gigaplex

This question came up in another thread and I thought it would be interesting to explore.

If any of you follow Tom Venuto (see book list on this forum) then you have heard the case for weekly body fat measurements. Others may do this too but it is basically a mandatory thing on a BFFM diet and that is how I ran into the idea.

So here's how it's done:
1) This is only for use on a "normal" diet. No diet that drastically changes water weight or glycogen should be going on when doing this. It's okay if these things change drastically the first week but if it's on a continual basis then this method will not be a useful tool.
2) You are not looking to find your exact body fat %. You are only interested in the amount of change in your body fat % over time. So don't over concern yourself with the number, look at the change over time.
3) Get measured by the same person each week. This encourages consistency in measurements. And this is a big one too because different people can give very different measurements.
4) Measure at the same time on the same day each week. This is because things fluctuate slightly during the day and after different activities so doing it at the same time will further encourage consistency.
5) It helps if on the day you pick to do measurements, you have roughly the same level of activity, eating schedule, etc. each week. This promotes even more consistency.
6) Do not over-interpret the data. You should be looking at trends not week to week changes. If something is off for two or three weeks then you might adjust your diet accordingly but if something is off for just a week then you shouldn't jump to conclusions.

So that's how weekly body fat measurements are generally done at least in the Venuto circle. It can be very useful for recognizing when something goes wrong and diagnosing why and what to do about it. So to me, it's worth it. The more data I have at hand, the better decisions I can make about diet and training.

m11

What you listed does promote more accurate results than if you did not observe those rules. However, caliper measurements are still not accurate enough to use as a major factor in determining if you are successful in your endeavors on a week to week basis. Week to week changes are too small for a caliper to accurately pick up.

Built

m11, you bring up an interesting poing.

gigaplex, can you humour us and post up some of your own data? I'd be interested to see your particular application of them.

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gigaplex

Right, that's rule number 6 - do not over-interpret the data. So week to week is basically irrelevant but after 4, 6, 8 weeks, you should be seeing a trend.

gigaplex

Yes.

I just uploaded here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...RK8hdQ9-K7gP6A

Have at it

gigaplex

It is a lot easier to see these things with charts but I have not used google docs until just a few minutes ago so I'll have to mess with that later.

A couple things to start off here. You can see a definite trend that indicates the diet is doing what it is supposed to. An example of when the trends would indicate a problem is near the end before I started doing calipers. I was getting too skinny for the rope and choke method to do me much good anymore. So it wasn't an actual problem with the diet but that is kind of what I would look for. The body fat % levels off there for enough weeks to consider it a trend while the weight keeps going down.

Really, I've been pretty lucky and things have worked out to where I haven't needed to make much modifications. But if there was a problem, the data would be there and I should see it. And I should be able to diagnose the problem better since I have this additional data. Even if I got the diagnosis wrong, at least I'd have that historical data to learn from.

If accuracy becomes a big deal for the caliper tests, I can always get a professional at my gym to do it. I like to do it myself because I am more reliable to get this done every week at the same time but most weeks I'd be able to get the same pro to do it at the same time.

gtbmed

So you gained 9.5 lbs. of mass and lost .6 lbs. of bodyweight in 1 week?

Just from measurements? I honestly don't understand the point of doing these measurements and going through all of this, it just doesn't seem worthwhile to me.

gtbmed's strength journal

m11

I agree.

You also mentioned "You should be looking at trends not week to week changes." I, of course, agree with that too.

However, the title of the thread caused me to believe that we were talking about weekly body fat measurements.


We are certainly in accordance regarding pinching yourself once or twice a month. I like to do it too just for kicks. However, if one week of a cut it says one percentage and then 7 days later the same number..or god forbid a higher number...I'm not going to go making adjustments.

Come to think of it, even after a month I wouldn't really want to go by caliper readings as a primary method to determine diet/training effectiveness. [Conjecture warning for the next statement] : Which notch is being used on my pants belt is probably more accurate than a caliper reading from Venuto himself.

m11

Great work by the way on your progress. Keep up the consistency and hard work. You'll definitely reach your goal before you know it.

Built

You've done well, but this hasn't been luck - you've been following a non-fucked protocol while significantly over-fat. Unless you did something truly stupid - for example, dieting on a protein sparing modified fast while doing boot-camp five days a week - you wouldn't lose lean mass and you'd put on a smidge of muscle. Any modest deficit with sufficient protein and compound lifts will do this.

This isn't to understate your progress - you stuck to it and it paid off.
But what would you change? Furthermore, what if you changed something based on an incorrect conclusion? Week to week, the probability of making a type II error is very large here. Taken as a trend, your actions simply wouldn't be responsive enough: by the time you acted, it might be too late.
Don't kid yourself - I've had three pros test my bodyfat with calipers. One was kinda close, one was spot on (when I was 14%, he was VERY pleased with himself!), and one pegged me at 26% bodyfat when I was DEXA'd at 16.5% the very next day.

I just laughed at this last one. She was at the extremely overpriced Steve Nash gym in downtown Vancouver no less, and competed in figure.

Now I think we all realize that gigaplex didn't truly believe he gained that much muscle in a week, but it does illustrate the problem - what if it went the other way? What if gig actually lost this much muscle according to the calipers? How would he know what to change on this basis?

Bingo.
Ultimately, this is what it all comes down to.

Listen, gplex, if you find it helps you keep yourself focused by taking these measurements, go for it.

You started out quite fat and are now at serious risk of seeing abs. This is a very cool time for you and you deserve to enjoy it.

Do keep in mind that the method you employed to get from "obese" to "normal weight" might not be quite as satisfying as you navigate the waters from "normal weight" to "ripped". You might want to consider a game plan for when you start losing muscle - which you will either notice from your caliper readings, or from how you look, or from your lifts, or even from how you feel.

Do you have one? Do you know what you will do when you start dropping muscle?

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Yanick

Too much structure/stress for me to be a lab experiment. I did it way back when, when I started dieting and tracking and such. All the forum guru's were spewing the AccuMeasure calipers for progress tracking and I bought a pair and pinched myself endlessly. It just became so much of a hassle and probably led to a greater stress response than the diet itself.

I now take it easy, don't overly analyze my diet (its a diet, not a cross-over, double blind, placebo research study) and just go by the scale, strength levels, clothes fit and the mirror. Gives me enough subjective and objective data to make informed decisions.

"The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." -Barry Marshall, Nobel Laureate

gigaplex

Yeah, I wouldn't either. After maybe about 4 weeks it starts meaning something to me. And this is part of it too: learning how much variance you have in your measurements so that you can interpret the data correctly. If someone was really, really good at doing body fat measurements or maybe they did hydrostatic weekly then they would be able to draw conclusions from smaller amounts of data. So I guess another reason for doing these weekly is so you get better and better at doing consistent measurements.

lol. Well maybe I should add a column to the spread sheet called "Belt Notch".

gigaplex

Thanks

Built

How would you act upon these data?
For what purpose? You appear to be more interested in tracking the variation than acting upon it. How and when would you react to a reading you didn't like?

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gigaplex

First off, nobody is saying that this should be looked at on a week to week basis. I have been accused of this endlessly despite me pointing out time and time again that I do not do this or advocate it and never did do this. So why? Why continue with that. Everyone here knows that that would be misinterpreting the data. I even mentioned it in the initial post of this thread as well as other threads.

Secondly, too late? Too late for what? Like you'll be stuck permanently fat forever? Man would that suck! Seriously though, if there is a problem, it seems better to know about it after a few weeks than to keep going forward not knowing about it. There are of course other ways that you may even detect it sooner and if that's the case then you still have that data there for historical purposes and can have verification that you have changed the diet correctly.

So again, you assume I'm oblivious. Ugh, it is getting tiring. The truth is I know exactly what you're talking about. I have seen the same variance as well. Some know what they are doing and others don't. It's a good point to bring up. It can make for an awkward situation too like if you're getting the measurement done by someone for a few weeks and then you have to be like, uh yeah, so I'm going to have one of your co-workers do this instead... yeah.

If it had said that I lost all that muscle, it would not really be enough data to act on. I would have to get additional data. I don't look at week to week, I look at trends. You also have to take into consideration that the way body fat was measured changed at that point so you would expect to probably see a difference. It wasn't like it was some big surprise.

Yes, but that's going to be a VERY long answer. I'll tell you what. I have nearly all the information I know about diet and nutrition stored in this huge document where I take notes and stuff. I will try and get it online for everyone to see tonight. Then we can all analyze it to death. Should be fun

Built

No need. Just outline the plan if you notice you're dropping muscle. What will you do first?

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jbish8

Hey Gigaplex,
Congrats on the success. It's good to hear from a fellow BFFM'er. I've been using Tom's program for a couple years now and have gotten good results and believe that at least for me, it is the best diet for long term overall health and fitness.
As far as measuring BF% each week, here's my thinking: For Tom's program, which is really geared towards people who are cutting on a diet that keeps macro ratios consistent and training/activity volume consistent, as long as you measure at the same time of day/week, same way, in the same site/s than I believe you can get some pretty accurate results with the accumeasure for determining what your BF is doing, however not necessarily actual BF% as moving 1/2" along the illiac crest either way can greatly affect your measurement. This is why it is crucial to measure at the EXACT same spot each time.
I do think that as long as you have the right attitude towards the results ie:
That they are for trends, that they aren't EXACT, and that changes in diet and activity can affect hydration and glycogen storage then I believe they can be a great tool for motivation as well as information on when something has stalled or is not working anymore, which is why the "it's too late" argument doesn't really work IMO. It may be too late to stop the stall from happening, but you will know sooner that it has and can start to work to resolve the problem. It sounds as though you have this attitude and it certainly seems to be working for you so I say keep doing what your doing regardless of what anyone else thinks. I personally track my BF% weekly as well but definitely don't believe that it was the make or break it tool to my success. Anyone who uses the argument that it's a waste of time is ignorant as most everyone on here do things to track and log and document that take take much longer (BF testing takes less than a minute) and are only tools to help not a requirement for success.
As far as Built's advice is concerned, I would not be offended to her method of telling you what to be careful of, rather listen and learn. You obviously don't have to do everything she's suggesting, but she has helped me and my wife out and given us some really solid tips and advice that we have used and are working quite well. I personally started losing LBM using the BFFM program when I started to try to get lower than 10% which is common.
Tom doesn't teach much in the area of training and there are some critical things you can do to avoid muscle loss when reaching the lower BF ranges. Built definitely knows her stuff in this area IMO and it sounds like shes trying to help you.
Also I may be able to help you get a more accurate reading as to what your true BF% is if your interested. The accumeasure instructions are somewhat vague and I have used some trial and error tests along with some comparison testing with the Bod pod DEXA and accumeasure and so far my last 3 readings on all 3 have been within 1% of each other on my wife and I.
Keep in mind the leaner you get the more accurate your readings will be if done correctly.

gigaplex

Thanks! I knew there had to be someone else here I looked at a lot of different forums before this one and was disappointed with all them. I happened to see BFFM was in the book list here and decided to join basically just based on that. I was at that BFFM inner circle forum before this but I just can't see paying for a forum anymore. You get extremely good advice there but I'd rather use it just for tough questions then and not have to pay every single month.

Yeah, it seems to be a skill. I don't think people just pick up the calipers and get awesome readings right off the bat. So I do need to get a bit better at it and I will in time.

That's the plan.


Yeah, I know that I may run into the same issue. I was kind of anticipating it and so one of the things I was looking into when I first entered the forum was HIIT. My plan right now on what to do first is basically just all the stuff BFFM talks about. So I would look at all the things I could do to improve on my diet:
eating more of the calories earlier in the day and tapering off
switching all carbs to fibrous later in the day
move up to 6 meals instead of 5
swicth to HIIT for cardio (this is actually what I was investigating when I first entered the forum)
start getting more sleep (i get like 5 hours a night)
drop fruit from the diet except for right after a workout
there are some carbs I eat that could be better so I might switch them out
switch up weight lifting routine

And then I'd pick the ones that were the most relevent. HIIT would probably be the first thing I'd do. I might go back to maintenance to try and fix my metabolism if I thought that might be the issue (depends on other factors). I'd have to look through my notes (they are at home) on the other things to see which one applies best and maybe some of those wouldn't and there may be other things I could do as well. I've got a lot of this stuff written out in my notes (which is like 50 pages long) and so I'd just be going through that.There are obviously other factors besides just whether or not I am losing LBM like what kind of training is being done when this happens, how low was my deficit, etc., etc. So although I have a plan, I do agree that it could be changed or improved.

I guess the nice thing about my method is that I will know when I am losing LBM rather than continue on causing additional damage. Since it is basically inevitable that at some point I will reach that (you can't lose fat forever) it just seems like a vital thing to do these measurements.

That would be awesome! I did get the accumeasure with the click thing so it should be the same. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The instructions DO suck. However, I think I am closer using the calipers to my true BF% and man was it a relief to know that the diet wasn't stalling. When the body fat percentage leveled off like that, I kept getting leaner and then I started looking at pics online of people at different body fat percentages and it was not matching up so I switched to calipers and I am pretty confident that was the issue as I look like pictures of others at that BF% so I think I was apparently losing fat that whole time. If I had to do it again I would probably start doing both measurements much earlier and then eventually phasing out rope and choke.

Built

A few questions.

1. Why would you want to eat more calories earlier in the day and taper them off later?
2. Why would you want to switch your carbs to fbrous ones later in the day?
3. Why would you want to eat MORE meals while cutting?
4. Why drop fruit?
5. Which are the "better" carbs?
6. In what way would you change your workouts?

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Yanick

I have a better question. How long have you been training and/or dieting seriously (we'll define serious as what you are doing now)?

"The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." -Barry Marshall, Nobel Laureate

danzik17

gigaplex - There is one big thing that I really think some people don't understand here (possibly yourself included)

Venuto's program and BFFM is a GREAT starting point for people who are just beginning and need that strict step by step "DO THIS" approach.

I used to be the same way and just as you are right now and would only ever eat "clean" carbs, 6 meals every 3 hours on the minute, etc.

I compare this to being a musician. You practice and learn the sheetmusic for a long time, but then you master it and no longer need that.

Dieting is no different. A lot of people (myself included) NEEDED that absurdly strict set up because it gave a measure of consistency and comfort. After a while, you learn WHY those techniques worked so you are no longer bound by Venuto's or anyone's rules and can make a diet that is right for you.

Ron Paul 2012

Journal: danzik17's Log - 4-6 Week Strength/Bulk
Journal: Sub 10% by April <old>

jbish8

OK.. so my biggest problem with the instructions is that, where is the illiac crest REALLY. Like I said it doesn't really matter for a barometer as long as you do it in the same site each time, but why not try to get as accurate as possible to actual BF while you're at it. Keep in mind I've only used 2 subjects (myself and wife) with this method to check accuracy but so far it's really close (within 1% of dexa) everytime (3 times). Here's what you do:

1. mark with a pen along the illiac crest (this is top of your hip bone starting at where the bony nub towards the front sticks out, obviously I'm not an MD.)
2. Find the point where the front of your arm meets your torso and use a plumb bob or level (I am a contractor) to find where this vertical line (this is called the anterior axillary line) intersects the mark on your illiac crest.
3. One inch above this intersection is where the measurement should be taken. Try that and then test it against a DEXA. I bet you'll be really close.
4. Also I always measure on Monday morning, after my only complete rest day on sunday so as to be as normal hydration/glocogen wise as possible.

Good job, and keep it up.

jbish8

I totally agree with this. I myself am learning that I can still get great results without being so anal, however I don't think that means Gig should stop doing what he's doing rather just realize it may get easier in the future.
Also Gig here's a link to a thread where Built helped me that may be of use to you.http://www.ironmagazineforums.com/di...lp-please.html (Help please!!!)

Yanick

Took the words right out of my mouth.

"The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." -Barry Marshall, Nobel Laureate

gigaplex

Yeah, I was pretty strict in the beginning too. I have loosened it up a bit though. BFFM shows the some of the cleanest and safest routes but you'd go crazy trying to do the "perfect" diet forever.

gigaplex

Yeah on the inner circle forum (Venuto's pay forum) the question would come up a lot: How do I lose that last couple percent? When I was on the forum I never really zoned in on those posts because it seemed like it would be ages before I would be at that point. Wish I would have read them now. So I figured it was likely going to be an issue since everyone was asking.

I'm going to read through your thread but one thing I am definitely curious about is your cardio. Was this more like steady state type cardio or HIIT? I know you say it's not like you're specifically doing cardio but if you had to categorize it, what would you call it? One of the biggest things that worries me about that last couple percent and LBM loss is the cardio. It just seems like it would be an obvious culprit so I am looking into that now.

Thanks for the tips about the caliper - that will definitely help.

Built

gigaplex, the trick at the end comes down to coaxing your body to release a little fat instead of a lot of muscle: recall that a pound of fat holds 3500 calories. A pound of muscle, if it's anything like lean beef or lean bison, holds maybe 500-600 calories. You can lose weight FAST if you drop muscle!

The daredevils article in my sig outlines how a catecholamine release can tip the balance when you get to this point - based on research out of the Netherlands, Lyle McDonald's ideas and various supplementation options.

In short, it's a two-step process:
1. release free fatty acids so your muscles have an easy source of fuel for when you later...
2. burn them off with steady state cardio

But there's a bit more to it than this.

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jbish8

When I rode on the road, which I did at least once a week, I always rode a 40 mile loop with a 4000' climb. The climb itself took an hour, so I was on my bike total about 1 1/2 hours. I was always trying to beat my previous time so I was always pushing as hard as I could. If I remember right, it seems my average heart rate for the entire trip was always in the range of 165-170 BPM and the highest it would get was around 180. My max. heart rate is 191, so that should give you an idea. I also rode a couple of different routes in the mountains 2 times per week that would take about 45 min. each. These I considered my HIIT as there would be really steep climbs followed by downhills to recover. My heart rate would average in the 150's but I would usually get into the high 180's on some of the climbs. I always played alot of sand V-ball and raquetball and tennis as well. Too much now that I look back, but it sure was fun and I was in some really good shape cardiovascular wise.

gigaplex

I have to admit I am initially quite skeptical of Lyle mostly because of the huge deficit he recommends for PSMF. I will admit that it sounds the most logical of any crash diet I've seen but I am just automatically skeptical of anyone recommending that kind of a deficit.

Of course if you couldn't tell I have a pretty healthy dose of skepticism about most new information I encounter Doesn't mean I will ignore it though so I will take a look at the link. Thanks.

m11

I'd recommend reading Lyle's books. Here's a podcast that P-funk did with him. It's an interesting listen and should give you a decent perspective on his approach.

Podcast #4 – Lyle McDonald « Reality-Based Fitness