closetbiker

Yeah. I know I sure lose focus on occasion and I wonder if I'm doing it more as I'm getting older. I mean to get to figure this out, but I keep on forgetting to look into it.

TromboneAl

Apolo Ohno said, on Leno, that his body fat was 2%. I don't believe it.

tallard

The other way to calculate body fat is water displacement. It's a pretty good tool as well, tho barely ever done.

TromboneAl

They used to do that more often -- I've had it done. My understanding was that it's less common now because other methods aren't as bad as they used to be.

tallard

It would be pretty cool if local swimming pools offered it as a paying service! In the Hot Tub for instance

Our sport and swimming centre also includes a physiotherapy office, they could easily take it under their wing!

deathshadow60

Which is just as inaccurate since a muscle-bound person will still displace more water since their muscles are bigger.

A boyancy measurement on the other hand is quite accurate - it just involves putting a scale at the bottom of a pool. Fat floats more than muscle, skin and bone, so the discrepancy between the dry land weight and the measured underwater weight would be a very good indicator.

tallard

Buoyancy is simply a direct relation of the amount of water displaced per weight. A water displacement test does exactly what you say.
If you're comparing a 250 lbs bodybuilder to a 250 lbs couch potato, the couch potato will displace a heck of a lot more water.

It is all one and the same.

closetbiker

I wonder about that too. Sometimes, people throw numbers around because of the connotation involved, something like bragging.

For men, I've read pro cyclists have body fat that runs from 5 - 15% and it's essential that the body have at the very least 2 - 6% for everyday types, and 6 - 13% for athletes.

Fit men have 14 -17% body fat and a range of 18 - 24% is perfectly acceptable. It's only when you go over 25% body fat that a man becomes obese.

It seems to me, if Ohno has 2% body fat, he'd been in trouble and he couldn't compete with another athlete who has a bit more fat.

tallard

For women it's worse, anything under 20% will create problems, starting with amenorrhea to bone density problems. Of course, back in prehistory, skinniness induced amenorrhea was the perfect population control self adjusted mechanism; as long as dying prematurely due to brittle bones was not an issue

One of the popular Fashion Weeks, a couple of years back, was it Milan?? not sure, declared they would not accept any catwalkers below 18% fat.

It's entirely different situation to be 18% fat, and 82% skin and bones, like catwalk fashion models
versus say
18% fat, and 50% muscle and 32% skin and bones of an athlete, tho female athletes commonly have bone density problems (Xcountry skiers and gymnasts especially).

But these studies haven't been done yet. Fat %age, no matter how precise the assessment method, is still but a very partial glimpse at human fitness.

I got my tubes cauterised years ago, so I need not worry about fertility; and I've plenty of fat to keep my oestrogen cycle in order, so osteoporosis should never be an issue for me. More and more studies on women's fat percentage actually reveal that real skinny women's life expectancy is actually shorter. Numbers are starting to pan out.

scroca

I disagree. I use a body fat analyzer at home. I accept that it is not necessarily accurate, not to exacting standards, that is. But it does approximate body fat, and it is consistent in how it approximates it. I take a measurement once a week, every week, always the same time of day, when I first get up. It tells me if my body fat is rising, dropping or staying the same. So I know what's going on from week to week, even though I couldn't tell you what my body fat is with any certainty. Would I prefer to know? Yes. But I don't see that happening and in the mean time, this method is good enough for me.

closetbiker

Going back to the original question:

Body Fat Charts

A quick google yields a range that forgives with age:



From what you've posted, I still think that the quality of measurement is suspect. It doesn't sound like you're overfat, it sounds like the scale you used isn't accurate.

miss kenton

I think differently. My BMI is 19, in the low healthy zone and I am in the lowest end ideal weight range for my height. I have had normal bone density results after a scan. Heredity, a nutritionally poor diet and lack of weight bearing exercise contribute more to loss of bone density than low weight. The risk for diabetes, stroke and heart disease linked to being overweight scare me much more than being thin.

tallard

I may not have been clear enough. Above 20% fat, there is no additional bone density risk, problems start at 20%, I repeat start . The fashion industry is more and more acknowledging that 18% is a magic number we should not go under. You at 19% (and how was that established?) are somewhere in there. Your bones may be fine today, and you seem willing to take the risk of needing hip surgery just because you slipped on an icy sidewalk by the time you're fifty. In addition to scientific papers stating this, I have two family members to compare that with: my mother and my grandmother, both were skinny athletic teens, my grandmother has already had hip replacement, each side separately, 6 months out-of-commission each side and much much pain, that adds up to one entire year out of her life. My mom already has osteopenia.

Are you really willing to encourage your own daughters to take that risk?

A single 14 year old at the olympics with osteoporosis is one too many. YOU are a lucky one, but many girls/women under those levels DO have problems. You seem to not be aware of osteoporosis studies. As seen in elderly women, one of the only common health aspects between them is skinniness in teenage years. Healthy bones in women are in direct relationship with a healthy oestrogen cycle which is in direct relationship with sufficient fat quantities.

There are also plenty of smokers who lived to their 90s, does that mean smoking is healthy for you, NO. It simply means that some people's genetic constitution is so high as to overcome any adversity.

You speak of diabetes (type II) I assume you meant. You have not read the studies related to gastric bypass. Type II diabetes is cured by the bypass surgery. At first many thought that it was the rapid weight loss that cured the type II diabetes, but they then found out that was not the case. These patients' type II diabetes disappears INSTANTLY after the bypass. Being overweight is but one factor in this disease which may be indirect. Future studies will clarify this further.

As for being overweight versus obese, there have been several studies since 2000 who've demonstrated that normal weight people do not live longer than overweight people. https://www.newscientist.com/article/...ctor-away.html

If your happy with your weight fine, speak to me in 60 years... but careful about what you suggest for others.

bruce19

FWIW, I've tried 3 different methods. The hand held resistance devise at my gym read out at 24%, the Taylor scale showed 30% and an online formula yielded 21.8%. I ended up taking that Taylor scale back to Kohl's because even the weight would vary by up to 5 lbs within an 8 hr. period.

As for overall health, I have a resting rate of mid-50's and when I work out hard and then back off and watch the drop in heart rate, my rate drops 30 beats in the first minute. According to what I've read that's supposed to be pretty good.

cyclinfool

Even if you took the average of all three your doing pretty well.

I have one of those scales that has the hand grips and foot pads. The weight is pretty good and when I am in "loose weight" mode I record the reading once/week. As I loose weight I see the numbers go in the right direction, % body fat decreases - I use it as a relative measure. What I want to see is the rate of change of %body fat is more than the rate of change in weight, i.e. I want to be loosing fat, not muscle.

Three seasons ago I dieted and rode hard - lost 25 lbs I was loosing a lot of muscle as well. Regained a lot of the weight over the winter and then last year I dieted but added more protein and watch the numbers. I ended up at about 5 lbs heavier than the year before but was able to consistently ride faster on all but the very long steep climbs.

Don't get hung up on the numbers, from your history you probably know what to do to get fit and build muscle, that formula doesn't change much with age however the rate of progress and the peak does

Good luck - I have about 4 more weeks before I empty out the feed bag and start serious training again.

miss kenton

The same exact thing could be said about being overweight!


I would say exactly the same thing to you! Cheers!

Wogster

A BMI of 19 and a body fat percentage of 19% are quite different, although typically if one has a BMI of 19 then their fat percentage is going to be fairly low. Like many other things, it's moderation, being too fat isn't good for you, but being too thin, isn't either. For a couple of reasons, first they probably limit their intake to smaller amounts of certain foods, and may be missing some of the essential nutrients, like calcium, which can lead to reduced bone density, which can lead to issues like osteoporosis. They also don't have as much built in cushioning, so combine less dense bones with less cushioning, and a fall can more easily lead to a broken hip. Some illnesses, like the flu, can result in a rapid loss of weight, for the normal or over weight person, that 10lb weight loss in a week, is not a problem, someone who is under weight, that same 10lbs can be fatal.

Type II Diabetes, there are really 3 solutions, that have varying success, first is diet and exercise, alot of morbidly obese diabetics will sit in front of the idiot box eating a 5,000 calorie, high carbohydrate meal and wonder why their blood sugar is 5 times normal. Take the same person, feed them a healthy, well balanced meal, and then have them put in a 30km ride, and the blood sugar may very well regulate itself over a longer term. Gastric bypass is another solution, it works by bypassing part of the stomach and first few cm of small intestine, it is surgery though and it is horribly expensive. Medication is another solution.

Really the best game plan for a type II diabetic is to use the medication as a help at first, while getting diet under control and getting into an exercise program, using the HbA1c test to determine the level of medication required. Hoping that the diet and exercise will work to the point of not requiring the medication.

icyclist 

My mantra: Exercise won't help us lose weight. It only makes us hungrier. The way to lose weight is to eat healthy foods (which doesn't require exercise, although there are, of course, good reasons for being physically fit).

tallard

Makes me think of that summer spent cycling through Spain, Portugal and France. 9 weeks, averaging 100 km per day, 20 extra pounds.
Or that week spent skiing, 8 days 25 km a day through uncut forest, gained 15 lbs.

With some bodies, you just can't win!

Wogster

Weight loss is a simple formula: EI-EO = SE

EI = energy in, in other words, what you eat.
EO = energy out, there are two types, static which is just needed to keep your biological machine running, there is also dynamic, walking, running, cycling and any other sport will increase this.
SE = stored energy, this is stored in the form of fat, the more you store, the more fat you have, a rough calculation is roughly 3500 calories in 1lb of fat, 7700 calories in 1kg of fat.

Here is how it works, say you go to McPukes and purchase a Big Mac, extra large fries and extra large non-diet Coke. This is equal to say 3000 calories, it's probably actually more then that, but we will use that number for ease of illustration. You take this home, and spend the evening scarfing that down and couch surfing, you burn 2000 calories per day, so your 1000 calories up, roughly 1/3 lb of additional fat, and that's assuming you don't eat anything else that day, or do any other activity except sleep.

Now suppose you buy the same meal, you eat it, get on a bicycle and do a ride up cardiac ridge, burning 2000 calories in the process. Same input, but now you burned 4000 calories, so your down 1000 calories, the body will use it's fat stores to make up that deficit. You lose weight. This is why diet and exercise are combined to provide weight loss.

The ideal though is to eat truly healthy foods, that is foods that have a high ratio of needed nutrients to energy content, in an edible state.

Mojo Slim

Hey. ANYBODY can be on a magazine cover. Here's me, a couple of times.

tallard

+1
Like your skin tone!

billydonn

This is correct.

icyclist 

Wogsterca wrote:

"Now suppose you buy the same meal, you eat it, get on a bicycle and do a ride up cardiac ridge, burning 2000 calories in the process. Same input, but now you burned 4000 calories, so your down 1000 calories, the body will use it's fat stores to make up that deficit. You lose weight. This is why diet and exercise are combined to provide weight loss. "

If that worked, it would be great. You've simply ignored my premise, though, and stated your own.

Let's look at the numbers you've listed another way:

- Your body needs: 2000 calories

- You burned with a bike ride: 2000 C

- You need to put back: 4000 C

So:

- You eat: 3000 C

- You are negative: 1000 C

In my scenario, you will put those missing calories back into your body because, as I wrote above, you will be hungry enough after your ride to consume at least 1000 C. Maybe not that night, maybe not the next day. But your body, on the most basic physiological level, will demand that balance be restored, and it won't be satisfied pulling energy out of fat tissue; your body will want you to put energy back in through it's gaping mouth.

Human beings simply will not tolerate being hungry.

In the abstract, yes, I agree with you, Wogsterca, it's calories in and calories out. In reality, though, and especially in societies where unhealthy - i.e. fattening - foods are too readily available, it's too often extra calories in and not enough out.

Once we have gained extra weight from eating too many Big Macs and shakes and breads and potatoes and candy bars, getting rid of that extra weight is extremely difficult, at least for most people. At that point, no matter how much we exercise, we will simply want to put back as much energy as we expend.

Think of the phrase, "I worked up a good appetite." That's what happens after a long bike ride, or after chopping a few cords of wood, or climbing a mountain, or exercising at the gym. We don't finish those activities, if we're overweight, feeling as if we don't need to eat. It's just the opposite, no matter what we weigh.

And cutting down on the amount of food we eat - once we are fat - won't work, either, because over the long haul, we will not let ourselves stay hungry. We will eventually eat to assuage our hunger. Maybe not that day, maybe not the next day. But we know that eventually just about everyone will put back on weight they've lost via exercise and by cutting down on their calories.

There is a way to lose weight, though, without starving ourselves (and without the need to exercise, although, as I wrote above, exercise is good for us). That way is to stop eating, as much as possible, sweets and starches. That is virtually impossible to do, given that these fattening foods are ubiquitous.

closetbiker

It is. You're in the highest percentage of good health for your age group. You should be proud. Keep up the good work.