Todd_A’s BodyBlog

As much as I faught it, I finally broke down and decided to buy one of these fancy scales with the bodyfat measuring tool built in. You have seen them around and have heard everyone complain about how inacurate they are or how they give off the wall readings or similar. Some like them, some do not.

The reason I decided to go ahead and buy one of these was that it is difficult to and troublesome to wake up on my weigh-in days and get my weight and all my calliper measurements in a timely fashion.  My girlfriend may or may not be there when I am ready to get this done and I do have to have help. Also, she was concerned that she was possibly not using the calipers the exact same way in the exact same position and grabbing the same place and same amount of skin each time.

I think that the Calipers may be more acurate to actual bodyfat, but without consistency you are left confused sometimes whenyou appear to have made progress but the caliper tells you differently. I like that the scales are going to do their process the exact same way every time, and I follow the same ritual every time I use them, so, if for no other reason than consistency, I like the scales. Another plus is ease of use. You basically just step on and wait. You do not need a second person to help with readings, and it is easy to take the readings 3 or 4 times in a row to make sure you are getting the same result to confirm.

So far I have seen very close bodyfat % numbers from the scales that have not varied more than I feel they should form day to day. They are consistent with what I would expect from my diet on the previous two days, so I feel that the scales are more than acurate enough to gague progress and watch for movement in the wrong direction.

In the 2 weeks since I have purchased mine, I have grown to like it more than I thought I might.  I wake up in the morning and I use the bathroom, then I get on the scales and note the results. I step off and I repeat and note the results. If I have a slightly different reading, I go again and sometimes a 4th time to assure myself that I have the most acurate reading, then I record the reading in a spreadsheet I have.

I have been using the scales every morning.  I know, I know… They say do not do this every day because of fluctuations in your weight and bodyfat day to day, but I wanted to observe these fluctuations myself so I can look for trends in the future. Plus with the diet I am on now, I am going through a weekly cycle so I should be able to start comparing my tuesday readings with previous tuesday readings or what ever day I want to compare, and see if I can see a pattern there. It may help me tweak some thigns in my diet or exercise programs. Also, if you have these fluctions day to day adn you only take readings once a week, how do you know you are not taking readings on the one day a week that you are the highest bodyfat? Daily readings will tell you what your lowest is and your highest. Just don’t get discouraged on the readings if they seem high. They may fall the following morning.

My caliper method was showing me to be about 18.5% bodyfat and the scales were showing me to be about 20.5%, so there is definately a differnece, but I am looking for consistent readings and trends, not acuracy so much.  I want to know I am loosing bodyfat, and not loosing too much muscle when cutting, and gaining muscle without too much bodyfat when bulking. I will still take caliper measurements to find what I consider to be a more acurate actual bodyfat measurement, but in my quest to cut and future quest to bulk, I will just rely on the scales to guide me along.

Bottom line is that if you get one of these, just realize they are not perfectly acurate, so just use them to help watch your progress and to keep you informed as to the direction you are going.

Well, it is now 2008 and another year has gone by, so I thought I would take a look at the differences from January 2007 to today and see if I have been working hard enough or what. I am writing this as I am looking through all the info I have, so here goes…

In January of 2007 I weighed in at 195 pounds and I am not sure on the bodyfat % because I was not even taking those at that point. Now I weigh 182.5 and I am at 17.63% bodyfat. From that it appears that I have only lost 12.5 pounds over  a year, however with further research into my records I find this:

On July 7th I began recording bodyfat % numbers along with my weight and I had lost down to 176.6 pounds and was at 20.09% bodyfat. That is 18.4 pounds lost at that point. That comes to 141 of lean mass and about 35 pounds of fat on me at that point.

September 15th I had lost to my lowest weightof 169.7 pounds and I was at 14.73% bodyfat. This translates to 144.7 pounds of lean mass and 25 pounds of fat. I had lost 10 pounds of fat in 2 months and gained 3.7 pounds of lean mass! Sweet!

From there I went to bulking because I realized I was going to be extremely light if I got downt to 10% bodyfat with only 144 pounds of lean mass.

Now I am up to 182.5 pounds and 17.63% bodyfat which translates to 150.33 pounds of lean mass and I am still carrying around 32.17 pounds of fat. So I have gained 7 pounds of fat in this last bulking attempt. I have also gained another 6 pounds of lean mass with that. I was expecting to gain some fat on the bulk, but I had hoped it would be about half the amount of the mass gains. 

 I would venture a guess at my begining bodyfat to be around 30 % or so based on everything I can calculate. That would put me at about 136 pounds of lean mass and that is pretty conservative because I was lifting consistently between January and July. This would mean I was carrying 58.5 pounds of fat or more last January. So, over the last year I appear to have lost approx. 26.3 pounds of fat conservatively, and gained right at 14 pounds of lean mass.  That averages to just over 1/4 pound of lean mass gained per week over the year, and right at 1/2 a pound a week of fat loss.

This means I had a 44.9% loss in bodyfat and 9.3% gain in mass, so if I did exactly the same this year I would be at 17.72 pounds of bodyfat and 164 pounds of lean mass which would put me at 181.72 pounds and 9.75% bodyfat. That would be awesome! That is a 14.45 pounds of fat loss with a gain of 13.6 pounds of lean mass.

I am starting out with a goal in the begining of this year of consentrating on loosing my bodyfat down to at least 10% with minimal muscle loss if any before attempting to add any lean mass. I need to see how things look without the covering of fat before I go any further with "bulking".  To my knowlege I have never been down to 10% bodyfat unless you look at my childhood, so this is a goal I have yet to reach and it will be a nice mildstone to accomplish!

17 pounds of fat loss while maintaining my current lean mass will put me at 10% BF. In one month I could loose 8 pounds at 2 pounds a week and that would place me at about 13% BF at 174 pounds, then in one more month I could be down to 167 or so at 10% BF. YAY!!!  SO I should set a 13% bodyfat goal for February 2, 2008.

WE will have to see how things go.