Muscle Mass and Body Fat, advice please

Soul_To_Squeeze
Soul_To_Squeeze Posts: 29 Member
edited March 2021 in Health and Weight Loss
My scale tells me my weight is staying around the same. Fluctuating a bit here and there. Body fat has increased by 2% and my muscle mass has decreased By 2% this last month. It was estimating at 29.5-30% a month or two ago but now it’s reading at 31.5% this past month. I know this is a very rough estimate from the scale but those are the overall trends I’m seeing. But unsure why?

I try to aim for 100g protein a day. Do body weight and dumbbell exercises 3-4 times a week (only recently got dumbbells) do cardio 5/6 days a week and try to eat in a slight deficit.

What should I be doing to keep muscle mass up and lower body fat?

I’m in a healthy weight range for my height 5”7 F (171cm) 68kg (148lb) have been trying to drop 2kg in the hopes of loosing a bit more lower belly fat. (But I’m stuck here and have been for a while)

Do I need to increase calories to maintenance? Or keep waiting a bit longer?


Thank you

Replies

  • FitAgainBy55
    FitAgainBy55 Posts: 179 Member
    Eating at a slight deficit requires a high level of precision. You probably need a couple of months of data and consistent routine to find your true TDEE. It can be done but it takes a lot of patience and ability to crunch all the numbers -- both calorie intake and weight trends. After 3 months of consistent data I've determined that my TDEE is several hundred calories over the estimate from my garmin tracker. It's possible your TDEE is actually a little under and thus you aren't eating at a slight deficit but actually at maintenance levels.

    If you want to lose a few pounds of fat, it might be easier to just temporarily go on a 1 lb per week plan for several weeks.

    If you want to gain muscle then you can then eat at maintenance and try to increase the intensity of your strength training. To really stress your body to the extent required to build muscle you need overload. This might be difficult to do with body weight and dumbbells. I guess it depends on how high your weights go up and your current strength level. Ideally you have sufficient weight so that you can do 5 to 10 reps where the last rep is really difficult to complete. That's not an absolute rule, just a general guideline. If you do 10 - 15 reps and it's fairly easy to complete you probably aren't putting enough stress on your muscles to build.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    I sounds like you are doing very well! Getting fit and maintaining weight is a winning combination.

    The "body fat" scales should be illegal-- they are a total scam. All it did for you was to make you question yourself!

    So long as it doesn't create too much stress, monitoring your bodyweight is truly helpful. Rather than go for other metrics, I think it's useful to monitor how you feel in general as well as your fitness capabilities. If you feel great, can lift a little more, and/or run/walk a little faster, then you are making progress!
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,982 Member
    To interate, you could go on the scale, get off drink 32 oz of water, go back on 30 minutes later and then have a higher muscle mass reading and lower body fat % reading. Because having more water in the body conducts electrical impulses faster, the bioimpedence reacts to "resistance" of the flow of electricity to gather info. I wouldn't put too much faith in the accuracy of the readings.

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  • Soul_To_Squeeze
    Soul_To_Squeeze Posts: 29 Member

    Thanks all. I absolutely agree about not paying too much attention to the body fat readings. Having said that, I should have said I don’t feel stronger yet, and think I have slightly more belly fat. My waist measurement is about the same but around my lower belly is about 1 cm up. (More when bloated)

    In my strength workouts I’m not sure how much I’m improving, it’s hard to measure. Been working on push ups for a couple of months now and still can’t push up fully for example. During strength workouts using dumbbells 5kg on each for walking lunges and overhead presses etc is fine. But if I up that to 8.5kg and do the same it’s a struggle and my form fails quickly. Unfortunately I can’t get them in between that weight because of how the dumbbells are. For leg based workouts I use about 8.5kg and that feels about right currently.

    Having my goal set to sedentary gives me around 1550 cals and I really struggle to stay within that. (Even with logging exercise and eating them all.) So I’ve been aiming for around 1650 which has been better but haven’t seen my weight decrease yet. (I’ve gone over that as well recently) I’ve got rate of loss set to really low. 0.2kg a week because I just can’t face going any lower with calories

    @FitAgainBy55

    1lb (0.4kg) per a week, would give me a goal of 1200 and I know I absolutely couldn’t stick to it.

    My estimated TDEE is around 1800-2400 depending on activity. And yeah, It is hard to know how accurate that is.

    I wouldn’t mind building muscle but I really don’t want to increase belly fat. But more importantly I don’t want to lose the muscle that I currently have which I suspect I might be.

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Those bio-impedance scales are only measuring resistance to the current in the body...they can't actually tell the difference from muscle mass from fat mass from water, etc. They're basically worthless. Scales are really good and accurately telling you the effect gravity is having on your body...but that's about it.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Soul_To_Squeeze wrote: »
    I wouldn’t mind building muscle but I really don’t want to increase belly fat. But more importantly I don’t want to lose the muscle that I currently have which I suspect I might be.

    You said your weight is roughly stable, you are exercising and eating a reasonable amount of protein.
    It's really not likely you are losing muscle in that situation. Muscle atrophy comes from not using your muscles and/or an inappropriate calorie deficit. Neither of which apply to you.
    As you are maintaining weight you also are not getting fatter - bloating is not fat!

    Your scales are misleading you and messing with your head.
  • FitAgainBy55
    FitAgainBy55 Posts: 179 Member
    Soul_To_Squeeze wrote: »

    1lb (0.4kg) per a week, would give me a goal of 1200 and I know I absolutely couldn’t stick to it.

    My estimated TDEE is around 1800-2400 depending on activity. And yeah, It is hard to know how accurate that is.

    I wouldn’t mind building muscle but I really don’t want to increase belly fat. But more importantly I don’t want to lose the muscle that I currently have which I suspect I might be.

    If your TDEE is between 1800 and 2400 (let's say average 2100 -- then you could eat 1600 calories per day to lose 1 lb. Anyway, it's up to you -- whatever you are eating now seems to be close to maintenance so you can adjust from there however you feel comfortable.



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