29M, SW 300, CW 267, GW 220 I’ve been doing IF for a little over a month now and I love it.
My question is, when I started, I used an online calculator with height, weight, waist and neck measurements to get a BF% of roughly 35%.
I’ve lost 2.5-3 inches off my stomach, I can fit both arms inside my pants (lol) and I’ve lost around 30lbs, but calculating my BF% still shows I’m around 33%
My goal is 220 at 15%, but loosely guessing, it seems by the time I get to 220, I’ll still be 30% fat.. does fat percentage drop drastically as I get towards a healthy weight? Am I doing something wrong? What’s all this weight loss if not fat?
Unless you’re getting your body fat percentage from someone using calipers or a DEXA scan, don’t worry about it. It won’t be accurate.
When you can take measurements of your own body parts, that’ll be more important than any body fat estimation you’ll find using a general calculator like you’ve used.
So don’t worry about your body fat percentage. If you’re working hard at getting rid of the fat, it’ll all work out in the end.
I’m sure you’re losing fat. It’s just hard to measure like that. But losing around your waist is awesome. Don’t worry about scale or body fat %.
There’s a health food place near me that uses the Bod Pod to measure body fat. Around here the cost is about $60 per test. Dexa scans are more accurate but about $200. Either will be plenty good for our uses.
I use a smart scale. I don’t think they are all that accurate but the trends should be so that’s what I used. Cost was about $130 or so. Was also nice to see graphs on my phone as my body changed. It’s vain but I freely admit seeing those graphs going down were a big motivator for me.
15% is hard to hit at 220 depending on your height. Maybe 5% of men even hit 17% or less. 20-25% is achievable and easy to maintain at higher weights. But below that you will need to employ strength training with an appropriate diet high in protein or otherwise you will be a stick figure.
Just look at this graph of BMI vs Body Fat to see how hard that will be: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark-Peterson-26/publication/272841659/figure/fig1/AS:294779767279616@1447292381400/Scatter-plot-depicting-the-correlation-between-body-mass-index-BMI-and-percent-body-fat_Q640.jpg
