Body composition

[B3]

I am not concerned about my body weight but I am concerned of losing the body fat, how can I follow the advice my Zip fitbit gives me?

[B3]

I am trying to lose body fat, how do I do this with the advice with what the Fitbit gives me?

[Dominique]

Welcome to the community, @B3! I merged both of your posts into one, since you’re asking almost the same question in them.

In most cases (especially for someone who is at a normal weight, like you appear to be), losing body fat means losing weight in practice, which in turns means being in a caloric deficit. Since you said you’re not concerned about body weight (which I would understand as "I don’t need/want to lose weight"), you can have a moderate deficit and therefore lose at a moderate rate. Such an approach would ensure you would minimize lean mass loss.

There are several ways you can use your Fitbit Zip and your Fitbit account to support your fat loss plan. One is by setting higher activity goals (for instance, in terms of steps, calories burned, active minutes etc.) compared to your current baseline, and continue eating the same (without tracking your intake). The other one is to use your Fitbit account / the Fitbit app to track your intake (in addition to tracking your energy expenditure – calories burned – with your Zip). I personally use the first method (I’m what you could call an "intuitive eater"), but many community members have been using the second one with great success.

Engaging in some kind of resistance training is also a good idea when the aim is to improve body composition. As to what/how to eat in order to optimizing body composition, you may want to read this other topic. 

[B3]

I do want to lose weight as well as my body fat but how do you set up these goals?

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

Well, it’s up to you to decide, based on what you want to achieve. I’m currently on week 7 of a 12-week fat loss phase. I aim to lose between 0.25 kg and 0.50 kg per week. Graphically, it looks like this:

 

I weigh every morning and calculate the weekly average every Monday, which is my reporting day in the Weekly Weigh-In topic (which I use for accountability purposes).

My activity goals are around 3000 calories burned and between 15k and 20k steps. I don’t count the calories I eat, but I more or less eat the same things everyday, which makes things easier.