How to Lower Body Fat Percentage?

[Chungungo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chungungo]

I am Fedor kind of type with less fat, I train everyday and I can only recomend strength training but you should eat less carbos and no sweets at night but not get crazy about, taking out carbs completely would make you feel tired.

[BelloMuakMuakMuak Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BelloMuakMuakMuak]

Speaking from experience (lost ~130lbs) HIIT is your BEST bet.


Its 40% nutrition, 25% gym work, 35% recovery (something like that)
Look into Ripptoes routine, after dropping to 135lb..I got up to 205 powerlifting..stick to the basic core lifts, Sprints, flip tires, run hills, sleds, keep it intense and have split days with light days. If you have a ? DM me!

Even body-workouts and tabatas will be enough along with nutrition and sleep to lower bf%
Its all about Food & Recovery!

[TheAnimal220 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close TheAnimal220]

Be careful with following all that empty-stomach training, though. Your insulin levels will be at their lowest, your cortisol will be high and after training it'll be even higher. Testosterone levels also drop whilst training.

Training on an empty stomach is pretty much the most catabolic thing you can do (not in a good way). You'd ideally take a shake that has quick acting protein and some fast carbs before doing any type of work. A shake with some whey and some cyclic dextrins a half hour before training is the best.

Look into training in the post absorptive state.

[closed224 Senior Member Member of the Month Dec 2014, Feb 2017 Find all posts View Profile Close closed224]

Anabolic vs catabolic if you are interested in looking those things up.

[Hacker Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hacker]

Last summer my body fat was at its lowest at about 7.9% and my body weight was at 185 lbs. This was measured accurately with the 10-site skinfold body fat test.

It is mostly covered by others who had posted before me, but diet is the most important and probably the hardest part in obtaining a lower body fat percentage. I did my best to almost completely avoid carbohydrates. For example, instead of using bread for your sandwich look into lettuce wraps. Snack on healthy proteins and fats such as nuts and meats instead of something carbohydrate heavy. Along with reducing your carbohydrates reducing sugar is important too! That is not only sugar from drinks like pop and candies etc, there is even lots of sugar in what you may think is a healthy fruit smoothie!

The supplements I took were whey protein, BCAAs, multi-vitamin, vitamin D, and fish oils to go along with my hour long workout from Monday to Friday. I did almost strictly strength work with weights and barely did any cardio work what so ever, and I lost close to 7% in just 4 months time. (I began training with 14% body fat.)

I forgot to mention as well - alcohol. The worst thing you can put into your body. It was funny because my trainer would record my body fat on a weekly basis, and after coming into the gym after a weekend he could just look at me and could tell me I had been drinking on the weekend (this was just within a minute or 2 of walking in the door). And the stats spoke for themselves. One weekend after 3 days of heavy drinking, my body fat shot up almost 1.5%! You may think that is not a lot, but to get rid of that 1.5% took me about 2-3 weeks if memory serves me correctly.

One more important thing! Sleep!! Make sure you are getting high quality sleep and plenty of it. If you are not sleeping well or not getting enough of it, your body fat will increase.

So the key is, a good healthy balanced diet along with exercise should result in reduced body fat. Good luck!

[master-gauge Senior Member Member of the Month May 2016 Find all posts View Profile Close master-gauge]

Green coffee bean, and some "circuit training" 3 times a week... 9 lbs gone so far in 2 weeks.. 21 to go...

[Chungungo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chungungo]

Last summer my body fat was at its lowest at about 7.9% and my body weight was at 185 lbs. This was measured accurately with the 10-site skinfold body fat test.

It is mostly covered by others who had posted before me, but diet is the most important and probably the hardest part in obtaining a lower body fat percentage. I did my best to almost completely avoid carbohydrates. For example, instead of using bread for your sandwich look into lettuce wraps. Snack on healthy proteins and fats such as nuts and meats instead of something carbohydrate heavy. Along with reducing your carbohydrates reducing sugar is important too! That is not only sugar from drinks like pop and candies etc, there is even lots of sugar in what you may think is a healthy fruit smoothie!

The supplements I took were whey protein, BCAAs, multi-vitamin, vitamin D, and fish oils to go along with my hour long workout from Monday to Friday. I did almost strictly strength work with weights and barely did any cardio work what so ever, and I lost close to 7% in just 4 months time. (I began training with 14% body fat.)

I forgot to mention as well - alcohol. The worst thing you can put into your body. It was funny because my trainer would record my body fat on a weekly basis, and after coming into the gym after a weekend he could just look at me and could tell me I had been drinking on the weekend (this was just within a minute or 2 of walking in the door). And the stats spoke for themselves. One weekend after 3 days of heavy drinking, my body fat shot up almost 1.5%! You may think that is not a lot, but to get rid of that 1.5% took me about 2-3 weeks if memory serves me correctly.

One more important thing! Sleep!! Make sure you are getting high quality sleep and plenty of it. If you are not sleeping well or not getting enough of it, your body fat will increase.

So the key is, a good healthy balanced diet along with exercise should result in reduced body fat. Good luck!

I drink a beer with almost no alcohol, I hope a little doesn´t matter because I love it with my foods...

[akaTrex Senior Member Member of the Month Jan 2016 Find all posts View Profile Close akaTrex]

Very Simple, Burn more than you intake.

Weight Lifting, Cardio with less calories and Waaa Laaa.

Check with your Jr. College & 4 Yr College Athletic departments to see if they offer Hydro Static Body Fat testing.

My Local Junior College offered non students the service for $25 per session.

[austinfella Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close austinfella]

I agree, the fasting is fine and will motivate the metabolism, but i prefer weight training after eating or at least giving yourself some protein a couple hours before any workout.

[efip Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close efip]

It's honestly the worlds simplest formula and ill tell you what it is.

Eat Less (Yes many people say nooo dont eat less, im telling you, less calories = less fat)

Eat lean (No chips no food high in carbs and no sweets)

EXERCISE (This is very important, excercise, run, do anything that burns fat. Unless you burn fat you wont lose body fat percentage)

Yes eating less burns fat, but also muscle. Say around 2000 calories and work out hard. You will gain muscle and lose fat

[millia Senior Member;PEGym Editor Find all posts View Profile Close millia]

I wish my tattoos weren't so identifiable or else I'd post pics of my progress with weightloss/bodybuilding in the last two years but I went from ~230 to a semi solid 195 and have a somewhat "jacked" look. Geo, if you're still looking for advice or sites to research or ideas I'm happy to chome in more.

[Geometrid Member Find all posts View Profile Close Geometrid]

Geo, if you're still looking for advice or sites to research or ideas I'm happy to chome in more.

Yeah, I'd appreciate any suggestions! I've started to develop a routine, but I'm sure it could be improved and I will probably look to increase the intensity as I progress.

[millia Senior Member;PEGym Editor Find all posts View Profile Close millia]

Weight training routine
For a basic weight training routine that has been proven to add results then start with Strong lifts 5x5. Great beginner routine that will continually challenge you.
Alternatively I liked this routine (similar to one I found on the same site0 and saw solid gains (which should be preceded by this one)
I then switched over to Layne Norton's power/hypertrophy routine and saw even better gains and have since settled into an actual 6 day body building split for other purposes.

Nutrition
At first I followed a ketogenic diet which I got all of my information from this reddit page which helped me cut a lot of weight in a decent amount of time, being completely OCD about cooking my food, scaling it, and recording it into MyFitnessPal (godsend of an app).
Since then I've become less OCD about my whole approach and now practice a loose form of intermittent fasting (good information about the basics) as well as strictly calorie counting.
One thing that I do keep with from my keto days is the use of this calculator to help me calculate my BMR as well as give me an idea of what kind of calories I need to intake on different training days/rest days.

Also something to keep in mind if you're doing any sort of weight training whatsoever you need to intake a minimum of 0.6 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. To calculate your lean body mass take your weight and multiply it by your estimated body fat percentage, so for someone who is 200 pounds and 10% body fat their daily minimum protein intake is 180 grams.

Let me know if you have any other questions or need recommendations/help with site navigation!

[Geometrid Member Find all posts View Profile Close Geometrid]

Thanks for all of your help Millia! I'll read through your links and try to get some better discipline about my routine. I found the myfitnesspal app last week and I've been experimenting with it to help tailor my diet, but I still need to cook more meals at home. What are your macronutrient goal levels for percentage carbs, fats, and proteins?

[millia Senior Member;PEGym Editor Find all posts View Profile Close millia]

In all honesty for macros I aim for ~180g protein a day and I couldn't care less about carbs/fats. I try to do more fats than carbs just because of my experience in keto dieting and also because carbs get me really bloated, but I also have one day a week where I just go crazy and ingest all that shitty food like pizza and fried rice, really whatever I'm in the mood for and keep my calories and carbs super high. It's a form of cyclical ketogenic dieting (CKD) where you refeed and replenish your body with carbs.

A super helpful book (I had forgotten about it last night as it was super late in my timezone and I was "out of my mind" so to speak) is called Engineering the Alpha, where it discusses SO much nutrition information as well as laying out solid routines. I read a decent chunk of it in regards to the nutrition portion and it's very good! You can get it for a decent price off Amazon but I have a PDF copy saved somewhere that I can dig up and upload somewhere (PM me for that if you're interested).

Cooking at home can be tedious, or fun, or just a chore it all just depends on your level of dedication and your perspective. For me I'm a cheap bastard who refuses to go to a restaurant and pay people to do something that I can do for a fraction of the cost and just as good (lol yea right) at home. I'm way too "frugal" (read cheap as fuck) to do that, so I prefer to save money and eat my food at home. My go-to recipe and food especially for lunches and also because it is SO EASY to make and delicious (if you like spicy food) is a pulled buffalo chicken recipe made in a crockpot. Dumb easy to make and it's so passive that you only spend a grand total of 10 minutes tops making it.
My strategy is to typically spend 1 day a week cooking out most/all of my meals. The buffalo chicken mentioned above is one way that I can get a solid 5 day yield out of chicken breasts, and then I will buy something additional for dinners (I only eat twice a day typically) so I usually will purchase some london broil steaks and let them marinade for a day or two and grill them and eat those for dinners with some nice runny eggs on top of it (mmmm protein) and stir fry vegetables in bacon fat (don't give me that look, it's delicious) as a side, and keep the lunch side simple with some corn or store bought beans. When I put it down on paper like this my diet is boring because I eat the same damn thing all the time but when it comes to gains, I'm dedicated.

I have a routine that I try to abide to which is I go to the grocery store and buy all my meats late in the week and have it cooked by Saturday, Sunday the latest. I have a farmers market that I can go to to get fresh/cheap vegetables on the weekends which then allows me to cook everything in one shot. For instance, tonight I picked up 12 lbs of chicken breasts and 4-5 lbs of beef and will be cooking all of that up in the next few days for meals. It fits my schedule and lifestyle to bulk cook things and just eat them throughout the week.

The trick is finding what works for you, and then turning it from a chore into something you enjoy, and into a habit, and changing your lifestyle.