Body Fat Incresase

[rem810926]

I have been eating better in the past week and trying to stay away from bad, fatty foods. I weighed myself for the first time since starting this yesterday and have gained .6% body fat. I was doing this to lower my body fat percentage. Is this normal and will it decrease with time?

[Dominique]

You should look at changes in BF% over a longer period of time. One week is way too short in order to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions, one way or the other. Same with improving your diet: it will take some time (and consistency) before you see results in terms of health, well-being etc.

[bikerhiker · Accepted solution]

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@rem810926 wrote:

I have been eating better in the past week and trying to stay away from bad, fatty foods. I weighed myself for the first time since starting this yesterday and have gained .6% body fat. I was doing this to lower my body fat percentage. Is this normal and will it decrease with time?

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A human is meant to store fat and the purpose of that is protect the central nervous system by means of maintaining what is called the "Myelin Sheath", a fatty insulating layer that surrounds the nerve endings.  So having some body fat is good.  In fact, essential body fat for a woman should be around 8%, while a man can do with only 2% BF.  Essential body fat is part of the overall BF%, which is why women can't match the BF% of a man no matter how hard a woman tried to do it.  Women store much higher BF % than men do and that has to do with women being the pro-creator's of babies.  Men don't give birth to babies, so depending on your level of BF% to begin with, your body will regulate what it needs to maintain an equilibrium BF% that is essential for your health and well being and reproduction.  In fact, going below a critical level of BF% will disrupt a woman's menstrual cycle!

Having said that, reducing body fat has to do with lowering your insulin level.  While eating less fatty foods (like transfat and saturated fat) do help in lower BF% in terms of lowering your lipids, the main key to telling the body not to store body fat is to have a normalized blood sugar level.  Which means that, your sugar intake should be around 6 teaspoons a day (WHO - World Health Organization recommendation).  6 teaspoons a day roughly translates to about 24g of sugar.  Some doctors recommend 15g of sugar.  But whatever the recommendation is, too much sugar in your body raises your blood sugar level, which then raises your insulin level and any unused energy the body does not need quickly gets stored in your body as body fat.  You will be surprised to find that most foods and drinks you consume and that includes even "sparkling water with some kind flavour like lime, strawberry" can easily exceed the WHO sugar recommendation by a wide margin and raise your insulin level.  Even a bottle of orange juice can easily exceed that and that can raise your body fat faster than you trying to cut fatty foods.  You need to understand that "SUGAR" is the main enemy and we simply can't avoid it in certain situations like attending a conference or in a cruise ship where almost everything are ladened by excess sugar, hidden in everything you can conceive of. 

Having said that, a raise of 0.6% BF is not an alarm unless you are at a high 35-45 BF% range.  Cutting sugar intake to 24g or 15g per day will give you a more significant result than cutting fatty foods.  Not all fatty foods are bad and you need fat in your diet or else, you can not dissolve those vitamins A, D, E, K as they are fat soluble vitamins.  Meaning, these vitamins can only dissolve in your body with the presence of fat.

I've included a link to the BBC documentary about "The Truth about Sugar" which provides an easy to understand explanation of what sugar can do to your BF%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONXNKacNU_4

[SunsetRunner]

Those body fat scales are not accurate at all. They do have a margin of error and can inaccurately fluctuate. Take pictures, measure yourself, and go according to how your clothes fit to help you see results.

[Dominique]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

Those body fat scales are not accurate at all. They do have a margin of error and can inaccurately fluctuate. Take pictures, measure yourself, and go according to how your clothes fit to help you see results.

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I think it’s a case of YMMV. My own experience with now 5+ years of daily use of the Fitbit Aria doesn’t match the above. Day-to-day fluctuations are very small. For instance, all values during the past 4 weeks were between 13.1 and 12.6:

I’ve also found that BF% values reported by the Aria match visual indications found on sites such as this one: when the Aria says I’m around 20%, I look like the 20% guy, and when it says I’m around 15%, I also look more like the 15% guy. BF% values reported by the Aria are also consistent with body measurements: for instance, waist circumference moves pretty much in line with BF%.

While I agree with you it can be useful to take measurements and pictures, it’s not practical on a day-to-day basis, because it usually takes weeks if not months to be able to detect any noticeable changes. The scale, OTOH, can provide daily feedback. The key is to always use it under the same conditions and to look at averages/trends over time rather than at changes from one weigh-in to the next.

[moonwitchkitty]

I've been experiencing this problem as well. I've dropped a size, I know I have gained muscles. But my Body fat% has gone up. I haven't been eating anything fatty. Thank you for posting this question.  I'm curious myself.  

[Dominique]

@moonwitchkitty: over what period of time have you been tracking your weight and body fat%? Asking as I noticed your Fitbit account was created on Oct. 14, 2018, i.e. a couple of weeks ago. No one can gain any detectable amount of muscle mass in such a short time, and one can also only gain/lose a limited amount of body fat in that time. So if you are talking about BF% changes over two weeks, they likely reflects changes in water weight (bioimpedance scales are known to be very sensitive to the hydration level of your body).

[moonwitchkitty]

I have been tracking it for a few months now. I had a Polar account until last month. 

[rem810926]

I’ve been tracking it since I got the scale in 2016. My bod fat has since reduced and remained now that I’ve been eating better for a month.

Sent from my iPhone