About two years ago I had to pull myself back into shape and tracked my body fat as an empirical marker to achieve that.

I got it down to 12% pretty quickly. Since then I have been bouncing around the 11-12% area without deviating much. It is an achievement to squeeze that extra 2% body fat out of my body.

I measured my body fat this morning before the ab/core workout. This time it had gone down a little more to 9.1%. I don't doubt there is some variance in those measuring instruments but since it is done at the same time each week I am hoping that it is useful in relative terms.

I rarely use dailyburn.com but it is good for charting body weight and body fat. The graph above is from there and includes my body fat measurements from 2007 and early 2008.

One of the interesting aspects of that graph is the body fat is not correlated to my loss and gain of weight. When I was approximately 18% body fat my weight was around 185 lbs. When I dropped to 12% body fat my weight was 164 lbs. I have since eaten my way up to 172 lbs with the goal of hitting 175 lbs. So my 9% measurements have been at the 172 lbs mark.

Update 7.3% Body Fat.

I measured my body fat this morning and it was 7.3% which is the lowest I have been. I am probably low enough that the amount of hydration is having significant effects on the readings. I do an ab/core work out with a physical trainer on saturdays and will take my body fat measurement again to see what the variation is.

I have managed to achieve the dropping of body fat in conjunction with an increase in weight. I am trying to eat my way up to 175 lbs if not 180 lbs. When I had the surgery on my shoulder I dropped down to 165 lbs as I couldn't work out, swim or run; and was very limited in what I could do physically.

I have tried to take my eating up a notch and eat more than I used to. I am also increasing the amount of times I work out so that it all gets consumed one way or another. For instance today I worked out for an hour in the morning, and then at lunch time I went and swam. It means I am constantly ravenous, however, if I skip lunch and dinner, as the quick dip in the graph from two days ago shows, I can lose up to 3 lbs over night.

This maps body fat and body weight fluctuations side by side from September to October 2009. It is interesting to note that as my weight dips so too does my body fat. I am trying to eat my way up to 176lbs but that comes at the cost of my body fat increasing as well. My body fluctuation are about three lbs a day. I hit 179lbs in the evening and am back to 174 in the morning.

My body fat has been hanging around the high 9s for a while now. I am slowing gaining more weight, but it is proving a difficult task. I am now seeing a physical trainer twice a week. The advantage in using a physical trainer is that they push you harder than you ever can yourself. Additionally they work over all your muscle groups so you get more consistent and even growth. Usually a person working out on their own focuses on what they are good at and their body knows how to cheat.

We have been doing an ab/core class with a physical trainer for about three months now and our bodies are getting stronger and stronger. So the physical trainer is using repetitions and sequences to tire our muscles down so that at the end we have sore muscles.

I am doing a leg workout on wednesdays and an ab/core workout on saturdays with the trainer. The rest of the week I am doing a mix of muscle groups, mainly though, I focus on chest and arms. It is working out well. I have thickened up recently and am hoping for about two to four more lbs to come from my legs in the next few months. It might get me to 180lbs.

I check my body fat every day at the gym using a little hand held device like this. It asks for fitness (athlete, normal, etc), gender, height, weight and age before it sends an electric impulse through your hands to determine your body fat.

Since my yearly timer clicked over today, I entered 39 instead of 38. The physical trainer told me to try it as age 55 and as age 25 and see how the result is affected. I am currently at about 11% body fat as I am trying to put on muscle and am having to eat a large amount of calories to do so. However at age 55 my reading was 14% and at age 25 my reading was 8%.

The reason for the difference is visceral fat which collects around the organs in the stomach and increases as you age. So the body fat machine compensates for that which makes it less accurate. These machines have a large error rate anyway, but as long as the same machine is used, and a sufficient number of results collected most of the variation can be removed in my opinion.