The KettleBell Experience

Sunday weigh in:

203lbs @ 31.1% on tanita scales

A drop of over 4lbs in fat and an increase in 2lbs of muscle this week! I could live with that!

Unfortunately I have no idea if it's true or not as the scales are just so irregular and from what I've read across a few different sources, very inaccurate. I've never actually believed I was over 30% flab anyway.

Apparently much more accurate (but still only a guide) are the accumeasure calipers I bought this week. According to a study conducted by the NSCA they gave pretty accurate results as compared to the gold standard of underwater weighing all from a reading taken from one site of the body. Good enough for me.

From now on they will take the lead from all the other means of determining my progress including, scales, mirror/pics, measurements and strength levels. Also as it turns out my bodyfat % reading is around 4% less with them! Yay! So I've instantly lost 8lbs of fat and gain 8lbs of muscle. Now if only I can bottle it and sell it.

This is my rather long winded way of saying that I'm changing focus for the way I determine progress. In the end it doesn't matter as I may reach my target and decide that I've still too much BF or even not enough. It is simply a more reliable way to give me some idea of my progress and when I may need to change things up.

Incidently I do not need to change things up currently; I'm dropping steady at a sensible rate** with only a general measuring of foods using cups and by eye. So everthing stays as is: bring on the massive sunday lunch and dessert!

**I was wondering about the rate of fat loss and where the 1-2lbs per week comes from and if there were exceptions to the rule or not. You see a lot of diets claiming 20lbs in 20 days or read testimonials where bigger guys/gals have lost up to 4lbs per week while still maintaining or increasing muscle mass and strength. mc had told me earlier in the week that I was losing too fast but in the next breath saying as long as I was eating over 75grams of protein per day she doubted I'd be losing muscle. I told her that I had it to lose though, and she told me that it didn't matter.

From experience I disagree with this statement. I've lost a stone or more in a month without feeling any weaker when I've been 35-50lbs overweight. Though I don't have training/body comp data to back it up. I did find reference to a study though which does side with me.

Basically speaking if carrying a lot of excess fat you can create a bigger calorie deficit without your body panicing, going into stravation mode and canabolising muscle. This can be true up to a limit of around a 4lbs lose per week. After this it seems that muscle loss will kick in despite even massive stores of fat. We'd need a 14000kcal deficit for 4lbs a week.

As you become leaner though you need to be more and more conservative with your deficit to the point where bodybuilders / fitness models will create a deficit where they may only look to lose 1/2 lb per week so that they lose none of their precious muscle.

The upshot of it all is that 1-2lbs is the middle of the road recommendation to the average person who isn't massively overweight and doesn't want to get shreaded. At either end of this scale there is certainly scope for increasing and decreasing it. As I'm beginning to see more and more with this business it comes down to the (relevant) numbers.

As for me, I'm happy with what I'm getting and as I said will be changing nothing. I have a heavy work schedule coming up this week so it will be interesting to see the effect the extra calories burned will have on my body comp.