JJ Virgin explains why your bathroom scale misses fat loss and recommends upgrading to a bioimpedance scale that tracks muscle and fat separately. Muscle gain is slow, so small shifts like gaining 1 lb of muscle while losing 1 lb of fat won't show on a regular scale. Women need 10-15% essential fat; aim for 18-25% if athletic, and check progress weekly over months.
So how much muscle do you need to put on your body to see noticeable fat loss? The question really is, is there an optimal muscle-to-fat ratio to see visible fat loss? I think that really what we need to look at is where do you really want your body fat to be? And this is why I want you to ditch the regular bathroom scale and upgrade your scale to a bioimpedance scale. That will tell you your fat-free mass index and your fat mass index. Now, these, by the way, are never gonna be as accurate as going to get a DEXA, which won't be as accurate as getting an MRI, we gotta start somewhere. I'd love to see you get a DEXA 1 to 2 times a year and then take it home and compare it to your bioimpedance and use that as your daily check-in. And what I have people do with a bioimpedance machine is get on the same time every morning, get up, go to the bathroom, walk around, get on your scale. And what's nice is these scales have a Bluetooth function. They'll go to your phone. Really, you're only paying attention to it once a week. You're weighing in daily, focusing on once a week, because what you want to see is that you are improving. Changing your body composition and building muscle is a little bit like watching grass grow. You are not going to say, you know, I'd love to build some muscle and have some natural liposuction, I'm going to get on it, and think that in a week you're going to put 5 pounds of muscle on. No, that's going to take you months. So it's a slow, slow grind, literally. So this is where a Bioimpedance machine can be great, because what you're going to start to see are shifts in your body composition. You might put on a pound of muscle, lose a pound of fat, and go, nothing happened, but you'll see it on the scale. And what you're looking for is those bioimpedance scales look at something called total body water, and from that they're extrapolating your fat-free mass and predicting skeletal muscle mass. Because really what's going to probably change the most as you start to do more working out is that your skeletal muscle mass is what you can impact the most. So what do we want to do? Well, women have 10 to 15% essential fat. That's fat we need to have on our body to survive. By the way, men, 3 to 5%. So we have less muscle mass, more body fat to begin with. Athletic women, you know, and a healthy, lean, fit woman, it's somewhere like 18 to 25%, and it really depends on your genetics, where you feel comfortable, what type of body type you have. I'm a way leaner person, always have been. That's where I feel my best, and that's where I'm my healthiest. So you've got to find what your in of one is best for you, but Somewhere probably is 18 to 25%. If you were super athletic, it may be less than that. It might be 15 to 20%. Find what's best for you.
