Seperating Fat from Fiction

[misterguyx]

I'm starting this log to keep track of information I find while I'm trying to sort out some answers for myself. I'm a computer programmer working as a research scientist that's got his degree in business system analysis. It's in my nature to compile information together and try and understand the entire system as one large group of interacting parts. I feel when dealing with biology, in order to consider something as fact it needs to not just be repeatable, but it needs to be understood within the constructs of the biological value of the trait, IE behaviors should be assumed to either be biologically desirable or the result of "damage" (biologically, genetically, emotionally). For example, pair bonding and social constructs are advantageous for mammals that need a large caloric intake and a relatively long infancy. I'll also assume that social constructs of attractiveness are fundamentally the result of subconscious evaluations of health indicators for fertility purposes, which is why fashionable looks change somewhat regularly based on wealth indicators in a culture, but porn and schtooping the healthy servant girl is multicultural.

Ok, all that said, I'm somewhat disturbed by what I'm piecing together between hard science and anecdotal broscience in the message board at large that's pointed to some inconsistencies I'd like some help trying to nail down. What I'm going to attempt to do is treat myself as a N=1 experiment testing out a slightly modified more comprehensive version of the boards collective beliefs. The way I'm comfortable operating is stating the problem, stating why it seems odd to me, stating my baseline assumptions, and then stating what I feel can be reasonably concluded from those assumptions. What I'll then attempt to do (and the reason I'm making this public) is to shoot down all my assumptions with hard science. If I can refute the assumptions directly, then I can refute the more difficult to disprove conclusions.

What I'm NOT really looking for is unhelpful unsupported counter examples, although there ARE some specific counter examples I'm looking for.

Ok, I'm really hoping if that was TL;DNR that you'll have bounced out of the thread too.

Here's my problem. It's widely acknowledged that you shouldn't judge body fat from a picture, and yet everyone seems perfectly happy to do so. I divorced right before I was 29 after spending nearly a decade almost playing nursemaid to an abusive semi-invalid ex-wife. It was a bad situation, and it ended badly for me, personally. I have had chronic muscle pain, joint pain, and neck cramps basically since I've been 12 that I've chalked up to a variety of things, from stress to a scuba diving accident I had a teen, and posture and being overweight. I was a chubby kid growing up, my dad considers himself a chubby guy, and he pounded into me my whole life that I needed to avoid being heavy like him. However, I ended up with roughly the same basic build. I played soccer my entire childhood in an attempt to lose weight, running until I passed out on the field. I ended up with strong muscular legs, pretty weak arms, and a loose gut. I also sang choir competitively, making it all the way to a performance in Carnegie Hall as part of a competition my senior year of high school.

The only time I was every even remotely thin in my life was after sophomore year of high school. I got double pneumonia and had to have my tonsils and adenoids taken out. Despite barely eating for weeks and throwing up in bed and losing nearly 30 pounds, I still had the loose stomach "gut". My entire life, people have looked at me in shorts and a t-shirt, told me how skinny I looked, and then I'd take OFF my shirt and they'd go, "oh, well I guess you do have some chub to lose, but not much". Meanwhile, electric scale estimates told me I was in the 20 to 25% range, the pure BMI number matched it loosely, so I'd say yep, and feel bad about myself. They'd also tell me, my whole life, how short I come across. I've got a guy in my office that's 5'9ish, and people regularly are surprised that I'm easily taller then him when I draw myself up straight. I always chalked that one up to be a shy computer nerd.

Basically, I looked like this, only twenty years ago:


More or less, and I was bound and determined to lose that gut. I worked harder and harder and stayed that basic same build all through college until I got married, got depressed, and got a job as a computer programmer out of college and sat and drank Mountain Dew all day in my cubicle. I gain 20 pounds in a year and a half of flab. I went on weight watchers, switched to diet soda, and lost 20 pounds, but was unable to get under 200, riding at 6'0 200lbs, no matter how much I restricted. The more disciplined I was, the weaker I felt until I eventually just sorta gave. My weight got to about 195, and slowly drifted up to 200. When my marital situation completely fell apart, I ballooned up to 235 in not much more than a year. That was a breaking point for me, and I went back on weight watchers, bought an elliptical trainer, canceled my gym membership and used the money from the gym membership to get a membership to a local massage therapy place, and only let myself go get a massage if I'd done the exercise.

Doing Men's Health's belly off exercise program and weight watchers, I attempted to lose the weight. I was completely unable to progress on the exercise program, and ended up repeating essentially little more than the warms up and the first week exercise for a couple weeks, and then I'd be in too much pain to continue. I figured I was fat, getting old, and just not dedicated enough. So I'd push myself harder, burn out sooner, then injure something and have to quit for a while. When I'd come back, I'd get a huge strength bounce, but never look any better, and burn out just as quickly. I eventually, almost purely through diet and cardio, got my body down to 165, estimate 13% body fat according to the electric scale. While I was doing that, I'd occasionally start blacking out on the elliptical and I learned to more or less breathe deep and push through. I was like a food nazi, but bad about actually tracking my food, instead using the "eat healthy, restrict, deny yourself" method. Eventually, I decided I couldn't lose the rest of the gut because I must be cheating more than I was estimating and started tracking my foot. My average daily calorie intake was around 900 calories. I adjusted up to 1500, but struggled to eat that every day.

This is me, then:

I went through my divorce, drank heavily, and ate just as litte. I started dating a woman who was basically anorexic when we met. She was unhealthy skinny and trying to fix her life. I jokingly put her on what I called the "T & A" diet, and together we both gained about 20 pounds over about two years. She developed a very healthy and AMAZING body, and I was the same skinny-with-my-clothes-on-chubby-without I've been my whole life. Two years ago, for my 30th birthday, I made a vow to myself to get healthy for REAL REAL for the first time in my life. Only this time, I didn't let some number on a scale define what was a healthy. I decided I wanted to define healthy as feeling strong and PAIN FREE for the first time in my life. I wanted my knees to stop aching, I wanted my shoulders to stop burning, and I wanted the sharp pains from neck to stop throbbing. I decided the first thing to do was lose the gut, so I got SERIOUS about my diet.

I ate as carefully as I could, tracked as closely as I could, and tried to exercise as much as I could. I'd be able to do about 4 weeks of any kind of strength building program, and then I'd injure myself, or DOMS would cause me to miss a week, or a holiday, or something would shake my discipline, or I'd get the flu, or vomit, or SOMETHING. I'd miss a few weeks, get weak on my diet, and then start hard again. Over this year period my body weight fluctuated from 178 to 185 depending on how often I broke down and how hard I could push myself.

Last summer, that dude Joe popped up as Alcide on True Blood. My ridiculously hot girlfriend, oddly, seemed to find his stack upon stack of muscles appealing. Who can know the female mind? I decided to take it as a challenge. Not for her, but for me. I renewed my vow to be strong and painfree, and used his body as a new template. I tried ramping up the Mens Health program for a couple months and pushing hard on cardio to lose the rest of the weight first, but all I really managed to do was cut out my cheating. By cutting out my cheating, I reined in my calories to a very consistent 1800, my weight stopped fluctuating by 5 pounds and instead bobbed RIGHT around 182. How much water I drank seemed to have more to do with whether I lost weight.

In January, I added some basic weights to try and build muscle, and attempting to research the best set of dumbbell exercises eventually brought me here this summer. I verified my routine was roughly a decent chest/arm workout, and I really wasn't TRYING to work my legs, because I found that walking my dogs exercised my legs to the point where additional exercises would lead to injury and missing exercise.

As I read around here and read the linked articles and linked medical journals, something started to alarm me. I began to notice a basic piece of intellectual inconsistency asserting itself that confused me. MOST of the medical advice made sense, MOST of the nutritional advice was consistent and often backed by direct research. However, a couple things I couldn't make sense of, but was touted as gospel and not thought of in other discussions that directly, it seemed, contradicted.

Now I went all too long for the forum, and have to repost the rest.

[misterguyx]

Three ideas jumped out at me as being conflicting, biologically undesirable or nonsensical, and potentially dangerous if all three are actually true:

1) Abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym. IE ab visibility is a direct result of body fat percentage and only very loosely correlated to other factors
2) Fat can not be spot gained or lost, and fat is distributed roughly equally
3) There are three body types that tend to gain or lose fat differently based on genetics

Here's my problem. Looking at my body, people are extremely fast on this message board to knee jerk out a response very similar to what the scales original estimate was. The original estimate is based on a specific distribution of muscle and fat collected by a specific group of people with a specific behavior and exercise routine, due to the nature of the Navy data most estimates are still based on. People eyeballing my body are more than happy to estimate 20% fat based on that, and the scales original estimate fluctuated between 17.5% and 19.5% based on fluid and cardio.

I was standing in the mirror last week, doing stomach vacuums, and realized that my posture affected how my abs look more than any other factor. Standing in a correct relaxed posture in front of the mirror, this is how I looked:



I posted that in another thread and immediately got the people who told me they could easily eyeball me at 20%, not to hurt my feelings. It doesn't hurt my feelings in the slightest, because the actual number isn't critical to me. What I quickly realized though, is that their eyeballing was based PURELY on their expectations of what my muscle mass distribution is and the fact they can't see clear separations between the abs. The fact that my stomach is actually CONCAVE doesn't even register. The fact I carry little to no muscle in my arms or shoulders, that you can EASILY see divots around my clavicles and the tops of my pecs, that you can see clear delineation of each rib doesn't register. Another thing they can't see is my stomach distension. If I massage my gut while holding my abs tense, the gas is readily apparently and can be distributed around in my intestines. The can't see the fact that my ass is so flat it's amazing I can stay in chairs, I have strong and distinct memories as a child not having people to like me to sit on their laps because my butt is "bony". However, to them, GUT WITH NO LINES = 20%.

However, when I change the scale to expect someone with muscular legs, it spits back 8%. With how strong my legs are, I'm not surprised it estimates too low. The Navy tape measure estimates ALSO estimate 18%, again, based on a specific distribution to simplify matters. However, the YMCA estimates don't. The YMCA estimates, based on my 15 inch neck and 32 inch navel measurement, that I'm at 12%, within the 4 to 5% rounding error you'd expect from the scale, using BOTH equations. Calipers take some practice, but I consistently measure myself with a three point test at an average of 12.5% body fat estimated. It's attempting to resolve this difference in estimates that prompted this. I really can't afford hydrostatic testing right now, but it's heavy on my mind in the near future.

This visualization of my stomach held in firmly and actually being able to differentiate all six abs, however, briefly and however strongly I needed to tense my TVA to see it, made me seriously question some of my basic body image issues. I asked myself what I'd be doing if the numbers WERE correct, even at 12%, and then used better estimates. I basically re-estimated my BMR as a mostly active muscular man instead of the sedentary chubby kid I still picture myself as.

For the last week, I've deliberately eaten as much as I could literally force down my throat at times. I eat as much meat and protein as I can, and eat the veg I have available, and try and make my protein numbers, and then I eat as much as I can to try and make my overall calorie number. I've been average a little over 3000 calories, and I'm really aiming for 4000. Over the last week, according to Daily Burn, I'm almost perfectly at 0 net calories, even though I'm trying my hardest to eat enough to bulk. The main difference I'm currently feeling in my body is that I switched from my custom 1 day a week per muscle split to doing a basic full body strength routine with dumbbells and my muscles are inflating (probably mostly with water) like balloons.

Last Monday the scale said I was 180 / 7.8%. This morning, same scale said 191 / 8.1%.

So here's my current theory, followed by the assumptions I am going to try and research to disprove it:

There is only one rough basic body type that functions as an omnivorous living machine. All humans, by gender, have a substantially similar musculature, skeletal system, and fat substructure. While height and limb proportion are genetically selected for in general, differentiation in appearance is primarily a function of behavior and dietary habit, with specific adaquate nutrition at key developmental stages requiring specific nutrient loads to reach optimal genetically determined guidelines.

Assumptions:
1) Fat is gained or loss roughly evenly, by gender disbursal patterns
2) Muscle creation is an energy limited process which requires specific amino acids as a resource
3) Fat creation is an energy limited process which requires glucose as a resource as well as liver enzymes
4) The body can synthesis other macro nutrients into glucose as required
5) Protein Synthesis and Fat Creation are functionally independent processes, requiring only the correct nutrient loads and energy requirements
6) The liver regulates fat creation based on over all glucose levels via enzymatic reactions
7) Protein Synthesis and Fat Creation can be assumed to happen at a steady rate when all the available inputs are available, with regards to a specific skeletal size
8) This rate of synthesis can ONLY be affected by resource scarcity
9) Humans genetically select toward rounder buttocks, rounder chests, flat abdominal as being "health" indicators on a subconscious level


Three Main Implications, general:
1) Body types are a convenient handle to describe how the body reacts to specific activity patterns and eating patterns and do not have a strong genetic component
2) Abdominal visibility requires low body fat, AND strength training, AND proper skeletal posture
3) Cellulite is a visible reaction to low body fat AND low muscle mass
4) The body's systems are optimized to achieve a steady state between your body fat percentage, your eating patterns, muscle mass, and your activity level.
5) Fat deposits can not be spot targeted for loss, however, the APPEARANCE of fat deposits are aggravated by lack of the correct muscle balance


First needed counter example
Anything peer reviewed journal that counters one of the 8 assumptions above.

Second needed counter example, 2 guys with extremely similar heights, routines, training history, and diets, that have extremely dissimilar physiques
I know, it's not exactly ground breaking or revolutionary, and yet a lot of people are going to react very badly. My problem is that everyone says there are body types when you're fat and out of shape. However, there don't seem to be ANY body types for people in shape. If you build all your muscles deliberately evenly, and lean yourself out, everyone looks the same. Black, white, yellow, or tanning bed orange. We all idealize the same, and we can all get there following the exact same routine:

1) Full body compound exercises
2) Carefully calculated TEE + additional calories
3) Sufficient protein

Eventually, everyone with the same size, build and workout routine, seems to narrow to having almost roughly identical bodies, in terms of measurements. We'll go ahead and assigned aesthetics that have more to do with skeleton lengths and how properly their form is, but we'll ALL roughly converge for a given skeleton size and height. A guy with a thinner rib cage will be the same, just slightly smaller in all his measurements. To me, coupled with the fact it's biological advantageous to breed across racial boundaries and there is NO differentiation of species across racial lines says to me that if we ARE evolving toward different body types, we're no where NEAR there in any practical terms now.

Third needed counter example
My girlfriend is helping me with this one, whether she likes it or not. She used to be extremely muscular in her legs but has depleted much of that muscle over the last year trying to match my unfortunately excessive dieting. She developed cellulite on her legs. In researching cellulite, the cause seems somewhat obvious. Males lay down fat systematically and somewhat haphazardly. Females are genetically selected toward rounder hips and breasts. They lay down their fat in a pattern that allows them to fill more skin with less fat, allowing thinner bodies to still have the sexually desirable curves. However, when the muscle receeeds after the fat is laid down, these anchors pull tight against what's essentially a retreating muscle floor, and form the characteristic divits. It's my theory, from what falls out above, that she should be able to completely get rid of her cellulite in a relatively short time with just squats and eating the corret maintenance diet to maintain her current body fat and building her legs back up.

Four needed counter example
I'm working on this one myself. It's my current theory that excessively weak abdominal muscles are not supporting my stomach and rib correctly giving rise to the posture that allows them to grow weaker and weaker. In additional the chronic malnutrition causes a base level of stomach distension that it may take a while to get under control. It is my belief that I'll be able to increase my over all mass with similar scale readings and give the appearance of having lost a significant amount weight simply by adding additional muscle in the correct places to give perspetive to the rest of my body. Essentially, I think I've "flattened" my abdominal muscles through 20 years of bad posture, lack of training, and malnutrition. I think in order for them to show, I'm actually going to have to strengthen them to the point there's divisions to show in the first place.

My plan:

Current Weight: 192
Body Fat Estimate from Calipers: 12.5%
Target calories: 4000
Target protein: 175 grams

Exercise Program, based on all pro, done MWF:
DB Squats 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )
DB Bench Press done on Swiss Exercise ball 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )
DB Bent Row 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )
Arnold Press 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )
Stiff Legged DB Deadlift 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )
Hammer Curl 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )
Calf Raise 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )

DB Sidebend 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )
DB Swiss Ball Pullover 8 X ( 12.5 / 34 / 39 / 39 )

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday
Walk dogs either 1 mile in 20 minutes at a somewhat leasurely pace or 2.3 miles in 35 minutes at a powerwalk, in a very hilly neighborhood

Additionally, my girlfriend and I do yoga in 20 to 30 minute blocks multiple times through the week as we feel like it.

I've had DOMS in my abs after exercising every day for a week, and I'm trying to be hyper vigalent in my posture the rest of the day, NOT just during exercise. Just holding my core for posture is enough to feel the lactic acid by the end of the day.

So this is where I'm going to sit here and disprove myself, if I'm able to. If you aren't interested, or if you think I'm just completely delusional, than if you can help me demonstrate that to myself in a concrete way, I'd appreciate knowing those steps.

[JourneymanDave]

In for analytical geek-by-day, athlete-by-night goodness.

I like your cognitive approach here, this is the way I approach most things too. Looking forward to it...

[misterguyx]

I'm pretty sure it's going to take a while to generate anything even remotely meaningful, so I'm planning on spending the interim trying to logically work out why various methods work in a comprehensive model assuming there are NOT genetic differences outside of random deviation/mutation and deficiencies. Holding that, there SHOULD be natural world analogs for every piece of anecdotal broscience that explains it. So I'm compiling some BroScience Truth and trying to assign it to real world use cases. My theory is that the BroScience that can be supported will be easily related to a natural world use case, while the stuff that can't be demonstrated in a lab won't reflect any nature based use cases.

Example:

Bro Science: Body types are genetic, and everyone is a mixture of those three types from birth
Implication if true: Your body type would be unchangeable, body types should be distinguishable at all levels of fitness, body type would be regardless of nutrition
Status: Presumed false.
Nature Use Case: None. Humans appear to carry fat differently, but I'm unaware of any other animal that does, nor any biological advantage to having fat disbursed differently. All humans appear to select for the same appearance for fertile males and females, however societal influences of social indicators override biological imperative for humans, often.
Possible Alternate Explanation
The three basic body types can more easily, in my opinion, be broken down into a dietary and activity mix than they can be broken down into any kind of genetic predisposition. Each of the three body types can be related to a specific naturally occurring behavior predicated by activity and nutrition. There does not appear to me to be any difficult transitioning between body types of different nutritional and activity types are substituted. Often, however, the level of change needed is severe enough a person can't effect change on their own, which is why externally motivated changes seem to show the most radical results, IE military service, leaving home for college, getting married, as entire lifestyles are modified without respect to intentionally changing body types.

Examining the body types we find:

Ectomorphs: Classically, this is consider the small, lithe, "hard gainer", considered to have "fast metabolism"
Mesomorphs: The "athletic" build. Gains and loses fat easily
Endomorphs: The "stocky" type. Gains muscle and fat easily, but has trouble losing fat

Now, let's describe those in terms of what we know about activity and nutrition, instead of implying a genetic component.

Ectomorphs - Classic lean build. Ectomorphs are the result of grazing behavior high in protein and saturated fats. Ectomorphs represent typical forager behavior. They have muscles that don't bulk but are relatively strong for their size due to endurance type activities. Ectomorphs are also often twitchy, and high energy, which is a result from being in energy efficient keto much of the time. Ectomorphs rarely eat enough to maintain muscle mass and are likely to be easily satiated by smaller quantities of food. Ectomorphs have muscles that are for the most part energy depleted, resulting in flatness and general smoothness of bodies, showing small flat chests, flat stomachs without obvious abdominal lines, and thin shoulders.
Biological Use Case for this theory is straight forward forager/gatherer behavior. The ectomorph survives easily off sustainable amounts of small game and vegetation, but do not put down fat stores and can not survive famine.

Mesomorphs - For the most part, healthy people. People who eat enough and exercise enough become mesomorphs. They find it easier to gain weight because they find it easier to eat larger quantities of food. Regardless of build, people who eat enough food but not excessive amounts are able to easily put on muscle and fat at roughly the same rate and burn fat off by minor calorie restriction while maintaining their current activity level. Mesomorphs are predators, although humans have learned to substitute specific vegetation for animal protein. Mesomorphs form when you have a consistently high level of all macro nutrients combined with sufficient exercise to bring muscles into hypertrophy.
Biological use case: Hunters supplemented by foraging. Mesomorphs could only form where sufficient big game could be supplemented by foraging for other basic nutrients. The larger muscles can really only naturally form in a highly carnivorous diet, and are really only needed to hunt large game.

Endomorphs - Endomorphs result from highly fluctuating diets. An endomorph body type is one that has periods of excessive calorie restriction followed by large calorie binges. An endomorph gains weight quickly, because they rarely actually gain or lose muscle or fat cells. Rather, endomorphs cycle continually between storing fat and bloating, and between full thick muscles and depleted flat muscles. Endomorphs become lethargic and injure easily during periods of famine, causing their fat loss to slow rapidly, but recover quickly in size and strength when feeding begins. Endomorphs lay down muscle as they are able to, but don't sustain the growth due to eventual calorie restriction, and can't maintain the lower levels of leanness due to the behavior changes that accompany the famine portion and injuries preventing activity.
Biological Advantage: Farming or migrating type behavior, where fat stores are laid down prior to a predictable but limited length lean period. Endomorphs result from excessive calorie restriction "hibernating" type behavior, cycled with a period of abundant food and activity.

[misterguyx]

sawoobly posted a study which indicates my hypothesis: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=19198647

Conclusion
For the first time we show that in free-living conditions, CR results in a metabolic adaptation and a behavioral adaptation with decreased physical activity levels. These data also suggest potential mechanisms by which CR causes large inter-individual variability in the rates of weight loss and how exercise may influence weight loss and weight loss maintenance.

In other words, if you restrict calories, you slow YOURSELF down, and metabolism is changed as a direct result.

[misterguyx]

http://www.livescience.com/5056-wide...ggressive.html

This is an interesting study because I feel it inadvertently reinforces my point. The findings in the study were that aggressive behavior was linked to face width, but also that people's perceptions of each other is directly influenced by the perception of face width. I say perception, because I think they misunderstood what they were seeing.

Assumptions:
Body fat is distributed equally
Abdominal separation is a factor of BOTH low body fat AND large abdominal muscles
Malnutrition, through various processes related to ketosis, causes irritability, lowers the brains ability to produce certain mood elevating hormones, and increases response times and energy levels (ie twitchiness)

Implications
1) Body fat should be most reliably estimated visually in bone pockets containing little to no muscle mass. Since body fat is distributed under the skin roughly equally, the natural divots between bone structures would visibly sag before pockets between muscle due entirely to the fact the muscles deplete and don't have as large pockets when sufficient nutrition for muscles isn't maintained.

2) This has the biological advantage of marking those unable to obtain sufficient food to maintain "healthy" body mass, marking them as less likely to be able to provide for offspring and a family. There's some interesting side implications related to how foraging for carbohydrates in the form of tubers and fruits ALSO provide the necessary ingredient to provide the sun protection a human would need in order to forage in open fields and sparsely treed areas. Meanwhile, those consuming sufficient calories without tubers and fruits develop a pallid cast to their (black people tend to call it "ashy") which dulls the reflectiveness of the skin's surfaces which is necessary for predatory stealth in a forest environment protected from the sun where such fruits and tubers wouldn't be readily available.

Practical Conclusion

1) Total calorie restriction should be based entirely on feeling satiated. Currently, in our environment, it's necessary for most people to track their foods due the lack of natural forces at work in their food selection. In order to build additional muscle beyond your body's comfortable steady state, you'll need to eat additional protein calories to fuel the muscle growth, up to a maximum possible anabolic rate. For maximum "predatory" build, diets should be whole food and protein dominant, with protein requirements ensured first, fiber requirements second, and carbohydrates added in the form of nuts, fruits, and vegetables as hungry. This mimics the whole consumption, skin, sinew and meats, of hunted animals complemented with foraged sugars. It's almost impossible to gain excessive muscle this way, but it completely explains why newbie gains stall out as muscle mass to muscle tear down ratios balance, and why so much more food is required to continue gaining beyond this "comfortable eating" stasis point.

2) Dieting VS Gaining should be entirely decided based on estimates of body fat in the face, including the jaw and temple, and the clavicles and ribs. This handles the fact that it is evolutionary beneficial to have the correct amount of body fat percentage to fully fill your skeletal structure, but no more or less. Large bone structures will need higher fat percentages for people to feel they look healthy, which may be counter to people's desires to cut. Large bone structures without additional fat are going to exhibit the above referenced behavior.

[misterguyx]

Friday Check In

Today's body:


Weight: 187
BF Estimate, Homepedics Scale "Athletic Male": 8%
Body Mass Index: 25!!!!!
Body Fat Estimate from Neck to Waist ratio: 13.5%
Body Fat Estimate, Hopepedics Scale "Normal Male": 18.7%

Forgot my calipers at home, so will need to do that later.

[misterguyx]

Today's Friday Check In:

Relaxed


Relaxed, Posture Focus



Magazine Pose




This is essentially the secret behind SIX WEEKS TO A NEW YOU! They know darn well you're going to ignore the diet part, and it's a darn good thing people do, because a lot of us will lower our body fat AND put on a significant amount of lean body mass just by building lean mass at a rate that roughly corresponds to our fat's oxidation rate.

In true POUNDS of body fat, I have currently, after a two and a half weeks of bulking, between 15 to 20 pounds of body fat, depending on how you estimate. My goal is to drop to 7ish body fat by increasing my lean mass by another 10 lbs over 6 months. I should be able to do that DARN close to maintenance.

Keep in mind the only difference between top and bottom is pose, and the first picture in this thread and my current picture are only a couple weeks a part, and I gained 14 pounds of fat, fluid, and lean mass in between.

Just as a silly FYI, this is my "Fridge" inspiration poster:



Comparing us, I think it's clear I need to build muscle OUT to flatness before I'll be even close to liking how I look, but obviously I still have a several pound of fat difference even once I layer on some additional muscle.

[OhSoDangeRuss]

Hey man - way, way late on getting involved in this thread. I was doing some digging online through different info, etc. (per the usual - always on information overload - I approach things VERY similarly to how you do) and stumbled across this thread. Excellent info and wanted to touch base with you and see if we couldn't shoot some emails/messages back and forth - I wouldn't mind picking your brain a bit about what all you've experienced/learned since posting this (assuming you're still pushing/moving forward with everything). Hope to hear back!

-Russell