Originally Posted by Harvey Balboner
Take your weight and divide by 2.2 to convert it into kilograms. I am 185 pounds and I believe that I am 10% body fat, so my lean mass percentage is 90%. 185 / 2.2 = 84 kilograms * 0.9 = 76 kilograms of lean mass. So now I just take my height in meters (take your height in inches and multiply by 0.0254) and use the equation. I am 5 foot 10 inches, or 70 inches tall. 70 x 0.0254 = 1.78 meters. My fat free mass index is 76 / (1.78 * 1.78) = 23.9. In the study, they also adjusted it for a 1.8 meter individual, so I add 6 * (1.78 - 1.8) = -0.12 = 23.8.
To Recap:
Fat Free Mass Index (FFMI) = Lean Mass (kg) / Height (m) ^ 2
Adjusted FFMI = FFMI + 6.0 * ( Height (m) - 1.8 )
If you use this equation and find that your fat free mass index is higher than 25, then there is a good chance your calculations are off. If it is less, it does not mean it is more accurate but at least it is in a more probable range. (Check out the Bodybuilding.com store for your own set of fat calipers and tape measures)
(1) Kouri EM, Pope HG Jr, Katz DL, Oliva P. Fat-free mass index in users and nonusers of anabolic-androgenic steroids. Clin J Sport Med. 1995 Oct;5(4):223-8.
(2) Schutz Y, Kyle UU, Pichard C. Fat-free mass index and fat mass index percentiles in Caucasians aged 18-98 y. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2002 Jul;26(7):953-60.
5. Fat & Carbohydrates!
TRUTH: Do not think that fat or carbohydrates are the only macronutrients to tweak in order to reach your goals!
Almost everyone agrees that protein is important. What becomes a matter for debate is the role that other macronutrients, such as fat and carbohydrate, should play.
In the previous two decades, fat was considered the evil culprit. Americans were inundated with the message to avoid fat at all costs, and the food industry responded by generating a plethora of new food items that touted their amazing low fat qualities. Of course, the rise in obesity was not curbed despite the innovative new products that essentially amounted to lumps of refined sugar with no fat to slow digestion.
We have since learned our lesson, and realize that fats are an important part of the diet. The mainstream has come to accept such space-age sounding terms as omega-3 and omega-6 and even the average consumer can talk about eating cold-water fish and taking their flaxseed. We are still unnecessarily afraid of saturated fats, however. While saturated fats are definitely are not the most favorable fats, consumption of them is not a prescription for a slow, agonizing death. Someone who is maintaining or dropping weight will more than likely metabolize saturated fats for energy. There are certain saturated fats like coconut oils that are a different type of saturated fat than their animal counterparts (yes, even saturated fats have their own styles).
One of the greatest advantages of saturated fats is that they retain their molecular structure under high heat. The recent increase in knowledge about trans-fatty acids has taught us to beware of vegetable-based oils and other unsaturated fats. While these oils may be healthy in the diet, when they are superheated (as in frying), they can transform into carcinogens. A little bit of saturated fat, on the other hand, keeps your eggs from sticking to the plate and does not add hundreds of calories if kept in moderation.
An egg yolk here or there, from the right type of egg (i.e. from free-range or grain-fed chickens rather than the corn-stuffed mainstream version) can actually provide a healthy dose of healthy fats, Vitamin E, and high-quality protein.
Of course, once we realized that the irrational fear of fats was a knee-jerk overreaction, we had to find some other obsession to craze the nutrition world with, so we focused on carbohydrates instead. The notion of limiting carbohydrate intake has been around for several centuries. It has been studied extensively for its role in treatment of epilepsy, but everyone with a lot of weight to lose dose not suffer from recurring seizures. It is not the concept of limiting carbohydrate that is new, it is the trendy marketing packages that wrap them up and serve them to us. Nearly a thousand low carbohydrate products have been introduced to the market over the past few years … can you say, "trend"?
Let's get the facts straight. Your brain prefers carbohydrate as fuel. Your liver dedicates itself almost exclusively to the management of carbohydrate in your bloodstream, so it stands to reason our bodies were designed to handle carbohydrate. Muscle requires carbohydrate to contract, stored in the form of glycogen. While a low carbohydrate diet can slowly replenish muscle glycogen through the process of converting proteins into sugars, this is an inefficient process. Most people report feeling fatigued, drained, and losing strength on low carbohydrate diets.
Protein can and will be stored as fat if eaten in excess. While it requires more energy to metabolize, it is not magic and will increase your midsection. On the other hand, reducing carbohydrate may reduce your ability to train intensely. This, in turn, can reduce the number of calories that you burn during a particular training session, which can therefore limit muscle gain or even cause loss of lean tissue.
Everyone is different. People will respond to different ratios of fats and carbohydrates. Take a step back, however, and don't get lost in the trend. All macronutrients are important to lose fat - water, protein, fat, and carbohydrate. You should not instantly minimize one or the other without understanding why you making the change. Most people can successfully drop fat simply by restricting overall calories.
This means it is okay to eat the occasional cold-water fish or lean ground beef despite the fat. It means that a baked potato or piece of fruit is not going to automatically shut down your ability to drop weight. More important than obsessing over carbohydrates or fats is to find a program that you enjoy (who wants to live on foods they don't like), and that supplies sufficient energy to allow you to both train intensely and recover fully. (Check out the Bodybuilding.com cutting up diets and nutrition calculators!)
6. A Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Pounds
TRUTH: Do not make the mistake of not taking a before picture!
In August of 1999, I stood in front of the blinds at the front of my house and waited patiently as my wife snapped a photo of me holding a newspaper for a competition I would enter. At the time, this was just a necessary step for the competition. I did not think much of it, except that I felt humiliated and disgusting. When the pictures came back, two things happened. First, I realized what an amazing woman my wife was for being so supportive of what I saw, and second, I was fully motivated to make a change because while I trick myself looking in the mirror, the photo did not lie.
Not everyone is entering a competition for prize money, and not everyone is comfortable sharing his or her photographs. Some people are starting out much heavier than the 245 I began my own journey with. However, I cannot tell you how powerful taking a picture can be. It may be the one decision that makes or breaks your efforts to lose fat!
August of 1999 & Present.
Even if you have no plans of sharing that picture with anyone else, I encourage you to take it. Tuck it away somewhere safe. You might not even want to look at it for months. But, inevitably, two things will happen. Those who struggle or hit roadblocks will pull out that old photograph. It will remind them of how trapped they felt before they began the long journey to losing fat, and it will inspire and reinvigorate them to continue the journey. Or, someone who is making great progress will look back, and, with nostalgia, vow to never return. They will print that picture off and use it as continuous motivation to live the healthy lifestyle.
If you transform and decide you never want to share that picture with anyone, you don't have to. But what if you did not take the picture and suddenly you want to remember where you came from, or to share it with someone else to prove that they, too, can make the journey? It would be a shame and a great regret to find you had no photographs to share.
This is where the power of the picture really comes into play - it is not only something that can help you with your journey, but it holds tremendous power to spur others to make the amazing change themselves. And that can and should encourage you to continue - not because you need to drop those pounds, but because in doing so, you'll not only be making a difference in your own life, but for the lives of others as well! (Check out the transformation section at Bodybuilding.com for amazing before/after stories!)
7. The Black & White Syndrome
TRUTH: Do not get stuck in an all-or-nothing mindset!
I first learned about this from David Greenwalt, a former coach and mentor of mine who helped me break the mysterious "single digits body fat" barrier in 2000. Understanding this made a huge difference with my progress!
Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it is not happening. Sometimes you might be improving your health in less visible ways. It seems there is a prevalent "either/or" mentality that can disrupt many programs. Either you are perfect, or you just give up. Either you train at exactly 4:30am, or you simply don't train that day. The either/or, or black and white syndrome, can interfere with a lot of progress.
Keith Klein, a well-known and respected nutritionist, has a great way of describing this. He compares it to a car. When you get a flat tire, what do you do? If you can, you change the tire. If you don't know how, you have someone help. Eventually, you repair or replace the tire and move on. So why is it, on nutrition programs, do people get a flat tire, then instead of fixing it and moving on, they insist on flattening all of the other tires as well? It is like taking a crow bar and smashing the car instead of saying, oops, there is a set back, time to move on.
This can be applied to working out as well. For example, someone might read that morning workouts are superior for burning fat. Without debating whether or not this is true, the either/or mentality would say that if you cannot get your workout done in the morning, why even bother. In reality, working out in the evening is still better than not working out at all - you should train when you can do it consistently, and when you have the most energy. So if you cannot always train in the morning, why not go ahead and try it in the evening? Be flexible and don't get caught in the black and white syndrome.
Another example comes with rest between programs. People recognize the need to take some time off from training every once in awhile for recovery or sometimes even special "detraining". One complaint I get is, "It was so hard to discipline myself to get up at 4:30am to train. If I take a week from training, I will break out of that habit and not be able to start again." This is a great example, because let me rephrase: either I wake up at 4:30am to train, or I sleep in. Why not compromise? Why not spend that week waking up at 4:30 and then writing down new goals, or reading a new book, or taking a calm walk? Keep the schedule, keep the discipline, but let your body have a break!
There are many other examples to follow, but the fact is, there will never be a perfect 8 weeks or 12 weeks or whatever time frame you design your program around. Life happens, and obstacles appear. You can choose to have a rigid, inflexible standard for yourself, and allow the first bump in the road to derail your progress, or you can avoid the black and white syndrome, and adapt to changes while focusing on progress.
8. 10 Pounds In 2 Days?
TRUTH: Do not think you can undo overnight what took years of neglect to create!
We all are trapped by some notion that we need to see changes right away. We give a program our full, all out effort, but within 2 weeks we don't see our abs or cuts in our legs or the scale stops moving and instead of progressing, we stop. We step back. We try to change things, switch programs, or buy a new supplement. The fact is, that first program may have been the best one - but if you are too impatient, you may never know.
It took years to build the physique you have now. I sometimes jokingly refer to my before pictures as the biggest investment of my life. I look at the gut I had at 245 pounds and think about how many six packs, pizzas, fast food visits, videos that I sat and watched instead of training, etc. went into building something that large. This is not meant to belittle anyone who is overweight - it is an honest tool I have used to motivate myself. Like it or not, a lot of time and lack of energy went into building your physique!
While some people have experienced rapid weight gain, for many this was a gradual change. It started out when the first pair of 34" pants got too tight, and after losing patience with squeezing into them, pulling in your gut, and not tucking in your shirts, you went ahead and bought the next larger size. This lasted for another several months, and then we went up a size again. What is nice is that jeans and slacks can be forgiving - we can stretch and squeeze into them for quite some time before the zipper stops working or the buttons pop off. So, over time, we invest in size.
This investment, however, is not going to suddenly unroll. Just as it took time to put the weight on, it will take time to take it off. Let's be very real here - while the weight may drop quickly the first few weeks or even months, ultimately (and optimally, I might add) you may only lose a few pounds per week. When you have 100 pounds to lose, that may seem an eternity. What is worse, you typically don't allow yourself to see the changes until you reach lower body fat levels - this is when the muscle definition shows through and the abs start to pop. At that level, changes can be seen almost weekly - but until then, you simply become a smaller you, and the flab still hangs on.
This can be very frustrating. But the trick is to use many ways to gauge your progress and not get too caught up in one or the other. Accept that this will take time. Even if you only lose 1 pound in a month, guess what? That is 12 pounds a year. With 100 pounds to go, you can only move closer to, not farther from, your goal.
A few tips to help bide the time:
Take pictures and use these to monitor your progress (see tip #6)
Buy a pair of pants that is one size too small. Then, periodically try this pair on until you can fit. Then, buy the next size down.
Take waist, biceps, and other measurements. The waist should always be going down, never going up, as you drop your weight.
Find examples of other people who have lost similar weight. Read their stories. Look at their pictures. Talk to them and learn what to realistically expect.
Remind yourself of the time it took to gain the weight, and don't expect to lose it any faster
Look at other indicators of progress. If you did not lose a pound this week, think of the fact that other changes are happening as well - you may be reducing your cholesterol, lowering your blood pressure, and in general, improving your health
Don't give up. Focus on progress, no matter how slow, and keep in mind that every pound you lose, no matter how long it takes, is another pound of unwanted fat you will not have to deal with again!
9. Supplements To The Rescue!
TRUTH: Do not think that supplements are the only way to lose fat!
How often have you wondered, what supplement will burn this fat for me? Or have you been on a forum or in a chat room, and heard "I just tried a new fat burner, and man, it is really working for me." You felt a surge of excitement - here, a firsthand testimonial! You quickly ask what the product is, and rush out to buy it. And when you get it, it does work. You feel a rush. It feels great. You are skipping. But a few months later, the weight loss stalls again. What was it? I know, I know... your body "adapted" to the supplement, right?
In reality, supplements are a complex matter and the point of this article is not to debate which ones are effective and which ones aren't. But after working with countless people who have had a ton of weight to lose, I can tell you this: supplements are not the solution. There are merely tools that can help you create the solution and achieve your goals, but they cannot fix bad nutrition or lack of intensity in the gym.
Supplements are more like a tool - like a screwdriver. Now a screwdriver, by itself, may help you drive a screw into wood or some other material. But ultimately, you are the one who has to perform the work. And the screwdriver in the hand of a skilled carpenter may perform much more effectively than one in the hands of a child. The point that I am trying to drive home is that the tool itself helps perform the work, but you must put forth the effort.
There are many supplements targeted at burning fat. Unfortunately, many of these supplements are surrounded by hype. The one supplement that has been studied the most for losing fat, the renowned ECA stack (the combination of ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin), has come under fire for more political reasons than anything else, and therefore is being pulled from the shelves by many manufacturers.
Even this supplement, which was very effective during many research trials, only achieved the equivalent of an extra 50 - 150 calories per day. This same deficit could be easily obtained by limiting portion sizes or increase activity.
The problem with this is that someone who has a very detailed nutrition plan can afford to make a tweak that is 50 - 150 calories. Their nutrition and training are consistent and the additional "burn" may be beneficial. Many people, however, are haphazard with their nutritional approach. They consume foods based on eyeballing the portion sizes and allow themselves to snack on various foods throughout the day and even take entire days to eat whatever they like. Think about it - for a product that affords an extra 400 - 800 calories per week, does it make sense to overeat another 1000 calories and expect to see results?
Many supplements are marketed based on the "I feel it" syndrome. Most end users do not keep detailed journals of their weight or measurements or even food logs. So they really have no clue if something is working or not - they only have their emotions to go by. So when they start taking a product, it gives them a buzz or some other kick. This makes them believe they can "feel" the fat burning, literally "sense" the supplement working. While this is great for sales, it does little to really help you move closer to your goal - feeling a buzz from drinking a cup of coffee or popping a thermogenic pill is a far cry from actually burning fat.
As I mentioned, supplements will not and cannot fix a broken program. You must already have the discipline to control what goes into your mouth and what effort you put forth when training. Once you have established this baseline, you can look to adding these new tools. But be realistic. First, regardless of what the latest study says, you need to know if it works for you. Saying that most people lose an extra 5 pounds of fat is fine, but that doesn't help you - you are not "most people", you are unique in your environment, with your own set of genetics, your own training regimen, and your own nutrition.
So, study the supplement - and go to the sources. Don't learn about protein powder by reading articles published by protein powder companies - that is like asking Phillip Morris if it is okay to have a cigarette. Instead, dig deeper, find qualified research, ask fitness professionals, and read FAQs and other sources of information such as those provided here at Bodybuilding.com. Then, take the supplement, but keep that journal. You should just the effectiveness based on how your weight changes or how closer you come to your goals, not how you feel when taking it.
Remember, supplements may help, but you must put forth the effort yourself, and remember they will not rescue your program, only help an already effective one perform better.
10. To Think That Exercise Will "Burn It Off"
TRUTH: Do not get caught in the trap of thinking you can eat anything you like, because you can simply exercise to "burn it off"!
I have heard this time and time again. "I am going to be fine for Thanksgiving dinner - I'll just run extra." Not that I think that running or exercising after overeating is a bad idea - it is not. It is a good idea. It is smart to burn extra calories and train to take advantage of the extra calories you consumed. But it can be fatal to assume you can consistently overeat and then fix it through training.
Let's be realistic. A person who runs an incredibly intense 20-minute HIIT session may burn around 400 calories. That is fine if your splurge was limited to a few extra French fries or a typical Snickers bar. But when you consume a large plate of Italian pasta in a cream sauce loaded with sausage and then have that Cesar salad on the side with the buttered down rolls and finish it up with a chocolate mousse pie and espresso shot mixed with Kahlua, you may be in for a surprise. This meal, alone, can account for 1000 - 2000 calories due to the fat, alcohol, and carbohydrate content (there may be protein, too, but not as much as a bodybuilder would desire). So a simple 20 minutes hard on the treadmill, or even an hour going easy, just won't cut it.
What is worse is that your body continuously adapts to your level of nutrition intake and exercise. Eventually, homeostasis will slow your metabolism. At this point, the only solution will be to eat less. Normally, you could increase exercise, too, but you are already overdoing it by continuously knocking out hours of cardio to overcompensate for meals that you could have simply controlled in the first place. Not a fun situation to be in.
Instead, a more sane approach is to balance your nutrition and training. You do not necessarily have to weigh everything or count calories, but you need to be consistent. Whether you know a meal is 400 calories, or a cup of something, or a fist-sized portion of something, is irrelevant - what is relevant is that you have a consistent method of making that meal. This way, if you find you need to cut back in order to lose more, you can move to 300 calories or ¾ of a cup or just less than your fist size. Be consistent with your portions and you will be able to adjust them.
Nutrition is by far the major component that determines success or failure for fat loss. So eat clean, most of the time, and try to allow yourself only occasional cheat meals. One meal a week should be fine, and then adding exercise to compensate is not necessarily a problem. It is when you overeat every day that no amount of exercise is going to account for those additional calories.
Probably the most important thing to consider is the mentality behind this. Regardless of the science, giving you the ability to "exercise off" the calories is just giving yourself an easy out, a backdoor, an excuse. It is keeping you from truly committing to the lifestyle. In the back of your mind, you never truly have to learn to enjoy the new, healthy way of eating because you can always slip and burn it off. It is exactly this thinking that can prevent you from succeeding at point #1 - truly making a decision. So, don't sell yourself short or give yourself any excuses - forget the nonsense about burning it off. You are looking at it backwards. Instead of burning off the foods you eat, eat to fuel your body for the workouts you use to build a better body and burn off the unwanted fat. There is a cliché expression that describes this perfectly - eat to live, do not live to eat.
Conclusion
In my experience, these are the top ten (10) major mistakes many people make when trying to lose a lot of fat. More importantly than avoiding these mistakes, however, is focusing on the positive changes that you can make to take you closer to your goal. A friend of mine, Cory Babstock, started at 300 pounds. He is now under 200 and is preparing for his first bodybuilding competition.
He shared with me the top ten (10) things he has focused on to remain successful while dropping fat. I would like to share that list to conclude this article!
Top Ten Things To Remain Successful:
Set goals
Keep a journal
Educate yourself
Move your body
Eat, but eat smart
Keep the focus
Maintain intensity
Ignore distractions
Embrace success
SUCCEED!
Thanks