08/29/2026
Another protip Physiology Friday, as between the long series we just had will be short protips like this here, as will speak on fatter to fitter within body fat percentage. Why tis it that people always get stuck in that same old classic time warped mind game played on you as your body starts getting fitter, but you still look fatter when you look in the mirror, or even feel like you are still fatter as you move about throughout the day? Again, like most things in the bizarro fitness world, it really does get darkest before comes the dawn, so knowing your body fat percentage is a great tool for you to use, but there is no honest to goodness need to get completely obsessed & compulsive over a number. You know what, I will actually take it a bit further, if you really get hung up on looks, numbers & metrics, simply get your before pics, measurements by tape, scale & caliper out of the way now, then even knock out your mirrors while you work out if you have to, so you can go a week or even a month or so without any judgment on progress at the start. However, eventually you do need to get back on that judgment on progress horse to know exactly where you are going, or this will simply be the blind leading the same blind, so in this case you want to use the mirror over those numbers as muscle svelte can wear differently on separate people with the same body fat percentage. Your starting point & the baseline measurements thereof are simply used to know if the bodyweight you are losing is fat or muscle, so tracking your body fat percentage over time will be the constant star you will track & be guided by during your fitness journey, but again not obsessed upon. So, after those few weeks @ the very start, it likely is best to measure your body fat percentage monthly, to just track & see if your exercise & nutrition plan is working for you, or whether there is a need there to tweek it for more effective & efficient action moving forward. Again, the number is just that, the look is what matters the most as your judgment on progress brings you closer to your goal, but again start out relaxed & not stressed over a number, as this can be just as counterproductive as not caring about how you look as well. But, understand that as you go from flab to fab, which again happens when you first start your fitness journey, as one burns more calories than consuming daily, they create a calorie deficit over time, this leaves your muscles depleted of glycogen, or muscle stored carb energy. Thus when your muscles are glycogen full, they are then full looking, but when your muscles are glycogen flat, so they are then flat looking, so like a rearview mirror, the image may appear that you have closer to less muscle & more fat on your body, in proportion without your percentage. However, as your muscles lose glycogen faster than body fat, they will automatically lose a lot in volume & thus again look flat & fat, not due to water weight or other gymbro science, rather glycogen from the carbs binds to water molecules in the cells & the more glycogen in the muscle means more water gets stored in those muscle cells. Cutting out carbs drastically or going on a hardcore aggressive calorie deficit, they lose a lot of the stored glycogen they had in the muscle cells, plus the water that was binded onto that glycogen combined with only losing a small amount of body fat in that same time period. As muscle stores hold only a limited amount of glycogen, losing water can only go so far as the muscle flattens, the more aggressive the cut in carbs & calories, the faster the deficit gets you there, the volume in muscle comes back as you start losing body fat to equal out the loss in water bulk. Percentages for the average man is around 15-19% & for the average women around 21-25%, so being superlean man gets you to about 5-9% or superlean woman being 12-16%, thus your look for leanness remains 7-12% for men & 17-22% for women but this also depends on what your goals are individually. :16-17
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