002

Age: 34.9
Male
Weight: 204 as of this morning
Height: 71 inches
BF% 24.2 calced via Withings scale this morning
Calories: Today I need 3252 maintenance calories, Net 2502 for a 750 deficit.
Goal BF%: 12%
Goal Weight: <172

I take a body composition and weight measurement every morning via the Withings scale, then use the Katch-Mcardle equation to figure my maintenance calories for a given day. My workouts are almost always 500-1500 calories, 6 days per week, focusing on cardio and strength/endurance development. I calculate my caloric burn via a HRM, only recording when my HR is over 120 BPM.

I appear to be losing lean mass a little faster than BF, though this could just be measurement noise. 1 week ago my BF% was measured at 22.2% with an overall weight of 206.5. Things seem to fluxuate quite a bit. I suspect that my problems with consuming enough lean protein during the day as well as maintaining a steady daily net (vs an overall weekly net) is to blame.

I have so far plotted all of this data for 1 month exactly. My start weight was approximately 209-210, though I have doubts about that accuracy. So far my overall weight loss trend is roughly matching my predicted loss of 0.21 lbs per day.

I am interested to see what conclusions you might draw from this sampling of others' metrics. Cheers.

psuLemon

Age: 34.9
Male
Weight: 204 as of this morning
Height: 71 inches
BF% 24.2 calced via Withings scale this morning
Calories: Today I need 3252 maintenance calories, Net 2502 for a 750 deficit.
Goal BF%: 12%
Goal Weight: <172

I take a body composition and weight measurement every morning via the Withings scale, then use the Katch-Mcardle equation to figure my maintenance calories for a given day. My workouts are almost always 500-1500 calories, 6 days per week, focusing on cardio and strength/endurance development. I calculate my caloric burn via a HRM, only recording when my HR is over 120 BPM.

I appear to be losing lean mass a little faster than BF, though this could just be measurement noise. 1 week ago my BF% was measured at 22.2% with an overall weight of 206.5. Things seem to fluxuate quite a bit. I suspect that my problems with consuming enough lean protein during the day as well as maintaining a steady daily net (vs an overall weekly net) is to blame.

I have so far plotted all of this data for 1 month exactly. My start weight was approximately 209-210, though I have doubts about that accuracy. So far my overall weight loss trend is roughly matching my predicted loss of 0.21 lbs per day.

I am interested to see what conclusions you might draw from this sampling of others' metrics. Cheers.

One piece of advice, if you can, I woudl sugget picking up some body fat calipers (much more accurate). Any who, it really depends what your goal is. Are you concerned with weight lose or muscle mass? I have found it's very difficult to maintain lean body mass when you create larger deficits over 500 calories (just from personal experience). If you see yourself, in the long run, caring more about muscle definition and maintain/gaining lean muscle mass, it might be suggested to decrease your deficit to 500 calories. In fact, that is what I did and I have the same lean muscle mass now @ 11% body fat as I did when I started at 18% body fat.

Also, as noted before, when you use a scale to measure your body fat it can be off. My scale says I am 18% body fat but I know for a fact that I am 11%. So my calories would be short by 200 calories. If that same logic applies, you would have another 200 calorie deficit which would create almost a 1000 calorie deficit which would make it difficult to measure caloric needs.

Some thoughts to ponder.

Sublog

Body fat calipers aren't that accurate. Mine has me at 10~ body fat. Which I am closer to 13-14%.

Specific Caliper Problems

Despite giving values very close to that of hydrostatic weighing, calipers have their own set of problems on top of the body density issues I discussed above.

One of these is the assumption that skin thickness is the same among individuals and always constant. While the differences tend to be small (a millimeter here or there), when you’re measuring a lot of sites, and dealing with someone who is pretty lean, a one millimeter difference can throw off the estimation. Putting some values to it, a one millimeter difference over 10 sites turns out to be significant and can change the body fat estimate by about 1.5%. While this is fairly irrelevant for fatter individuals, it can become relevant when folks get lean.

The next issue I sort of dealt with in the previous article and that has to do with where body fat is carried and the number of sites measured. As I mentioned in Measuring Body Composition Part 2, equations which use fewer sites (one common one is pec, abdominal, and thigh for men) can drastically under-estimate true body fat percentage if someone carries a lot of fat in an unmeasured site (upper back is a common place for males).

Often individuals are losing body fat in unmeasured places but this won’t show up with a 3 site measurement and it will look like the diet isn’t working. As I noted in that article, taking more measurements can get around this but also requires a partner who knows what they are doing; as well, more sites gives them more chances to mess up. So it’s always a trade-off.

Additionally, visceral fat (the stuff found in and around the gut) isn’t even measured by calipers, although methods such as DEXA (or even the waist to hip ratio) can track changes there. By many methods, a loss of visceral fat will actually show up as a loss of lean body mass although it’s not. Someone losing visceral fat early in a diet may think that their diet really isn’t working when it actually is.

And of course, there are also the other issues endemic to caliper technique that I mentioned in Measuring Body Composition Part 2; you need a trained operator, they have to know how to pull a proper consistent skinfold, etc. One thing I didn’t mention is that large skinfolds (as are often seen in the female thigh) can be damn near impossible to measure accurately.

See this for more info

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/problems-with-measuring-body-composition.html

psuLemon

Bump

trelm249

2 week update

Age: 41
Weight: 261
Height: 5'7
Sex: M
Body Fat : 34.1%
Daily Calories: average 1850

Sidesteal

Current weight: 182
Goal weight: N/A -- letting the mirror tell me when to stop cutting.
Height: 5'11"
Bodyfat% In the neighborhood of 12 to 13%, avi current.

Nutritional intake:
Kcal: 2250 with some wiggle room. I will go as low as 2000 (seldom) and as high as about 2450, additional comments below.
Pro: 180g MIN
Fat: 65g MIN ave/week
Cho: wherever it ends up based on above minimums

Notes/comments: I used Katsch-McArdle and had to largely guess for activity since I lift with somewhat high volume but I also sit here and post/read forums which doesn't exactly burn calories!

I closely monitor progress and as needed I prepare to adjust my diet. I recently added in 1 day/week where I don't track intake. Not necessarily a cheat, I just don't track it for the mental break. I do not always hit my fat macro but I do monitor it over the course of a few days. If I'm under a few times in a row, I'll take a day where I hit around 100g to balance it out.

psuLemon

Thanks everyone.


Sublog, i understand the fluctuatiins in bodyfat. In fact i know people that fluctuate ~2% depending on the time of year. I will say, even with fluctation, its a more accurate measure for caloric needs as compared to weight and inches. For example, when i use weight to calculate my caloric needs it suggest 2200 calories while katch mcardle suggest 2600. Over the last 6 months i have determined i do need 2600 to maintain lbm and for weight loss.

joseph9

Updating my post from 9/6/11.

Then:

Age: 42
Sex: M
Body Fat : 23% (Probably closer to 21% -- taken first thing in the morning with a BEI scale).
Daily Calories: 1554

BF Goal (optional): 10-15%

Today:
Age:42
Sex:M
Body Fat: 18.1% (probably closer to 16-17% -- taken first thing in morning with BEI scale)
Daily Calories: 1865 net, 2105 gross (last 28 day average, net is after deducting cardio exercise calories, gross is total calories consumed)

LorinaLynn

On 07/06/11....

I'm game. I don't know my true body fat percentage, so I'll go by the U.S. Navy Circumference Method found here: http://www.scientificpsychic.com/fitness/diet.html

Age: 39
Weight: 132
Height: 5'5
Sex: F
Body Fat : 20.3%
Daily Calories: 1500 + most of my exercise calories Mon-Fri, but I don't log on weekends.

BF Goal (optional): I think I'm pretty much there! Maybe 18%, if I can lose it from my thighs without getting bony on top.

Update as of 10/21/11

Age: 39
Weight: 125.5
Height: 5'5
Sex: F
Body Fat : 18.5%
Daily Calories: Between 1800-2200 (on a brief vacation from logging at the moment)

At goal and maintaining now.

joseph9

Nicely done, Lorina!

psuLemon

Thanks everyone. I will record when i get home from travel. Please keep it coming.

psuLemon

20 More people needed for this. Almost done collecting.

Ssocrrbabe

Age: 29
Sex: F
Body Fat : 29.9%
Daily Calories: 1200 NET, Around 1700 gross
BF Goal (optional): 22%

Erica0718

Bump to do when off work :-)

psuLemon

Age: 29
Sex: F
Body Fat : 29.9%
Daily Calories: 1200 NET, Around 1700 gross
BF Goal (optional): 22%

Can I get your weight too?

steffiejoe

Here you go

Age: 42
Weight: 143.6
Height: 5'6 1/2
Sex: F
Body Fat : 29.8%
Daily Calories: 1500

BF Goal (optional): 18%-20%