How Much Do You Have to Lose?
Submitted by Got Strength? Blog
So now you know your body fat percentage and have some measurements. Take your weight and we’re in business.
If you’re a male you’re looking for about a 15% body fat for the sake of looking pretty athletic. Most guys with a bit of muscle mass start seeing their abs well at around 12% body fat. When the body fat gets under 10% then you’re pretty ripped.
Women can add about 8% to this for similar appearance numbers, although it’s a bit more variable with them.
Let’s say you’re a 25 year old male with 25% body fat at a body weight of 200 pounds.
At this moment you’re carrying 150 pounds of lean weight (muscle, bone, water, etc) and 50 pounds of fat and you don’t look beach-ready. Each percentage point is two pounds of body weight. If we were looking to take 10% fat off of you we’ll have to drop about 20 pounds of fat in the next 12 weeks, or 1.67 pounds of fat per week. That’s very doable, but it will take some serious effort.
Of course, not all the weight that you lose is going to be fat, but if done properly a high percentage will be. Losing weight that fast there will be some risk of muscle loss and there’ll almost certainly be some water loss. Let’s look to drop 25 pounds in the next 12 weeks, just slightly over two pounds per week. That’s ambitious and it’s faster than I recommend long-term fat loss. However, we’re focusing on getting ready for a certain date and the weight loss will probably happen quicker at the beginning than at the end.
A pound of fat is equal to about 3,500 calories of stored energy. This isn’t as simple as just burning 3,500 calories and you’re down a pound, but that gives us a starting point. To drop two pounds via pure math we’re looking at a 7,000 calorie deficit per week. To account for a little extra let’s add 500 calories to that to make 7,500 calories per week and a touch over 25 pounds’ worth in 12 weeks.
This deficit won’t be just via diet, so don’t worry about dropping 1,000 calories from your current menu. There’ll be additional activity in there as well. Start writing down your diet and exercise program so that you have something to look at as we make the necessary changes to get you the body you’re looking for.
Tomorrow we’ll start on the diet portion of this program. I’ll see you then!
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