Body Composition: Do These Calipers Make Me Look Fat? - podcast episode cover

Body Composition: Do These Calipers Make Me Look Fat?

Oct 18, 202328 minSeason 2Ep. 20
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Episode description

You know when you’re whining to your friend about how fat you are and your friend says “No you’re not, you’re so skinny!”? Well…Sara is the kind of friend who will respond with “Oh, I have some skinfold calipers! Let’s measure your body composition!” And this week, she did just that for Caleigh. The results were not what Caleigh was expecting, but fitness data doesn’t lie! Join us as we discuss fitness metrics, the ins and outs of achieving a healthy body composition, and the differences between male and female body composition. We also learn that famous American artist Jackson Pollock invented the 3-Site Skinfold Formula for calculating body composition. We might fact check that though.

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Transcript

Welcome to Nacho Fitness Coach. I'm Sarah, the expert. And I'm Kaylee, the beginner. Join us as we discuss fitness culture from our two very different perspectives. So grab yourself a protein shake or a glass of wine and let's get started. So Kaylee, I think it's time. Oh, wait. I think it's time that we do your body composition. Oh, we've talked about it. Yeah, we've got it up. Yeah, I think I brought my calipers. Oh, OK. Just going to grab that fat and just OK. Let's measure it.

Let's just a little pinchy pinch. All right. And see where it's at. We'll plug it into my little equation calculator thing, my little app. I'm curious to see because I've been measuring it on my watch every Wednesday morning, same time, same day of the week, every week. But I don't. Wait, your watch measures your body. Come talk about this. Well, I mean, we've talked about like the stress, the heart rate stuff. Have we talked about that? I think it was season one.

I don't remember anything from season one. I haven't slept in like 10 years. So I have to like put my thought. There's like these two little knobs or whatever buttons on each side of my watch around one side of my watch. OK, I have to put these two fingers on no other part. There's little nubbies there. Yeah, no other parts of my body can be touching like my like my armpits. Well, you get your fingernails on. So how's this going to work? The fingernails don't matter. It's the skin. Oh, the skin.

OK, so you can't be like your hand can't touch. Oh, gosh, you got to be like standing up. OK, and then I don't honestly I don't super look at the numbers. So you don't super look at what numbers the whatever measure, whatever measure. Let me let me measure that before because earlier when we talked about, you know, maybe this coming up in us doing this episode, you referred to it as measuring your BMI. Yeah, I don't know what that means. And it sounded good. And I was like, no, that's not.

What we're going to do. It's like, wait, what? Which is a common I mean, if you don't body mass index, right? Body mass index is different than measuring your body fat percentage. OK, so this measured my well doesn't measure my weight, but I put my weight in. OK, so Wednesday mornings, I weigh myself first. Wait, just Wednesday morning. I do, because I feel like it's like the middle of the week. I know. But you measured it. You you were a daily scale wearer. I was you were.

And so this is past tense, like you've moved away from measuring yourself on a scale. I don't know. I'm OK. Wednesday morning, I have an alarm set. I'm really proud of my 32 because I wake up at 530 and you got to take the picture. So then you got to take the picture. And then five to my phone tells me because I'm generally like still in the bathroom. Right. You know, yeah. That's the best time to do it. It's first thing in the morning when you wake up after you pee. Take off my jam jams.

OK. And you know, any any ponytail holders, earrings, anything that could add any, you know, add a single ounce. Just make sure your birthday suit take off nail polish, the whole thing. The fake nails got to go pop them off once a week. It's fine. So I put my weight in. And so this measures skeletal muscle, which I do not know what that means. OK. Fat mass. OK. Body fat. OK. Is that and that's yeah, that's body fat percentage. So then it calculates out a percentage for you. Yes.

I thought it did more than that. But yeah, a lot. OK, so I think I think we need I think we need to do this properly. Well, I think well, and there's different ways that you can go about measuring your body fat percentage. And some of them are highly more accurate than others and blah, blah, blah. But in my opinion, what's most important is you pick one thing that's a baseline and then you are you track to that baseline. Like it's not going to do you any good if you are measuring it on your app.

But then you get your body fat calipers tested. But then you go to a store and they've got one of those electro, you know, scales or whatever that they will measure through that. And then, you know, you've got Bob pod testing and you can do so. That'd be interesting. It is really interesting because you could see, you know, there's some variability in it, right. But the most important part is just pick one that's easily accessible to you that you can do then consistently for your benchmark.

If this is something that you kind of want to track and watch and we can talk about why I like doing it because what I have access to is my watch. I don't there's no part of me that thinks like this is a super accurate, but it is something that I have access to and I have the control over like doing it the same time every week, the same controlled environment where it's not. Yes, which is really nearly all over the place. Important part. So all right. So here's what we're going to do then.

Hold on. Wait, oh, wait. I want to tell you that in August of twenty twenty two. OK. I did. I measured it. I wasn't measuring it regularly then, but I must have. Oh, OK. Thirty eight point five percent is what it measured your body, body fat. And now what's it. So when was the last time then you measured it? Was it just this last Wednesday? OK. So which was what today's Sunday? Is it? Yeah. I don't know. Sure. Thirty point nine. OK. Down from thirty eight.

I would have to guess the calipers are going to be less than that. You don't know the ranges, though, do you? What do you mean? Have you ever seen? So there's a scale of body fat percentage ranges that kind of basically put you in different categories.

And a lot of those that are tied to what your physique would look like at that body percentage, you know, so you have like a healthy range, for example, and then maybe online you've seen some of the like memes floating around social media were like, this is what you would look like if you're under 10 percent body fat. Like, and usually it's like an ab shot. Yeah. You know, it's like here's your your eight to 10 percent body fat range.

Here's your 10 to 15 or here's about 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 percent. And you'll see, you know, torso's care, you know, pictures lined up that will say, have you seen any one of those? No, we're going to find one. OK, because it's it's a lot of times people correlate the body fat percentage to what you're out. What you look would look like. Right. On the outside. Right. But we're going to talk about the importance, too, of just understanding what your body fat percentage is, what it really means,

how it's different than just knowing your scale weight. Right. I think first things first. Now you've got your one that you've consistently done. You've got some history, but I brought my caliper. So I think what we're going to do is we're going to take a little break. OK, let the listeners enjoy some elevator music. OK, shoot some behind the scenes video of us actually measuring your body fat percentage. I'm game. And then we'll plug it in and we'll see how it's different

and we'll talk about it. OK, is that good? OK, we'll be back. So, Kaylee, we're back. All right. I pinched at you a little bit. Done without all that. Wasn't painful. No, just the closeness. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm up in your business. We've never been that close. I don't think I've ever touched you before. Like not even like a handshake or not. I don't think so. That was it. So weird. Not that you say it that way. It's a very intimate experience.

You know, it was something that the gym that I was at, it was common practice. Yeah, how they baseline everything is so from my standpoint, I got comfortable with it really quick because that was it's data. It's not a negative or whatever. It's just it is what it is. It's data that you can start tracking. Right. So it's like, I mean, I was not afraid to grab. I'm not afraid to grab people, which is funny because I don't really like people or to touch people. Either one.

You know, so it's like, OK, I don't. Anyways, it is what it's like for like a, you know, like people who work in the medical field. It's a it's it's different when it's your job. Yeah, it's not a person necessarily. It's a task. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Like just completing the task. Check the box. I need the information for me right now, please. So here we're just going to just do it. So so we did a foresight body caliper skin fold measurement. OK. And we did your tricep.

We did your I can never say this right. And somebody's going to just super really act. I think it's right. It sounds good to me. Like right above your hip bone. Then your abdominal, which I do right next to like your belly button. And then halfway up your thigh. So and I did all the left side. And so what we're going to do now is I've got a calculator pulled up. We're going to go through and plug them all in and we're going to see where you're at. So your age is 36.

What happened? Stop it. 37. OK. And your most recent weight was 139, 139, even no point six. I don't know if you wanted to get specific. I do want to be specific. OK, so then I feel like there used to be. Where am I missing the height? I guess I don't have to do that in here. Weight, age. Well, how tall are you again, by the way? Five, seven, five, seven. OK. I'm five, nine ish five, ten. I feel like I'm shrinking. I'm not like I'm like five, seven on a good day. I've measured at five, six.

I also feel like in high school for basketball rosters or sports rosters. You put your shoes on, you stand on your toes. And I was like five, 11. We do shrink as we age. I know, but I don't think that much. Do you? Well, maybe I guess I did used to be OK. So anyways, we did. So this is the fat caliper test. I'm using the Jackson Pollock for caliper method, which is the formula based on the equation. Who? Jackson Pollock? Yeah, I don't know. Did he cross over and do body fat percentages?

Hold on. So that's what we're using. That's an American painter. What? Well, it's the Jackson slash Pollock. It's not just those two people that came up with this formula. So, oh, yeah, there's a famous painter named Jackson Pollock. OK, so the website I've always used is linear dash software dot com. OK. And so not underscore that like dash linear dash software dot com. You pull it up and then there's a bunch of different ones in here.

So for your your measurements, we've got your abdominal measurement was at 22 millimeters. Your thighs were 33 on your left thigh. They don't call them thunder thighs for nothing. Tricep was 17 millimeters and your ciprileac was 12. OK, so that was so we had that little fun little pincher guy and you pulled your skin out with your fat. So trying to muscle. So like, you know, that's what you can pull on.

I mean, because you can see, like if you just grab your leg right now, I mean, you can kind of grab at your skin and your fat, right? Feel it pull away from your muscle. And so that's what you're trying to grab at. And depending on your skin tightness, I mean, sometimes it's hard to get for people if they got really tight skin and then it just kind of depends. But that's the goal is if you grab it like halfway up your leg and you can kind of grab and pinch that skin in your fat.

Yeah, we're measuring that. So. OK. And like you were helping me do my tricep because it's hard for me to see. And I could feel the times where you're grabbing my muscle versus if you grab the back of your arm, you can feel yourself kind of pinch away. And you're like, oh, now I just pop past my muscle. And then you can feel like that little extra, right, extra spot there. So, OK, so now we're going to calculate. And there's this little button here.

And so this is coming up and it's telling us what your body fact percentage is. So this is your body composition. What was it again that you said you're? Watch told you reading your fingers, right? Just get back into it. I some sort of electromagnetic signal that was going through and looping through your body somehow. Are you asking for my body fat? Yeah. What did it say? That's what it gave you. Right. And that app was your body fat percentage. It's a 30 body fat percentage.

Oh, shoot. Hold on. I got to find my average is 30.6. OK, according to all the measurements that I've taken. OK. So what did I say about that? I was like, I don't think that's right. Yeah, it seems that seems high to me just by looking at you, knowing your stature and all fun things. OK. So what this calculates your body fat percentage out to be is 24.39 percent. Oh, so there you go.

Now, what it also does then too, is it breaks out of your scale weight, what it estimates your lean body weight to be, which your lean body weight would consist then of muscles, bones, organs, skin, that stuff. Your lean body weight is 105.55. OK. Your pounds of body fat are 34.05. OK. So the reason why that's always really important and part of kind of consults with clients that I discuss is once you can separate out those numbers, you can see that there's power behind understanding them

because scale weight doesn't give you the whole picture. Right. Scale weight could be water. It's fluctuate. It varies. With scale weight, all it is is how much gravity is pushing you down on this stupid little plate that's on the floor. It really does nothing more than that. Yeah. Understanding what these numbers mean, it gives you two things. One, it tells you how much fat pounds really are probably going to be realistic for you to lose.

Yeah. I would say, and I think at one point I did look up on average, especially females, we like to hold a little bit more fat. Men tend to get a little bit leaner because we have to stay healthy with our hormones. Yeah. And at one point, I feel like we needed to have at least like 20 pounds of body fat or something, on average, depending on your height or whatever, because you just, you need to have some. So you're like, okay, well, I've got 34.5, oh, 0.5. So basically 34 pounds.

So if you would come to me and say, Sarah, I still want to lose 20 pounds. I'd be like, that's not even probably going to be healthy at that point because it's putting your body fat number way too low. So it helps set realistic goals to understand them. The other thing with like the lean body weight is because your muscles are included in that number, it's not the whole number, but included, you can trend over time how much muscle you're actually

gaining as a byproduct of strength training. Okay. What you're doing and your bones will get more dense. So that number, so you, what you want to do is you want to see that lean body weight number increase. Yeah. Well, you're seeing that body fat number probably decrease a little bit, probably decrease a little bit. And then that's going to change them. What your overall body composition is. So what it does then is it gives, there's a chart.

Men and women are different, but there's classification. So there's five categories. You have an essential fat category, athletes, fitness, acceptable range. And then there's an obesity, like obese range. I'm in the athlete range, right? You're in the fitness range. Okay. That's not right. I mean, you're, yeah, you just dipped in past the acceptable range.

Okay. So essential fat is 10 to 12% in females. Men is two to 4%. So you can see how much leaner that they can get and still be healthy and not have to worry about those adverse effects, especially with, with like hormone balances. Your athletes are typically between 14 and 20% body fat for women. Your fitness category is 21 to 40. I'm sorry, 21 to 41. No, that's not right. That's a big range. 21 to 24%. So that's a kind of shorter category. And then acceptable is 25%

to 31%. Okay. And obese in women is 32% plus body fat percentage. So that's, that's where you're at. There's your numbers. So you just fit you're in the fitness category. Yay. You're like, I'm like, I busted down. And that's a good category to be in. Yeah. That's a healthy, I ain't mad at it. Yeah, no, absolutely not. So that's always something to understand. I'm gonna,

I'm gonna have to go find one of those pictures. I probably actually have one stored on my phone that where it will show like physique pictures as it relates to what the actual body fat percentage is. So like you put in your numbers and it'll show you. So this is just like a, a picture compilation. Somebody put together where it's like, okay, if you are at 10% body fat, this is probably what you know, okay, your torso would look like, you know, and then if you have 15% body

fat, you're here. If you're 20 and sometimes that's a good visual guide to be like, okay, what are my realistic goals? Yeah. If you want to go for a shredded six pack and you're gunning more towards that 10% range, well, what you have to do to get there is a lot more extreme and dramatic than it is to just bust into one of those other ones. And so you just have to make that decision then lifestyle. Well, it's going to make sense. Okay. So any questions about your

results? No, you're happy with that. I'm happy with that. Yeah. That's a good spot to be in. I mean, okay. So now should we do mine? Yeah. Cause I, we took mine too. Um, so we'll plug in my numbers. So I 42 weight was 164.4. I'm five nine ish nine, nine 10. My abdominal pinch was 17. My thigh pinch was 18. My tricep pinch was 15. And my superlac was 18. No, hold on. Oh, seven. Sorry. That was my hip. Okay. My support lac was seven. I get them right. Belly was 17. I was 18 tricep 15. And then the

superlac was seven. And so I went back and I have a history of what my pinches were and my body fat percentage all the way back to May, 2015. Dang. So because back then you've had a whole array of array of like situation life situations. Yeah. Since then you've done fitness competitions, you've been pregnant, you've been postpartum. I think I probably have like emails to my coach. Yeah. Go before then. I

mean, I think I did my first competition in 2010. Oh, be fine. Right. 11, 2011 or 12, 2000, somewhere in there. But you're not even physically the same person you were because all of your cells have been generated. We've talked about this, but I'm still going to fit back into my jeans. So I would probably be able to go back through emails and find measurements from before then, but this is when I first started putting my

data into this same app. So May, 2015 was nine months postpartum. Your first. Baby number one. Yeah. When I stepped on stage for the last time, my body fat percentage was 9.47%. Wow. Which is crazy. I've not been that lean since. Yeah. That was pretty lean. And then I bumped back up because honestly, there's a reason why that category is called essential fat. Yeah. 10 to 12% for women. And I was under that.

You don't typically see people get under that and stay, especially if they're interested in reproduction and having, because it just, it messaged with your hormones for sure. Your body's like, I'm not helping. So you took that into consideration. So I totally did. So your second. Absolutely. So, and, and I also didn't stay there for very long because I didn't want it to have negative impacts.

It was like, it was, you had a goal. Yeah. And I, I didn't like go crazy right afterwards, but I mean, I slowly let myself kind of like creep up a little bit because I knew we wanted to have more kids. And so then when I found out I was pregnant with baby number two, my body fat percentage was 14.35%. Okay. So it jumped up a little bit, but still in that like athletes range. And then I did a photo shoot after I had had him, it was about 11.76. So it dipped back down again. And then if you talk

about what would I be like right after pregnancy? Yeah. So how much does that vary? And there's not, there's no doing this during pregnancy, right? Like this is not really, is it mostly because your scale weight gets really thrown off with your water weight. The weight of I held, I held a ton of water. And I do actually, I have a friend that has like an in touch or in body, in body system that when I

was pregnant, just to see yeah, of water, it was, it was a lot. So it does, that scale weight does throw you off when you're pregnant. I mean, you could do pinches, but they're still not going to be super accurate. You're kind of comparing apples and oranges. So when I was two months,

then postpartum with number three, my body fat percentage was 26.68% body fat. So you can kind of see how it like jumped up then a little bit and then kind of hovered in the middle of that fitness range postpartum, eight weeks postpartum, your body's getting, you know, back to your regular blood mass. You've probably pushed a lot of water out, you know, kind of starting to come back. And so then six months after that, I was down to 15.88%, which would make sense because that was

about 1% fat, like 1% loss a month over those next six months. So, you know, there are people that have different, what they consider as progress. Precision nutrition, which is where I get a lot of my nutrition information from, where my certifications are from, they are, they are where my certifications are from. They believe that 1% fat loss a month is stellar. Slow, over time,

going to be consistent. If you're somebody that's say, interested in stepping on stage or doing comp ramp or something that's a little bit more of a fast over a short period of time, you know, you can get up to 1% fat loss a week. You're making some sacrifices. You know, you're not living, you're not living, no, it's pretty intense. So, all right, so that's where we were at with my history. So I am going to calculate out what it says right now. So right now, then it says based

on where I'm at today, that my body fat percentage is 18.17. So I've got 29.86 pounds of body fat. My lean body weight is 134.54. So I'm falling kind of in that athletes range. Yeah, attracts. I know that I am happiest with how I look in the mirror. And I like being able to wear shorts in the summer. Like that for me is the biggest indicator. Yeah. If I can feel comfortable in wearing like jean shorts in the summer, I know that my body fat number, I like it to be right around that 20.

So not the percentage, but just straight up how many pounds of body fat am I carrying? Right. Which scale weight that will put me closer to like 150s. Yeah, which probably put me closer to, you know, probably 12 or 13%. Yeah. Percent body fat. I'd be as my happy place. Okay. I'll get there. I have no doubt. Slowly. That was the one thing I promised myself after this last one. I was like, I'm going to take my time getting there. I don't have to do this again. And I don't want it

to be quick that it all comes back afterwards. So it's been low and it's been slow. Yeah. Low losses, slow. And I'm happy with that. So awesome. There we go. All right. Now we talked about body composition. Yeah. I wish I would have, I wish I would have hated it. I wish I would have had these numbers last summer just to see, cause last summer was like my tip of tipping point where I was like, all right, time to buy the fat jeans, time to buy the fat tank top mom swimsuit, you know,

cause I did not feel comfortable last year at all. Yep. Yeah. So there's a whole, whole new situation. And now like I'm, you know, I look at the mirror now and I'm like, okay, dang girl. I'm making it. All right. Yeah. Let's bust out that swimsuit. You know, but that is, I mean, it was actually kind of interesting just going back through my history of like, yeah, what are, what was, what was I doing that month and year? And it was like, okay, that was when that one was,

and that's when I had them. And so that history is actually kind of nice. It's something that most people don't want to do. You don't want to say, I never thought about doing it. I mean, I guess I always knew it was a thing, but I never like sitting here now, I wish I had those numbers, just, you know, from you, it's a way to see progress. Sometimes you're your own worst enemy

in the mirror. You're always, you're an always nitpick that one specific area. Like for me, it holds around my belly until I just have to get super dialed in with my nutrition, almost to the point where I'm like miserable, really. And then I'm like, well, is that worth it to lose that extra little like bit? Right. It's hovering around there. I'm like, depends on what your goals are. It depends on what your goals are. Maybe someday I'll be like, yes, let's just bust through it. But

then sometimes like, I don't know, maybe it's okay now. I don't really know. We'll see. But it, it's helpful to have it. The other thing that is really super helpful that usually people try to shy away from our progress pictures, because when you start thinking that things haven't changed,

you can take another one and you're like, oh wait, actually. And I haven't taken like formal, you know, in front of the mirror progress pictures, but I had sent you pictures from just like two years ago, one year ago, you know, similar poses or situations or whatever, where it's like, oh wow, there's a difference. Yeah. Big difference. So, you know, that would be, that would be something that I would definitely encourage people to do is just collect the data.

You don't have to show anyone. You don't have to tell anyone. You don't have to do anything with it. You know, like I would love to have more and I will, I think I will keep, yeah, you know, measuring this. You can do circumference measurements too. Sometimes that's a helpful one. See, that's another thing I've never done. Waist. Yep. You know, never done that. Chest, waist, hips, you know, you can watch then that's how much space you're taking up on the outside.

I just always go by the chin. Oh, well, yeah. I'm like, I'm like, well, I'm like three chins down from last year. But you realize all you have to do is like tip your chin up and push your, well, I get a whole chin situation. That's honestly, that was when like, when I really started seeing it in my face, I was like, oh no, no, it does. I can deal, I can deal with the belly and the, you know, the thighs and stuff. Once I'm like looking in where I can't like hide it

and you can see the face, neck up, you know, it's like, oh gosh. Okay. It's time. It's for me. And I, you know, right. I know not everybody feels that way, whatever, but everybody has their own, you know, limits of what they can stand. You do you, whatever makes you happy. That was mine. That was, it was a phase. It's getting the jowls. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I get it. So, all right. That is the low down scoop on body fat percentage. That was fun. Body composition. That

was a little, you know, kind of a fun episode. Let's never touch that much again. I don't want to touch you again. Nope. I mean, unless you want me to do your, I'll pinch you at you with my calipers again. Yeah, we'll probably do it. And then we'll, we'll do an update when we do that. So that's it. That's all we got for, for today. Okay. Until next time. Bye. Thanks for listening. Be sure to head over to our Instagram at nacho fitness coach and let us know how you feel about

the topic. Do you love it or hate it? Also, don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. And if you like our podcasts, leave us a rating. See you next time. You've been listening to Ufany Innovatives, sonified.

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