Body Fat Percentage Guide

Fitness tips and training methods, this video focus' on body fat percentage.

Darin Steen: Hello there! Darin here from fatlosslifestyle.com here, to talk to you about a very, very important topic, and that is, don't trust the scale. I see so many of my clients, and I used to do it 20, 30 years ago when I was uninformed, no offense, but the scale brings bad news, and that's not good. We are emotional creatures, when we just use the scale to see if our fitness fat loss program is working, our muscle building program is working, bad news comes, and you need a little bit more information than that. You see, the body is made up of 60-65% of water, that is, take an average 150 pound man or girl, that's 100-110 pounds of water inside you. You see, that water is transported in and out of cells, in and out of fat, in and out of muscle. You are counting on so many things. What time of the month it is for the girls? How much salt you had in your meal last night? What type of carbs you ate yesterday? There are so many things changing that your body is shoveling water in and out, all that weight of water. I forget how many pounds you get on the water weights, three or four, so you can imagine how our scale weight can fluctuate. You just can't use the scale. And the other thing is, our eyes are blind, when we start to really focus on changing our body and our lifestyle and our life, we hyper focus on our body. We are looking at our midsection in the mirror and we sort of get those blind eyes like an anorexic person, we really aren't a very good judge of if things are really working or not. Three things that you can do if you want to judge better whether your fitness fat less nutrition program is working, and that is the way your clothes fit, commonsense. We wear the same clothes, the same way. Don't wash your blue jeans and then wonder why they are tighter, but wear the same clothes, and if they feel looser around the waistline, and you feel like you are more loose and you have a little more room in them, then your program is going pretty good, you are losing some fat. And you are taking up less space in the room, that's what you want. Even though you lose fat, when you get smaller, you appear bigger, because body building is an illusion, and it's about seeing the shape of the muscle as the fat melts off, and that's what I am going to show you how to do. The second way is to use the scale and the tape measure, a cloth tape measure that a seamstress will use. Parallel to the floor, right to the navel, the same tightness every time. That and a scale weight combined together will give you a little bit more information. If your scale weight stays the same and that measurement around your waistline at the navel goes down, that means you are gaining muscle and losing fat. If your scale weight stays the same and the measurement goes up, then that means you are losing muscle and gaining fat. So it gives you a little bit more information than just the scale. So we have got the clothes, the first one. The second is the scale and a cloth tape measure. And the third thing is a little bit more precise, is a one side Skinfold Caliper Testing Kit. I don't sell them, but you can find them anywhere online. Bill Phillips' 'Body For Life' turned me on to it 20 years ago. Just Google search Skinfold Caliper Test. They are about $10, $11, $12, $13. They are invaluable. All you do there, it's so simple, all you have to do is read the directions. It takes one minute. One side, go to your right hipbone, see how many millimeters thick it is. Do it three times. Take the average of those three readings. Plug it into a formula. Mine is 11 millimeters thick right now. Your age, 44 for me. And it says that I am at, then you get your body's fat percentage. For me, it comes up to 11% right now. That's a little bit high for me. I am not really proud of that, but it's coming down pretty quickly right now to get ready for the fitness season which kicks in, pretty much in about a month. So my interval cardio, things are going really well, so I know it's falling. So you have got three numbers to follow, okay? Once you get your body fat percentage, and within one minute with the one side Skinfold Caliper Test, you can come up with your body fat percentage. Next, very simply, mine is 11%. Take the decimal and move it over two places to the left, every time. So I got to .11, multiply it times my scale weight, that will come up with how much your fat actually weighs. So I weigh more than 200, but for simplicity's sake, 200 pound man, 11%, .11, times 200, my scale weight, that comes up to 22 pounds of fat. So, so far I got two important numbers; 11% overall body fat and how much the fat in my body weighs, 22 pounds. If we cut all the fat off my body, I would be dead, because you need fats to survive, so what's leftover is called lean body mass, its everything else besides fat; blood, organs, bone, muscle, water volume. Since all those numbers stay the same, the only one that changes significantly is muscle. You can lose muscle if you eat salad a day and run 10 miles. You can gain muscle if you eat properly and workout intentionally. So when lean body mass changes, it's indicative or it tells us how much muscle we are losing or how much muscle we are gaining. So you have got your overall body fat percentage. You have got your fat weight. And you have got your lean body mass. And you can tell if you are losing fat or gaining muscle or losing muscle, you can tell more precisely. It's very simple. I highly suggest that you do it. That way you can make one change with your resistance training, one change with your cardio, one change with your nutrition, one change with your goal setting and mental mindset, and then you have a much better ability changing one thing at a time to monitor with the Skinfold Caliper Test to see if things are actually working. We have got a lot of clients in our club that utilize these techniques. Let's go out here real quick, I just want to show you a couple. This is my private studio here in Chicago. I think my head trainer, Cordell, is actually training a client right now. There he is. Hey Cordell! Cordell: Hey! Darin Steen: And there is Penny, she is a first time girl in our group class here, even though she is solo today. Alright. Now, I just want to show you, right over here, on the wall, I just want to show you a couple of people. We got all kinds of stories, but right there is a 44-year-old guy who got ripped abs for the first time in his life, Bob Mann. He was so excited. Frank Carnobogi, 60-year-old guy, who beat myotonic dystrophy in here with the mindset and exercise. Coach Neuhold, I met him one day at the Notre Dame Alumni game try out and me and him talked about winning mindset. Here is a guy right there, whom I met at a fitness competition, who dropped 150 pounds and got ripped abs. What an incredible story! And then we have got Danny Druckemiller right up there. There is Danny. I hope you can see it, because my thing is bouncing around. Danny lost seven inches off his waist in here. It took him about seven months, but as you can see, look at his face on the first one on the left, he looks like he is unhappy and depressed, which he probably was. And then the one on the right, he looks like a young kid and he is really smiling. And that wasn't by design, that was just natural, because when you -- come back into my office here. This is my office here, my private studio. There is my vision board. Got Oprah up there, Dr. Nicola, Jim Fannon, how much money I want to make next year, book sales. Vision boards are really, really valuable, because your mind cannot go -- and here we go. Because your body cannot go where you mind hasn't gone first. Vision boards help you to see what you want and where you are going, and start to build up that belief system and the gut that you can have it. I highly suggest that you cut out a physique out of a fitness magazine, put on that vision board, and you cut your head off and put it on that picture. I did it years ago, and about a year later I was competing as a pro bodybuilder at WWF. And I don't have the right genetics. I don't have the genetics to be a great bodybuilder, but I overcame that, the main thing was because I took my mind their first. So I highly suggest that you create a vision board. So there are some nice tools, I hope you got inspired. I highly suggest that you put your body fat percentage under a microscope, with these three advantages that we talked about, to more precisely tell what is going on, so you can make adjustments with some education behind. So there you go. Darin Steen from fatlosslifestyle.com. You do have the power to change, go make it happen.