Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - All About Body Fat Percentage - How to Measure, What's Healthy & Not, & More...

Episode Date: April 29, 2016

In this podcast I answer the most common questions I get asked about body fat percentage, including how it's calculated, how to measure it, what's a healthy body fat percentage and what's not, and more... 04:08 - What is bodyfat percentage? 09:08 - What are healthy and unhealthy body fat percentages? 20:09 - How do you measure body fat percentage (DEXA, bio impedance, skin fold, etc.)? ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: How to Actually Increase Your Testosterone (and How Not to): https://legionathletics.com/how-to-increase-testosterone/ How Many Grams of Fat Should You Eat Per Day? http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-many-grams-of-fat-per-day/ Athletic Amenorrhea: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2941235/ How to Calculate Your Body Fat Percentage Easily & Accurately: https://legionathletics.com/how-to-calculate-body-fat/ AccuMeasure Personal Body Fat Tester: http://goo.gl/z2nzey Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by Legion, my line of naturally sweetened and flavored workout supplements. Now, as you probably know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that basically do nothing, and I've always had trouble finding products actually worth buying, and especially as I've gotten more and more educated as to what actually works and what doesn't. And eventually after complaining a lot, I decided to do something about it and start making my own supplements. The exact supplements I myself have always wanted. A few of the things that make my products unique are one,

they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored, which I think is good because while artificial sweeteners may not be as harmful, some people claim there is research that suggests regular consumption of these chemicals may not be good for our health, particularly our gut health. So I like to just play it safe and sweeten everything with stevia and erythritol, which are natural sweeteners that actually have health benefits, not health risks. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself. If you go on our website and you check out any of our product pages, you're going to

see that we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting evidence in the footnotes. So you can go look at the research for yourself and verify that we're doing the right thing. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in those studies that prove their effectiveness. This is very important because while a molecule might be proven to, let's say, improve your workout performance, not all dosages are going to improve your workout performance. If you take too little, you're not going to see any effects. You have to take the right amounts. And the right amounts are the amounts proven to be effective in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary

blends, which means you know exactly what you're buying when you buy our supplements. All of our formulations are 100% transparent in terms of ingredients and dosages. So if that sounds interesting to you and you want to check it out, then go to www.legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you will save 10% on your order. Also, if you like what I have to say in my podcast,

then I guarantee you'll like my books. I make my living primarily as a writer. So as long as I can keep selling books, then I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel

great without having to give up all the foods you love or live in the gym grinding away at workouts you hate. And you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks.

That's muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks, and you'll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike from Muscle for Life and in this podcast I want to talk about body fat percentage. I've written a lot about it and I still get quite a few questions about it and just, you know, I want to go over some of the common confusions people have about body fat percentage. I've written a lot about it and I still get quite a few questions about it. And just, you know, I want to go over some of the common confusions people have about body fat percentage and talk about how do you reduce body fat percentage and how does it depend on your body composition and talk about measuring body fat percentage and why pretty much every method that is out there is flawed in different ways

and also talk about what is healthy and what isn't healthy and some other things about body fat percentage. So obviously as it implies, body fat percentage is the percentage of your weight that is fat. So if you're a 200 pound guy and you have 20 pounds of fat, then your body fat percentage is 10%. If it were 40 pounds of fat, then your body fat percentage is 10%. Uh, if it were 40 pounds of fat, then it would be 20%. If you then lost 20 pounds of fat, let's say you lost 20 pounds of fat and you didn't lose any muscles. So now you weigh 180 pounds and you have 20 pounds of body fat. Now your body fat percentage would be whatever, somewhere around, you know, 12% or so. And then let's say, so now you're, you're 180 pounds, 12% body fat, and then you get up to, so you're with 20 pounds of body fat, right? So you get up

to, let's say you gain muscle, gain no fat, uh, and you get back up to 200 pounds with 20 pounds of body fat. Now you're at 10% body fat. So that little process there of, you know, losing fat, gaining like losing fat, not muscle, and then gaining muscle and not fat is, uh, illustrates how changes in body composition affect your body fat percentage. And really just kind of highlights the fact that that's really what we're going for. So when people are talking about body recomposition, for example, building muscle and losing fat at the same time, uh, obviously that's what it is, adding muscle, losing fat, that can cause profound changes to your body fat percentage, of course, even though your weight might not change

that much. This is the reason why I'm just kind of calling this out is in this, in the whole world of dieting and fitness, we always hear about weight loss, weight gain, weight, weight, weight, weight, weight. And that's fine. But really what we're talking about, if we want to be specific, is not just gaining weight or losing weight. It is gaining muscle and not fat and losing fat and not muscle. It's kind of like when you first learn about dieting, you learn about energy balance and caloric intake. And that's fine. That's a good place to start. You need to know that, you know, in order to, uh, lose weight or lose fat, you need to be in a state of negative

energy balance. You need to be in a caloric deficit. That's good. But then when you take that a bit further though, and you, and you learn that, you know, okay, if you just want to see pounds go down on the scale or just see pounds go up on the scale, then a calorie is a calorie. Uh, just, you know calorie. Just work with energy balance and you'll be able to achieve that. But if you want to build a physique, if you want to gain muscle and not fat, now, of course, a proper bulk, you're going to gain some fat. But if you want to maximize the muscle gain and minimize the fat gain, and when you're losing fat, if you want to maximize the fat loss and minimize the

muscle loss, you need to go beyond calories and you need to go into macronutrients, you know, protein, carb, and fat. And then even beyond that would be micronutrients and making sure that you're providing your body with the essential nutrients it needs to do all the things that it needs to do. And that also extends those benefits extend, not it's not just quote unquote health, like, you know, whatever that is, it's just kind of a term but no i mean there are very uh real benefits and very noticeable benefits in the gym outside of the gym to eating a nutritious diet you know we could say it's quote unquote a clean diet or whatever but um it's not all about just calories and macros. So in the same way, when we're talking about weight, what we really should be thinking with is, you know, breaking that down into

weight in terms of muscle and fat. And along those lines, I should also mention BMI, which stands for body mass index. And it's an expression, it's a numeric expression of the relationship between your height and your weight. And you've probably seen BMI thrown around. And you have BMI calculators online. And you calculate your BMI by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared. And it will give you a number. And if your number is in a – there are different ranges. You have underweight.

You have normal. You have overweight. BMI is more a tool for assessing the overall fatness of a population. It's not as useful on an individual basis because muscle weighs quite a bit. So someone like me, according to the BMI scale, I'm borderline overweight, even though I'm about 8% body fat. Of course, it doesn't make sense, but it's because I have a lot more muscle than the average person. So if I were just one little person in a big sample of people that were being analyzed, I wouldn't be influencing the sample much at all.

But when you try to apply that tool just to one individual, it's not very useful. So body fat percentage is much more useful because it gives you insight into body composition. And of course, even when we're looking at a population, it would be much more useful to know, uh, yeah, you know, look, go beyond BMI and, and understand a bit more about the body comp, the average body composition of the population. And that's where that type of research is going. But BMI, it just is, it's still in use and it's still around. And I still, people sometimes ask me, uh, or they're, they are judging their progress by BMI and I wouldn't do that. All right. So now let's talk about healthy and unhealthy body fat

percentage ranges for both, uh, guys and girls. And, um, there's, I've seen a lot of opinions out there on this. I mean, there are opinions that if you're a guy under 10% body fat, that that's just unhealthy and it's unsustainable and it's going to wreck your hormones and blah, blah, blah. And that's just not true for girls. It's generally the same things are said about, about girls that are under 20% body fat. And usually it's thrown in there that you're going to, you're going to lose your periods and you know, that's going to be even worse for your body and so forth. And so the generally accepted ranges for body fat are you have essential levels, which means that this is the bare minimum amount of fat that is needed

to stay alive because fat isn't just a metabolically inert substance. It's involved in the production of hormones and other things. So if you were to lose too much fat, you would eventually die. And in men, that's about two to 4%. And in women, it's about nine to 11%. Um, and then we get into the athletic range, which is for men, that's about six to 13%. And for women, it's about 14 to 20%. And then you, when we move up to the generally kind of fit where you look just fit and that's 14 to 17% in men, 21 to 24% in women. And then there's the normal average body fat percentage of just people out there, which is about 18 to 25% in men and 25 to 31% in women. And then overweight obese would be, you know, 26% and up in men and about 32% and up in women. Now, obviously when we're talking about essential levels of body fat, the only people that ever

really get into that range are competitive bodybuilders. So that's just not applicable to us. Uh, the, you know, shredded type of look that, that a lot of people want, both guys and girls, um, is usually about the six to 7%, maybe 8% range in guys. And I would say 15, 16, 17% in girls, you know, the low end of that, like 6% is very, very lean. It's very hard to maintain. I would say the only people, I've worked with a lot of people, and the only people that really come to mind that have been able to maintain that for long periods of time without drugs are people that just genetically have been very lean their entire lives. So for them, it was like they may have started around 9% body fat, 8% body fat, and then they cut down to 6% or so, and it's easy for them to stay there just because of genetics.

But I myself have tried it. I've gotten that lean before for photo shoots and stuff, but it's really just not sustainable. I just don't feel good. I'm not able to eat enough food without gaining some fat back. So, you know, that's just the way it is. And for girls, the same thing goes for that 15, 16% look, which is very lean. Your skin is very tight. You don't have much fat to grab anywhere. Definitely not in your torso. And again, really the girls that I have emailed with or just spoken with that have been able to stay that lean were just genetically predisposed to

being very lean. So I would say that a more sustainable and realistic goal to shoot for for guys is, let's say, if I were to say one number, I'd say about 8%. Everyone can do that and everyone can maintain that healthily. In girls, I would say, let's say 18% is something I think that everyone can do. Now, of course, there are exceptions. I mean, some people are predisposed to being fatter than others. And some people definitely have a harder time losing fat than others and especially stubborn fat. And there are genetic factors in play. Nobody is genetically doomed to being fat. That's not true. No one's default is overweight or obese, but some people are definitely, definitely able to get leaner

and stay lean much easier than other people. Now, this idea that 8% body fat, for example, is too lean or 18% body fat is too lean for for healthy hormone production um there's just no evidence of this i mean i've seen people try to cite studies of natural bodybuilders like case studies where natural bodybuilders were uh prepping for a show up to even six months in some case and then followed even six months after so you have like a 12 month case study of a natural bodybuilder and what happened to their hormones. Um, but again, you're looking at someone that got down to four or 5% body fat who is in a caloric deficit for six plus months and training very hard. And, um, you know, that's, that, that's just not, you can't use that to say that, uh, someone at 8%,

maybe exercising like myself four to six hours a week, uh, is, uh, you can't, you can't equate those two, those two scenarios. Ironically, research actually shows that leanness is associated with higher levels of anabolic hormones. And, uh, I've written about that and I'll, I'll link an article down below where you can read about specifically it's on testosterone, but I talk about, you know, that, that relationship. Um, and there's also obviously a relationship between your fatty, your fat intake and your, and your hormone levels. So if you are eating a very, very low fat diet, um, let's say less than 15% of your calories per day, and also very low in saturated fats. So if you're having basically no saturated fat and you're in your, in less than fat and less than 15% of your daily calories are coming from fat,

then that can impair hormone production. But again, that's not related to body fat level. And if you listening, if you know of any evidence that shows that a guy being at 8%, 9%, let's just say 7% to 9% body fat can negatively impact hormone levels, then send it my way. And I'd love to check it out because I've looked for it extensively. I've maintained this myself for quite some time. Um, I don't, uh, actually know what my testosterone

levels are because I don't get blood tests because I don't really have a reason to, although I actually did get a blood test just recently, a urine test, because I want to get whole life insurance and they require it. So unfortunately they don't, they don't test hormone levels, which is kind of strange and they don't test micronutrient levels. They just have, it's like a, it's, it's just a full metabolic panel. So it tells you, um, your, you know, your liver health and your, your blood glucose, uh, how, how your body deals with glucose, how well it deals with glucose and it, and you're talking about your kidney health and blah, blah, blah. I posted an image on it on Instagram because I thought it was kind of cool.

And the person that I'm working with on the life insurance, she said it's actually possible that the lab, which is Quest Diagnostics, that they may still have the blood, so then I can now separate to the life insurance because the life insurance company,, cause the life insurance company or, you know, the, the, they pay for the, for the test. Um, but I might be able to, if they still have the blood, I could then just personally pay and then they could run it for hormones and micronutrients, which I'd love to do. But my point is I don't have any symptoms of low testosterone.

I sleep well, I have a good sex drive. Um, I, my workouts are good. I don't, you know, I just don't really have any symptoms of low testosterone. So I'd be pretty shocked if my testosterone were low. So that's me personally. And then also I've worked with now, I mean, I've worked with thousands of people. And because I've been in touch with people for quite some time, I've worked with quite a few guys that started out fairly overweight and then have gotten into the sub-10% body fat range. And just now, like me, just kind of stay there% body fat range. And just now like me, just kind of stay there because they like it and they feel good. They look good. And again,

I've never heard from one person actually that has done that, that has either gotten, I've heard from people that have went and got blood tests and their hormone levels were fine. And I've never heard from someone that had symptoms of low T or who just had low T before they got, before they got lean, their T was up here and then they did it. And now their T's down here. I've just never come across it. And the same thing applies for, for women as well. I've worked with quite a few women that went from very overweight to very lean or moderately overweight, moderately overweight to, to, to very lean and just stayed there. And when they know what to do with it,

of course it requires that you know what you're doing with your dieting and that you're not overtraining because like, for instance, if you are, and this would have nothing to do with being lean, but let's say that you diet down, you get really lean, and you don't want to really eat, you don't want to reverse diet, you don't want to increase your calories because you're afraid that you're going to get fat. So you kind of just keep your calories in this low range, which let's say it's still a mild caloric deficit, not enough to really notice anything.

Like maybe it's just enough where you would lose maybe a pound of fat, I don't know, every six weeks or something, but it's when your body is in a caloric deficit, it places stress on the body. It just does. So you have this mild deficit and maybe you're, you're still pushing it really hard in your workouts. And, um, let's say at the end of your cut, you were doing really as much cardio as you could do without just blowing yourself up and pushing hard in your training, your, in your lifting, and you don't want to drop the cardio out. And so your cortisol levels are just going to continue to rise. I mean, the longer that you're in a, you're in a caloric deficit,

if you're pushing hard in the gym, that's just what happens. Your cortisol levels rise and that will suppress anabolic hormone levels and particularly testosterone. So you could be in this situation where now you might have symptoms of low testosterone. Maybe you get tested and your testosterone is low, but if you assume that,

Oh, well it must just be because I'm lean. Well, no, if you were to start eating more food, come out of the deficit, let's say cut back on the cardio, just give your body a break, cortisol levels come up, testosterone levels, or sorry, cortisol levels come down, testosterone levels come up. So my point is, is it's not as simple as, oh, well, point is, is it's not as simple as, oh, well I was 15% and my, my testosterone levels were here and now I'm 8% and they're here. So it must be because I'm 8%. And I should also note that, um, I've, I've written about this. I'm trying to, I'll have to see where, um, I'll find it and I'll link an article down below. But the, uh, reason there's, there's research on this. The reason why

some women lose their periods when they're cutting is not because they're getting too lean or it's not because they're eating enough fat. They're eating an inadequate amount of fat in their diets. It's because that's what can happen when you're in a caloric deficit as a woman. Your body has a priority of things that it needs to do. And it, you know, all these things require energy and period is not very high on that list. So what can happen is, and I've seen this quite a few times, just working with women and not, not a crazy caloric deficit. I mean, just like a real standard, uh, you know, a woman that starts in her, in her 20, somewhere in the 20% body fat range. She, and then she just

gets rolling and it's not like she's even at a super shredded pointer or something, but period goes and, um, you know, and then it, she just keeps going. And then when you, when she comes out of the deficit, it comes back. And I've seen that many times and, um, that's been, there's research on it. So, um, that's a bit of a myth that it's either the low body fat percentage. If, if, uh, a woman is at that point where she's very lean or it's, you know, not enough fat intake is what causes the period loss, that's not it. It's just the fact that you're in a caloric deficit. All right, so now let's talk a bit about measuring body fat percentage because this is what a lot of people want to know. There's a lot of people just say, hey, people will send you pictures. Can you guess my body fat percentage?

And the first thing you need to know is every method that's out there has flaws. You're never going to get a 100% accurate reading of your body fat percentage. And yes, that applies to DEXA, which many people think is incontrovertibly accurate, and that's not true. So first, let's talk quickly about bioimpedance devices, handhelds. They pass an electric current through your body and they measure the resistance to it, and then use some math to guesstimate your body fat percentage. So there are problems here, just methodological problems. I mean, there's the fact that electricity will take the path of least resistance through your body. And obviously water is the, is going to, is more conductive than tissue. So hydration status can really throw off readings where if you are hydrated,

it's going to, you're going to, you're going to read different than if you're dehydrated. Um, also when you last worked out is, uh, it can affect, um, your readings when you last eight can affect your readings or just, there are a lot of variables that can mess up these readings. And unfortunately I, if it were, if you could just test under the same conditions and you get a different reading, it may be inaccurate as well. But if it were at least consistently inaccurate, you could use it to track how your body fat percentage is changing over time. Unfortunately, these devices are just, there are too many ways that the readings can be influenced for it to even be useful for that. So I wouldn't So I just don't recommend them at all.

I'd say don't even bother with handhelds and don't bother with scales. And these problems even extend to the fancier type of BIA devices that you'll find in doctor's offices as well. So then there's skinfold testing where you use calipers to pinch different areas and measure how thick your skin is pinch different areas on your, pinch skin and measure how thick your skin is on different areas of your body. And then you use those measurements to, you know, put them into an equation and then it gives you a guesstimation of your body fat percentage. The problem here is the math just works for some people and it tends to be accurate for,

you know, for some people and it just doesn't work for other people. And that's probably mainly because it's influenced by the fact that people hold their fat in different areas of their bodies. Now that said, the way that I personally like to track my body fat percentage is a caliper. And I'll put the, what is it? It's called AccuMeasure. Yeah, AccuMeasure. If you look at it on Amazon, look up AccuMeasure. I like their caliper and I like their method because it's a one site method that even one, I've actually found it to be fairly accurate now because, again, I've just worked with so many people. And you can also guesstimate body fat percentages by just pictures, which I'll link an article down below if you want to go check out some of the science behind what I'm talking about and also see some of these pictures where you could look at yourself in the mirror and you could guess and say, okay, I looked at you about 13% to 15%, and that would be just as accurate really as using a caliper or using a BIA or even DEXA or whatever.

But this particular caliper, which for YouTube, I'll link down below specifically to it, but if you're listening, you can find it on Amazon. It's called AccuMeasure is the the company and they just make a caliper and their method, um, including, so it's a one site method and then, which is, is it's, you do it right here in your abdomen. And then, uh, the, how, how that correlates to body fat percentage, meaning the math behind it. Um, they, they, they just did a good job because it tends to be, um, fairly accurate with a lot of people. And even if it's not accurate for you though, even if it, let's say it puts you at 2% or 3% They just did a good job because it tends to be fairly accurate with a lot of people. And even if it's not accurate for you, though, even if, let's say, it puts you at 2% or 3% higher or lower than you actually are, what's good about a one-site method with a caliper is that allows you to track changes in your body composition over time. So if, and particularly in, so like if your waist is expanding, if you are gaining fat in, in the, over your

abs and that, in that area of your body, you are gaining body fat all over your body. That's a very reliable indicator of fat gain. And if your waist is shrinking, that's a very reliable indicator of fat loss. So because this caliper, um, and this method, they, they have a one site measurement in the ab abdomen area. If your skin is getting thicker in that area, your waist will also be getting bigger, which I also would recommend that if you really want to keep tabs on, on your body fatness, even if we just leave percentage out

of it, I would say, uh, measuring your waist at your navel and then calipering will that those are the two measurements you really need, uh, just to know what's happening. Waist measurement going down, caliper getting thinner, you are losing fat regardless of what's happening on the scale. Regardless of anything, you're losing fat. If they are going up, again, you are gaining fat regardless of anything else. And just to talk quickly on pictures, this can be tough because the amount of muscle somebody has is going to dramatically change how a certain body fat percentage looks. So like a person with a lot of muscle will look pretty good at 10% body fat. They're going to have abs. They're going to have good muscle definition.

But somebody who would say has very, very little muscle, has maybe a skinny fat type of look could also be at 10% body fat and they look very, very different. And that's, of course, because we're talking about relative quantities here to overall body weight. And what does that body weight composed of? If I were just to explain it briefly, most, most people, let's say guys are more interested in, when am I going to have abs? So if you can't see abs at all, then you are probably 16% body fat or higher. If you have a little bit of abs, you have outline of abs. When you, when, when you flex, you can see them a bit. You're probably in the 13 to 15%

range. Um, when you start to get in the, in the nine to 10, 11, 12% range, um, you have more abs, basically. Um, you don't have, you're not gonna have much vascularity. You're not going to have that dry kind of grainy look, but, uh, and you'll still have some skin, some fat you can pinch, especially in your lower abs and as you work around the sides, your obliques. When you start getting into the 7% to 8% range, that's when you're going to see abs without flexing, and when you do flex, it's going to be whatever, full six-pack. Around 7% for sure, you're going to start seeing vascularity. Now, some people are more vascular than others. I'm just not a very vascular person. Even when I'm at my leanest, I have a little bit of ab vascularity and, um, you know, vascularity around my obliques, but I'm not a super vascular person. If I get up to just even 10, 11% body fat, um, I don't really, I have no vascularity in my core

and even, you know, my arm vascularity goes away. So that's just the way that my body fat. I don't really, I have no vascularity in my core and even, you know, my arm vascularity goes away. So that's just the way that my body is. Some people though, are much more vascular, especially in their arms and shoulders and chest. I have like zero chest vascularity. I've never even seen a chest vein. I have a very little bit of shoulder vascularity. That's just genetics. I will just leave it at that for guys. And that's what most guys want to know is what body fat percentage do I need to be to have abs? And I'd say like at the point where you are happy with your abs, uh, or start becoming happy with them, I'd say is about 10%. And, and for girls, um, you know, I guess if I think about it, I, most of the focus is kind of on, on abs, although it's more just like having

a flat stomach, having some lines, not necessarily a six pack like guys. And in girls that really kind of starts around 20%. That's when you'll start seeing the outlines on the side. Um, and depending on your core development, you might also start seeing something down the middle. Um, and then when you, as you get, you know, each percentage point you drop below 20% makes quite a big difference here. So like 18% on a girl, um, generally is, is quite lean. That's where I wouldn't say it's necessarily abs. Again, it depends on how much core development there is in genetics, but that's where you're going to be able to see your TVA line, the lines, you're going to have the lines going down the side.

And you're going to probably be able to see not just line down the middle, but you're going to be able to see what kind of ab development you have in terms of each individual muscle. And as you get down to leaner, if you get down to 15% or so, that's when you have that kind of shredded look, you'll see that with, I mean, I think of CrossFit girls, some of these girls that have straight six packs, that's, you know, probably about 15% body fat. So we can also quickly talk about DEXA, which is an x-ray machine that scans your body and then uses some math to calculate your body fat percentage. A lot of people think that it's, you know, the absolute gold standard. And that is the final word on what your body and then uses some math to calculate your body fat percentage. A lot of people think that it's, um, you know, the absolute gold standard and that is the final word on what your body fat percentage is. But you know, there are quite a few studies that show otherwise,

uh, the error rates can be as high as any of these other methods actually. Um, and again, if you want to check this out, if you're listening, go to legionathletics.com and search for body fat or just percentage and you'll see a whole article I wrote. So I link these studies so you can go look at it for yourself. If you're on YouTube, it'll be linked down below. But just know that it can be very accurate, but also it can be very inaccurate. It can be off by as much as several percent, and not relative, but absolute.

So you could be 10%, and DEXA could peg you at 13 or 14%. You know, that's just, that's just the way it is. The same story goes for the BOD pod, which is, it's a machine that works similarly to hydrostatic weighing, which is where you get dunked in water, but it uses air instead of water. So it's measuring air displacement in a, in a capsule, basically. And it can be accurate. It can be very inaccurate. I mean, there was one study in this article that I wrote that it was off by like as much as 15% in an absolute sense. So somebody at 10%, you know, could come out 25%. And I've actually seen that. I've had people write me that they went and got a bod pod, and it was like a guy in the 20s, and he was clear.

I mean, a guy that had abs coming out at like 22% from a bod pod, and then they're just straight confused. And then I sent them this article, and they look at some of the research, and they're like, oh, well, okay, fine, that makes sense. So, again, I mean, I wouldn't even bother with a bod pod. If I were going to do anything fancy, I would do a DEXA just because I think that's the most likely to be accurate out of the methods that I would have to leave my home to do. But even then, I mean, I wouldn't go out of my way to get DEXA scanned because I would know that it's either just going to kind of confirm what is pretty clear, taking into account my caliper readings, taking into account how I look, or it's just going to come out. It could come out high or it even could come out low. Those are the most common methods that people use to determine body fat percentage. And if you want

to talk gold standard or real gold standard, what you'll find in some scientific studies, it's called a four compartment analysis, and it uses different testing methods to kind of piece by piece, separate your body into different categories, which is bone, water, muscle tissue, and fat mass. And then when they have all of those, so like there are certain methods that are good. This is how they like hydrostatic weighing is used for measuring bone density. It's a good way to determine bone density. And then they'll use a, you know, Dexa to determine bone mass and they'll use another method to determine this and that, whatever. And then they come out the other end with a very, very accurate breakdown of your body composition.

But, you know, that requires a team of scientists, and it requires a lot of time and whatever. I mean, no one's going to do it. But that's really the only way to know with a really high degree of accuracy what your body fat percentage is and what your body composition really is. How many pounds of fat do you really have on your body? Instead of all that, what I recommend is weigh yourself every 7 to 10 days. Take an average of those days. Don't stress out too much over the daily fluctuations in weight because water weight is going to fluctuate. Glycogen is going to fluctuate. Glycogen is going to fluctuate, you know, how you're, you're, how regular you are and going

to the bathroom is going to change things. So weigh yourself every day. And then every seven to 10 days, take an average and use that to tell you where you're going. If the average is going up and you're bulking great. If it's going down and you're cutting great, if you're maintaining and it's staying more or less the same, great. Um, but that's, that's a, that's a good way to avoid the kind of neurosis that can sometimes creep in when you step on the scale and you're a pound up, you know, from yesterday and you're like, what's wrong. And then, or if you're bulking and you're a pound down, did I lose muscle or whatever? Um, I also like to take weekly caliper measurements. Um, so now right now I'm maintaining, I don't really bother with it right now because you know, I just know where my

calories need to be and I just do it. But if you, if I were bulking or cutting and I was really wanting to make sure that, you know, I need to keep track and make sure that I'm rolling, then I'd also be taking weekly, uh, caliper readings, which again, I talked about the caliper that I like, and it's just a one, it's a one point measurement, uh, in the abdomen area. Um, and then I would take weekly, uh weekly waist measurements at the navel. And again, you know, you know, you want to see this going up or down based on what you're doing with your diet. And last but not least, I would recommend taking weekly pictures because sometimes you lose perspective on what's happening with your body when you look at yourself in the mirror every day.

And a great way to maintain perspective is to just take a picture every week and then see how that's changing over the course of, let's say, four or six weeks. And if you do all those things, then you're going to have a very, very good idea of what's happening with your body composition, even though you may not know your body fat percentage, but you will know where it's at approximately. And that's really all that matters. I mean, we're not talking about who cares whether, you know, you are, you are, or aren't six or 7% body fat. If you look the way you want to look and you feel good and everything's good, then that's all that matters, right? All right, so that's everything I wanted to cover in this podcast.

I just want to touch on all these points. These are a lot of things that I get asked about regarding body fat percentage. Stick to the topic and not be tangential. I hope you enjoyed it. I will see you either next week or the week after. Right now, I'm super just busy with some stuff for Legion. And also I'm working on, I'm going to be putting together, it's really going to be probably over the next six to 12 months. It's going to be quite a lot of work, but I'm going to be putting together a whole series of online courses that

are going to go over things that, you know, I originally, I was thinking like I could hold, I could write another book on that. I could write a book on this, on this. These are all things that, you know, I originally, I was thinking like I could hold, I could write another book on that. I could write a book on this, on this. These are all things that I've like really want to dive into and I want to cover in detail. Uh, but I think it'll actually be better to, I think it'd be cooler to have some online courses and I want to do it. Um, I want to put it, to put it on like an actual online course type platforms. There's a community. And so I'm looking into that. I may need to launch the first one, just more simple. Like, you know, I, if it's going to be maybe a package of, um, you know, if it's going to be an ebook type of thing with, there's going to be some tools. So there'll probably be some spreadsheets and stuff that come with it. Um, but going forward, I definitely would

like to put together a more, uh, you know, an online course type of thing with, uh, uh, where you're going to be logging in on the website and accessing all of your, all of your material and really build that out. Um, I think it'll be, I think it'd be great because there's like the first thing that I'm working on is going to dive really into meal planning and meal prepping. Now I've written a lot about it of course. Um, but one, I want to bring together a lot of things that I've written about all over the place and kind of create, here's a definitive, everything you need to know about planning your diet and preparing your diet and actually like preparing your food and making it work. And of course it's going to cover all the basics, calories and macros and so forth. But also I want to really dive deep into the nutritional side of

things and not just teach you about what are the, what are the essential nutrients that we need to be getting from our diets, but in what amounts do we need to be getting from getting them in? And how do we actually go about doing that in terms of planning out our diets? How do we, because you know, most people go as far as many people don't even, you know, eat,

they don't really pay attention to their fruit and vegetable intake. They might eat some vegetables here and there and some fruit here and there, but they're not necessarily hitting their two or three servings of vegetables a day or one to two servings of fruit a day every day, or at least five or six days out of the week. So there's a small percentage of people that care enough to do that. But even among those people, I personally don't know anybody that has really looked at what fruits and vegetables are they eating and what micronutrients are those providing and what areas of their diet are now good and what areas are in terms of a nutritional sense where they're going to be strong on maybe certain vitamins and

minerals and weak on others. So I want to put together something that will allow people that want to really micromanage their diet nutritionally and put together a system and make it very easy for meal planning kind of like on, you know, on a whole another level, which is something I'm excited for myself, actually, because it's something that I've been wanting to do. And then I realized, I was like, actually, if I'm going to do all this work and put all this together, I'm sure there are a lot of other people think it's a good idea. And they would want to do the same thing. Because the fact is, the nutritional content of your diet, The fact is the nutritional content of your diet, it actually makes quite a big difference in terms of it's not just this idea that you're more healthy, but it affects you emotionally.

It affects you mentally. It affects you physically. If you really get everything right, you're going to have better energy levels. You're just going to have a general better sense of well-being. You are going to see an improvement in your performance in the gym. And, I mean, if you want to see an example of this, just go check out some of the reviews on Amazon or on Legion's website for our multivitamin triumph. And these are the type of things that people commonly say. Now, there's obviously quite a bit more in triumph.

It's not just vitamins and minerals. commonly say. Now there's obviously quite a bit more in triumph. It's not just vitamins and minerals, but, uh, that is when, when, when you dive into this course and you see what a lot of the symptoms of deficiencies are of different nutrients, and you realize that deficiencies are a gradient scale type of thing. It's not like you're either, you know, a hundred percent good with no symptoms or a hundred percent bad with all symptoms. You know, you could be slightly deficient in something and have, you know, maybe shades of a few symptoms and not others. And, uh, but you don't quite realize that. And also if you have, let's say, you know, let's say if you are slightly deficient in four different

nutrients, each of those, one of the symptoms, let's just say is depression, right? And that there, there are examples of that, like even with B vitamins, for instance. Um, so if you, those cumulative effects, even though it might be just the volumes pretty low on, on each of those, uh, you know, cause you're not horribly deficient in it, but it does depress your mood a little bit, but then the cumulative effect could be actually, let's say it's a 20%. Let's see if we had to quantify – 20% depression and mood because of deficiencies in these four different nutrients. And so anyways, that's the idea for the first course, and it's pretty cool. I'm very excited for it personally. I do pretty well with diversifying my vegetable and fruit intake, and I do have chosen different fruits and vegetables that I eat and whole grains and stuff specifically because I know they're very rich in certain micronutrients, but I really want to, I really want to codify it

and make it a simple step-by-step type of system that everyone can use. Anyways, that wasn't even really meant to be a pitch. I'm kind of just talking cause I'm excited to get it done, but that's, that's going to be the first course. Then there are going to be many others. And so I'm going to probably be on a, I may, I may still keep my podcast every week, but it might be biweekly sometimes just because I really want to get this first course done. And I'm like really working my ass off to get it done amongst random things that I'm needed for with Legion, with new product launches and website stuff and email marketing stuff and blah, blah, blah. So if I don't see you next week,

I will see you the week after. And, um, that's it.