230 lbs 27.8% BF and now 223.6lbs with 26.1%? WHAT

howeclectic wrote: »

When losing weight your body will want to look at lean mass as an energy source.

1) lean mass can fuel your body
2) your lean mass is economically more expensive than fat

Your body thinks theres a food shortage and needs to prepare for possible famine (as has been the human experience for 200,000 years). You have to give your body a reason to not drop lean mass since lean mass costs more calories daily than fat pound for pound. Tell your body you're a hunter who needs to chase down their prey to eat. How do you do that? High intensity exercise followed by food eating back the calories lost exercising. I am over simplifying things a bit... but its a lot easier to make sense of things if you completely ignore the last 200-300 years and focus on the logic your body has operated under for the last 200k years.

mathjulz wrote: »

The scale measurements of body fat aren't very reliable ... in that they may not even show a proper trend. So don't read too much into it.

Additionally, just 2 two weeks is really too soon to be seeing a real trend in body composition change. There does tend to be a "whoosh" at the beginning, whether water or something else. (Again, don't put too much credit into how much water the scale says you have).

To avoid being "skinny fat," stick with the lifting. I just started 5/3/1 and I love it! Also make sure you get plenty of protein. That will help you maintain your muscle mass as much as possible (though you will still lose some muscle).

Stick with it, you got this!

stevencloser wrote: »

27.8% of 230 is 64, 26.1% of 223.6 is 58. You lost 6 pounds. Aside from the inaccuracy of scales and whatnot, where's the problem?

howeclectic wrote: »

viren19890 wrote: »

If I'm understanding you correctly -it means that body would rather burn fat than muscle -if we give it a reason to do so and the reason could be keeping protein high and keep lifting heavy weight -so muslce mass stays ?

Well, your body will always want to go after the lean mass during a sustained calorie deficit. But lifting heavy weights will tell the body you don't have much lean mass to spare (you need it). You will still probably lose *some* lean mass. Just less if you lift.

howeclectic wrote: »

Lean mass

viren19890 wrote: »

Ok so I understood it wrong then. Anyone ever figure out-why the body doesn't go after fat? I mean wasn't that suppose to be "stored" for the time of need? and deficit would be considered that time lol

Lean mass expends 7-10 calories per pound per day. Fat mass expends 2-3 calories per pound.

Imagine you had a company and the economy was tanking. Now imagine all of your employees were equally productive. Who do you layoff ? The most expensive employees obviously (your muscle mass). Now... say your more expensive employees were more productive (you use your muscles to get food). Now the equation is less certain... If you don't use your lean mass... your body assumes you don't need it and its too expensive to keep around in a sustained famine. The extra days this can buy you until your next meal can mean life or death.

kimny72 wrote: »

OP, whenever you lose weight, you will lose some fat and some muscle. If you weight train and eat enough protein, you can minimize the muscle loss.

Having said that, weight loss isn't linear. The % of fat, muscle, and water gain or loss will be different day to day and week to week based on hundreds of variables, most of which you can't control or see. Your digestive system, stress, energy-level, environmental humidity, minor nutritional differences in the individual foods you eat, your immune system, etc all can create minor, imperceptible changes in the way your body processes your food and fuels your exercise.

You want to look at trends over the long term, like month to month and not stress the small stuff. All the numbers we work with are estimates, hopefully really good estimates, so the long term trend will be the important thing. Good luck!