The Body Fat Scale

Most people who’ve been to the gym for a while have this.

It’s a special scale which “calculates” your body fat %.

It’s not very accurate. People put way too much weight in it. It thinks I’m 400% 🙄

It might sound like I have a bone to pick with this, but I actually love them.

They’re super useful if used properly.

These scales work strangely.

They run a small current through your body and measure resistance.

This is thrown through a special equation based on gender, height, race, age. It’s an equation that differs from scale to scale. It’s not very accurate.

but.

It’s consistent.

Inaccurate + consistent → insight into minimal changes that are happening.

and I mean really insightful.

• Am I heading on the right track?

• Am I getting a good trend of fat loss?

• Am I overdoing the fat gain here?

You just can’t use it to say I have x% bodyfat or y kg of muscle.

So here’s what I do to take advantage of bodyfat scales. and yes i genuinely do consider this to be a vital part of making good progress

The Method

Get yourself a bodyfat scale first of all 🙄 link

Create a daily habit where you weigh yourself in the morning.

Get up and pee + empty bowels. Step on scale and weigh. Repeat every single day forever.

Some people advise to weigh yourself once a week, that’s weird…

On any given day you can be ± 2kg.

Imagine you weigh yourself when you’re 2kg lighter, and then on a day where you’re 2kg heavier.

“I’m so fat how did I gain 4kg in one week. I need to cut back on the calories.”

No… it just wasn’t averaged out.

Those daily sessions where you’re trying to standardise the waste in your body will end up averaging out to show true trends.

This is what lets me work out how my progress is going, even if the chart looks super weird on the day to day.

Depending on what your current goals are you’d be following one of two paths.

• TDEE maintenance

• Weight maintenance

Total Daily Energy Expenditure maintenance has you building muscle whilst your fat stays the same as muscle gain comes under TDEE. This maintenance has you gain weight, even though you’re at maintenance calories.

Weight maintenance has you stay at the same weight and build muscle whilst you lose fat equally.

Pick either, both work splendidly.

Each path will be easy to monitor through the trends you see.

• TDEE maintenance if muscle gain is equal to weight gain, your on the weight track

• Weight maintenance if weight stays the same and bf% goes down, your on the right track

This daily habit will also make sure you’re reminded of what you’re working towards, and it’ll keep you doing an action first thing towards that goal.

Here’s an extra combo I try and get people to throw in.

Start using this combo when you’re ready to take progress to the next level and move away from recomping to maxing growth without fat gain.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of getting nutrition advice from me you’d know I rave on and on about Cronometer.

This is the Cronometer combo.

Most bodyfat scales let you share the health data to your phone, and Cronometer can import this. this starts to get quite insane

Now that I’ve got this I can take a look and compare my fat gain/loss trends.

This literally tells me my real maintenance, which is really insane if you think about it.

1. Calculate the estimate for your fat gain/loss from your BF trends

   1. Grab your weight gain trend in the last x time

   2. Subtract your muscle gain trend in the last x time

   3. You now have your fat gain/loss in the last x time

2. Take a look at your average calories in the last x time on Cronometer

3. Divide the fat Δ by the amount of weeks in your time range the triangle means change

4. Take this number in grams and add to your average calories

5. You now have your real maintenance

Follow this number and increase calories when you start to see fat loss occurring.

It’s really that easy.

Now make sure to go grab those bodyfat scales and get some insane progress.

Literal method I’ve never seen anyone talk about.

Finding your weight maintenance calories is the furthest I’ve seen this taken (you don’t remove muscle gain from the calculation). Even that is rarely talked about.

This is the type of gold you subscribe for.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher

P.S. If you’re not using it already please please please grab Cronometer. It’s much better than MyFitnessPal or anything else you’d find, and it lets you scan barcodes for free.