New poster but have been studying T-Mag a while and love it.
Jumped on the Tanita today and after a month of not weighing myself, saw that I was down 2.5 lbs. Pretty excited. This is even after a week in San Diego eating pretty poorly. But then the BF% read out as 24.5%! I was 23.6% a month ago! WTF!!!
Been doing Home Grown Muscle from Men’s Health every M, W and F for about 2 months now. Been doing HIIT 2 or 3 days a week. Also been doing T-Dawg 2.0 for about a month. You can get a glimpse of my diet here:
Is Tinita correct or is this an error? Please let me know your thoughts. Am I not eating enough? HEEEEELP! 6’11" by the way and 273 pounds. Your help is appreciated.
If you’re not looking into professional athletics, I hate you.
As far as the Tanita goes, I’ve been doing what (I think) Jason Norcross suggested with mine. I weigh every day at the same time and take 5 readings, dropping the first, and averaging the other four. I’ve been using it for a month, and it’s kind of fun to see how it fluctuates, but you feel better knowing that 3 days later you’ll have a better number.
Hyrdation issues are huge with this thing, so the likelihood that you’re hydrated the same one month apart is slim.
And if you really want to drop the percentage, grab your ankles.
Tanita’s have a range of like 8% ± that they can be off, so don’t sweat if you are up 1%. I know I’m around 14% BF, but my Tanita says I’m 20%, so I don’t worry and don’t even take my BF measurements with the Tanita anymore.
Your biggest problem is that you’re doing a Men’s Health workout.
Your second biggest problem is thinking that your Tanita is accurate. I have one, and to really know what it’s telling you get on it several times per day until you learn how the readings change in relation to various variables.
I’m thinking of buying one of these…just for a progress tool. When I actually go on a cutting phase. ;)Correct me if I’m wrong. If your dehydrated impedence goes up which causes the bf reading to be higher? I’m probably totally wrong. But I’m not a sparky so there.
Its ± 1mm (just like lange calipers) and you can measure yourself; its designed for this actually. Apparently, this level of accuracy is within 1% of getting dumped in water which I guess is the gold standard for measuring body mass. It stores previous readings for comparison and computes the BF% for you. Its about $45 depending on where you get one. I have a Tanita and its so off its not funny. While its a nice scale for weight, its BF % measurement is lackluster at BEST.
I used to sell Tanita’s at a sporting store I worked in…I’ll tell you they’re shit! They’re highly dependent on time of day you try, sweat composition (which is related to daily deit fluctuations), and a whole host of other factors. I’ve seen fat people read less than 10% and marathoners with awesome bodies read nearly 30%.
It looks to me as if you are under eating for someone of your size.
Go with the recommended calories for a week or two and see if you need to adjust from there:
(BW)273*15-500=3595Cal
1-1.5gPro
Carbs=100g on workout days and 70g on others
“Good” Fats=Rest
Also, some of your meal combo’s are questionable.
Go with the food guidelines in T-Dawg 2.0 and here are some other articles you may want to take a look at if you haven’t already:
Lean Eatin’ ? Part I
Lean Eatin’ ? Part II
Foods That Make You Look Good Nekid
Thanks for the replies. It is absolutely brutal trying to hit 3000 cals a day while also staying below 100/70 carbs on T-Dawg. I basically need to start a damned chicken farm in my back yard. Any recommendations would be helpful. Thank goodness today is a carb up day so should hit 3K.
For suggestions on how to hit 3000 while doing tdawg 2.0 i would ask if you are varying your protein a lot?
I’m doing the t-dawg 2.0 myself and running about 2700 calories/day. 300 more wouldn’t be hard for me to do at all, just would require adding a few more ounces to each meal.
I eat eggs typically in morning, then vary between roasts/steaks/chicken/salmon/tuna the rest of the day. Plus some powder and some cottage cheese if i get low on time and/or can’t cook the food.
Also have some jerky and beef sticks on hand.
Really have to eat every 2.5 hours though, otherwise I run out of meal times and if i spread that to 3+ hours i’m screwed
