How many more calories

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  • Scottgriesser
    Scottgriesser Posts: 172 Member
    edited May 2019
    lalalacroix wrote: »

    Wouldn't a person actually need a Dexa scan to get an accurate body fat percentage? My understanding is that scales that measure body fat can be very inaccurate.

    To be near 100% accurate, yes. To get a rough estimate, no. Which is more rough of an estimate, btw, a scale that you step on and spits out numbers, or a chart you look at on the internet that asks your height and weight?

    People seem to be locking onto the "all athletes" portion of what I said instead of the point behind it. Too much hyperbole. Point is why would you use a system as your basis that has such an inherent flaw like "increased muscle mass= higher bmi and high bmi= bad" Since when is increasing muscle mass bad? Maybe we just have different opinions on what health and fitness are.

    I admitted I spoke poorly earlier in the thread, and stated that BMI works just fine for many (majority of) people. "I" believe that it is a silly system to base your perception of your fitness off of a system where muscle is bad. Especially when there are other pretty simple options.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    edited May 2019
    lalalacroix wrote: »
    corinasue1143 wrote: »
    Just my 2 cents. I think if you are losing faster/more easily, part of it is because you are more active, apart from intentional exercise. Part of it may also be because your muscle to fat ratio has changed so much. It takes more calories to maintain muscle. Rejoice! Celebrate! And raise your daily calories a little.

    While I hope that I've added a bit of muscle, it probably isn't that much. And without looking it up, I think a pound of muscle burns a few more calories per day than a pound of fat. So the difference isn't much. Maybe one of our wise friends here can give the proper info on how much more muscle burns than fat.

    It's roughly 2cals for fat and 6cals for muscle per pound per day at rest.

    Just trading a few pounds of fat for muscle is insignificant (in calorie terms, not health terms) but I think @corinasue1143 made a good point about the impact of everyday activity and exercise. Certainly my own experience was that as I got lighter and fitter I simply moved more day to day (walked more, cycled more, used public transport and cars less) and my exercise intensity went up and up (c. 25% higher calorie burns for the same duration).

    An interesting social observation happened when I worked in an office with truly awful slow and unreliable elevators/lifts a relatively short distance from the main company offices. The lighter and fitter colleagues all simply used the 8 flights of stairs to get to and from our office floor and walked between sites - the heavier and less fit ones stood and waited for the lifts and took the Underground one stop between sites.
  • jaymijones
    jaymijones Posts: 171 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Scottgriesser wrote: »
    lalalacroix wrote: »

    Wouldn't a person actually need a Dexa scan to get an accurate body fat percentage? My understanding is that scales that measure body fat can be very inaccurate.

    To be near 100% accurate, yes. To get a rough estimate, no. Which is more rough of an estimate, btw, a scale that you step on and spits out numbers, or a chart you look at on the internet that asks your height and weight?

    People seem to be locking onto the "all athletes" portion of what I said instead of the point behind it. Too much hyperbole. Point is why would you use a system as your basis that has such an inherent flaw like "increased muscle mass= higher bmi and high bmi= bad" Since when is increasing muscle mass bad? Maybe we just have different opinions on what health and fitness are.

    I admitted I spoke poorly earlier in the thread, and stated that BMI works just fine for many (majority of) people. "I" believe that it is a silly system to base your perception of your fitness off of a system where muscle is bad. Especially when there are other pretty simple options.

    The BIS scale is a more rough estimate and more likely to be considerably off as a percentage.

    You may want to supplement BMI with waist to height as an easy second data point in terms of increased health risk.

    If both BMI and waist to hight say you're obese; but you feel it is all muscle, then I would seek more confirmation from various body fat measurements such as bia, caliper, body pod, dunk, DEXA, MRI in increased order of potential accuracy.

    Visual by trained observers probably spans across the last four.

    I haven’t always liked the BMI scale, but still refer to it because it’s an easy scale to refer back to. I do think it’s flawed. But unless you have easy affordable access to a Dexa scanner none of the other methods are perfect either. I’m not an athlete, but I am pretty active. I find all the numbers for all the different weight measurement methods fascinating, because as of right now all three of them put me in different categories.

    Right now my BMI is 26. Which puts me just over the line into “overweight,” my body fat % according to the average numbers my scale spits out, which I know are probably not accurate, puts me at around 25% body fat (sometimes it tells me 27%, yesterday it said 21%, but for the last month 25% is the most common reading). If I assume that number is accurate, then I’m right where I should be for my age and height. I’m a 5’7, 35 year old female and my measurements are 34, 29, 42. Which puts me on the higher end of “not overweight” according to that scale.

    My personal goals are another 10-15lbs to lose then recomp to get my body fat% down to the low 20’s, as I think I can maintain that.

    Despite all these different numbers, I no longer think of myself as “fat” but I also am not where I personally want to be, I’d like that 42, in my measurements to be in the 30’s and I’d like my thighs to jiggle less when I run. So I can ditch the compression leggings.

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