Body Fat Scale Reviews - I work out 4-5 days a week, how come I have a BMI 27 and body fat 30%?

I work out 4-5 days a week, how come I have a BMI 27 and body fat 30%?

I know that the at-home body fat scales are not accurate and are suposed to be used to see how much you gain and lose.. well I gained, i twas 26 to begin with, and now it is 30% body fat. I am 5'4 and weigh 160 pounds but am size 10. I'm so confused, I work out 150 minutes a week (2 to 3 hours) yet I continue to gain fat. how is this even possible? Also I have a pretty good understanding of nutrition, fitness, weight loss and gain.... i eat pretty normally except for an excess of chocolate, how could that cause me to have so much body fat if I work off all the calories all the time? "An excess of chocolate," means that I eat chocolate every day, but I never eat candy bars or anything, its not like I have more than a serving or two of chocolate in any form... its usually random peices of chocolate, never a candy bar. or it is frozen yogurt which contains chocolate.

Public Comments

If you're not reaching your weight loss goals, decrease your Caloric intake. The chocolate in small amounts shouldn't make a big difference, but it sounds like you still may be consuming too much food. Track your Calores for a day or two just to be sure. Heart rate monitors are good too to see how many Calories you burn. I'm sure you know the body must lose weight if your Calorie expenditure is greater than your Calorie intake.
I realized once I started working out that I ate a lot more than I wanted to believe. I started journaling everything I ate...and found that sometimes when I browsed through the kitchen for some water, I'd add 100 or 200 calories just by getting a tiny snack that I barely considered as 'eating.' I'd highly recommend journaling everything you eat for a week--but be honest with yourself because nobody else will be looking at this. Use an online calculator to estimate how many calories you are actually consuming. (I didn't want to actually know how many calories I was eating when I recognized how much snacking I did). Cutting out chocolate might be a bit hard, but limit it to twice or three times a week, and go from there. Also, if you are naturally curvaceous, you will have body fat in your breasts/butt, so take this into consideration. Unfortunately, 2-3 hours a week isn't enough to lose weight in all honesty. I'd suggest working out an hour a day if you want to see true results, but give yourself one rest day if you decide to do this. I've watched 'the biggest loser" for a while and I always wonder how they lost so much weight so quickly...then I found out they exercise between 4 and 6 hours a day. UGH! Best of luck. Try finding a buddy to exercise with you which could help keep you motivated when you'd rather eat chocolate than run a few miles.
Unfortunately, if you really want to lose weight, you can't really eat all that "normally". You should be cutting out breads, starches... eating vegetables upon vegetables. What do you do to work out? Have you been increasing your workout? Whether that means by time, or by weight. Like, if you walk uphill... are you increasing your incline? It sounds to me that your diet might not be working. Maybe if you gave us an idea of what you eat on an average day, we'd be able to help you more.
There is a little-known correlation between oxygen balance in the body and overweight -- clearly you are not OBESE! Because of its chemical components, fatty tissue scavenges for oxygen. Muscle tissue requires much less oxygen. You have only so much oxygen in your blood and body fluids and even that is affected by what you eat (sugar in chocolate also scavenges oxygen from your body). Maybe if your workouts were less aerobic (rapid heartbeats for prolonged period keeps oxygen unbalanced) and more anaerobic (weight lifting, for example) you'd see a gradual decrease in BMI, because the "extra" oxygen now available will help metabolize that fatty tissue.
I agree with addressing the issue of toxins in the body. You story sounds alot like mine. I ate 5-6 small balanced meals a day and excercised alot, yet I had stubborn fat that I could not get rid of. I was approached one day by one of the participants in the step aerobics class that I teach about a nutritional-cleansing program. She explained that because we live in such a toxic world, we are chronically exposed to these harmful substances, and our bodies are filled with toxins. One of the ways that the liver deals with these impurities is to increase body fat to encase them to protect the body from their influence. I learned that diets are not successful for long term weight loss because they don't address the need to cleanse the body of impurities. I took her advice and did a 9 day total body cleanse and I lost 5 lbs and 12 inches in 3 days and by the end of the 9 days I lost 8 lbs. and 20 inches. After about 6 weeks on this program, I had lost 21 lbs. The nice thing is that this wasn't just water weight, but impurities and fat. My energy level has soared, my digestion has improved greatly, and my daily headaches are gone. I feel amazing. You can learn more by listening to a doctor's presentation on this. Just visit www.cleanse4wtloss.isagenix.com and watch the video called "Are You Toxic?" Hope this was helpful.
Are you keeping a food journal? We forget what we eat and how much we eat. It is called Food Amnesia. I find that keeping a journal of what I eat keeps me on track and then I don't over eat. You may not be getting enough calories and your are burning your lean body mass and this increases your fat %. The is confusing I know but a registered dietician can explain about this issue. You have to fuel your workout so you don't burn all of your calories. It sounds like your are doing too much cardio and not eating enough to fuel the workout. Are you weight training at least 2 times a week? Have you consulted a personal trainer? They can get you on track with the right amount of aerobic exercise and weight training. Then keep your calories at a minimum of 1,200 calories. Add about 200 to 400 calories for exercise and you should see a difference in a month or two. Good Luck!! CB
Where's the confusion? Too much coming in and not enough coming out means a surplus for storage. It's just that basic. If that is not the answer you were looking for - get involved in higher intensity training. Sam - moderator of Raw Fitness in Yahoo Groups www.nakidfitness.com
I had this EXACT same problem, and stumbled upon the solution by accident. I am now convinced that the reason some people hold onto excess fat in certain areas that never seems to burn is that some bodies do not metabolize as well some of those artificial and processed ingredients in the typical modern diet. While I can only offer you an experience-based hypothesis and not a scientifically-based conclusion, I believe that the various by-products of the "un-natural" foods we eat are viewed by our digestive system as foreign, and get stored in the fat next to our skin as the body's protective way of keeping those mystery substances away from harming our vital organs. I think the body refuses to burn the fat that is isolating these "waste" substances (some people like to call these "toxins," so whatever you want to call them) because it does not have a safe means of clearing them out of the body. Again, while I'm guessing here, I would say that the culprits are probably things like artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and anything that the body does not recognize as natural food. My story: In 2005-2006, I trained for and ran a marathon over a 6-month period. I lost zero weight and still had cellulite covering my thighs in all of my marathon pictures. I have always had a bit of extra fat on the backs of my arms, and I had never been able to lose it from there or my thighs or butt, no matter what I did. In 2007, I did a raw vegan diet just out of curiosity, but was too busy (or lazy?) to work out AT ALL (not that I recommend this). Even though I was only eating raw fruits, vegetables, greens, nuts, seeds, etc., I was eating a normal amount of calories (this is a pretty big volume of food). Within a couple of weeks, to my great surprise, I had lost most of the excess fat in these problem areas. I also had a lot of other interesting side effects, such as feeling really awesome and no longer getting sunburns - which is really weird considering I am one of the fairest-skinned people I know, blonde hair blue eyes and everything. Years earlier, I had taken medication over a period of a few months that I had side effects from for over a year after I stopped taking it. When I went on and off the medication initially, I saw tracing lights, which was a side effect of the medicine (not normal for me :)). Within a few days of the raw vegan diet, I saw these tracing lights again, and I am convinced that the medication or by-products of it were trapped in my fat until the cleaner diet enabled them to be released and disposed of by my body. The thing I can't explain is why the raw vegan diet gives your fat the green light to let go of all the junk it's storing. But - if it works, it works. If you are interested, just Google "raw vegan diet" because there are tons of resources online. You don't even have to do it 100% to see your fat disappear. I keep recommending this a whole year later to everyone I know because the results were so phenomenal and the diet was so extremely easy (no cooking!) and satisfying (keep eating all day long if you want!). It is so very liberating to discover that keeping excess weight off is really as easy as this, and when you eat this way, you instinctively know it's right and healthy. FYI - there are a lot of raw chocolate bars available now. I think it's ironic how sometimes our exceptional level of understanding of nutrition and fitness is exactly what gets in the way of it. I say ignore what people tell you should work from an intellectual or logical standpoint, and keep experimenting and find what acutally works for you, being open to the unexpected.
Hi I have joined a website that has a food diary avalible if you send in your real/honest eatting for a week and exercise they calculate your calorie intake and outtake I found it very helpful as I did not realises the picking I do throught out the day all adds up to a meal or more! its called www.interweight.com hope this helps it also has forums to share info on and a chat room and lots of info for nutrition/wellbeing etc.....
Sounds like there may be a combination of things that you may be able to do to help decrease your weight. First, You may need to limit your intake of chocolate to 1 small piece every other day. Calories are calories and unless you are eating a small piece of dark chocolate for the possible health benefits, those are empty calories that are doing you no good towards your goal. Second, try increasing your exercise program. To lose weight you should be exercising most days of the week for 45-60 minutes at a moderate-high intensity, and surely add resistance training 1-2 times per week. Try increasing the intensity level for small bouts of time, 1-2 minutes with a recovery period of 3-5 minutes at your normal level. This gives you body a little boost of extra calories burned and helps increase your fitness level. Another factor that may play a role, albeit small, make sure that you weigh yourself at the same time on the same day of the week and make sure that you are hydrated. Sublte changes such as those will make a difference in the reading. Good luck!