A caliper test said I'm borderline obese, but the person told me to only lose 18lbs?

Question

He did a 4 point caliper test, testing my tricep, abdomen, hip and upper thigh. It came out to my bmi being 30.07%. He grabbed a lot of my arm and thigh, and it actually hurt, so maybe he grabbed too much skin? Anyway.. if I really am borderline obese, should I be losing more than 18lbs? He said if I lose 18lbs my BMI will drop to 20% or probably lower. He also said that I, at 158lbs and 5'3", should not go below 130 for my base weight or risk my BMI going too low. I'm more confused now than before.

LOL, I don't know about whether or not he was trying to be polite, it's not his job to be polite. If he was, I may have to find another nutritionist.

Answer 1

Please understand that Body Mass Index (BMI) is NOT the same as your Body Fat Percentage. These are two completely separate issues.

It can be quite confusing, but body mass index is a very general estimate of body fatness determined by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in metres. Your body mass index is NOT your body fat percentage. For example, your BMI comes to 28 but this does not mean you have 28% body fat. If someone has a BMI of 20, this does not mean they have 20% body fat, etc.

A body mass index of between 18.5 and 25 is considered healthy, a BMI of 25-30 is overweight a BMI of over 30 is obese. You are technically overweight according to BMI, but you will see in a minute that BMI can be misleading.

A healthy body fat percentage for the average woman is between 18% and 32%. So healthwise, you're body fat percentage of 30% is acceptable. There have been studies comparing Body Mass Index and Body Fat Percentage and they actually found those with a BMI of 25 had around 30% body fat on average. It appears that a lot of your extra weight comes from having a high muscle mass and/or a larger frame rather than excess fat, so you do not need to be losing ridiculous amounts of weight to reach an ideal body fat percentage.

If you are currently 158lb and 30.07% body fat, this means you have 47.5lb of body fat and 110.5lb of lean body mass. If you were to lose 18lb of body fat and retain ALL of your lean body mass, then your weight would be 140lb and your body fat percentage would become approximately 21%.

However, it is very difficult when losing body fat to retain all of your lean body mass unless you are taking supplements and doing intensive strength training and you may find you do lose some muscle as well as fat. You should do strength training and ensure you get plenty of protein to retain as much muscle as possible. You do not want more than 1/3 of your weight loss to be from muscle. The more muscle you lose, the more body fat you will need to lose to reach your target body fat percentage.

Hope I haven't confused you any more!

Good luck with your weight loss : )

Answer 2

for you to go from 30% body fat to 20% (optimum) you would have to lose 18-20 lbs of fat. i'm not quite sure why he said going below 20% body fat is unhealthy because it is surely not unhealthy for a woman to have lower body fat than that, it's just not very common among those who are not competitive athletes.

Answer 3

My guess is he was trying not to offend you. You know how some women get......

At 5'3", you could probably drop 40 pounds or more and not miss it. I can say it because I'm out of arms reach and we're not married.