Bodyfat Distribution Patterns
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Body fat is distributed all over your body but it’s not an even distribution. For example there is a at least a little bit of fat stored in places like your forehead and the back of your hands, but obviously this isn’t a major fat storage site.
For men the main site of fat storage is the gut/belly, and for women it is a mix of hips/thigh/butt and belly.
Each person will have a slightly different specific pattern but the general trend for men and women are more or less the same.
There are different specific locations of the fat.
Visceral fat is the fat that is stored underneath your abs and is all around your organs. This is basically what makes up a ‘gut’. Researchers are finding out that this fat is what contributes to a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes)
Subcutaneous fat is the stuff just under your skin that you can pinch. This fat also accumulates in the belly area for a double whammy on top of visceral fat. Lower body fat is also subcutaneous.
Intra-muscular fat is within the muscles themselves.
We store fat close to the middle of our bodies simply because from an evolutionary and functional perspective it allows us to still move around and use our arms and legs.
Think of it the other way around. If we stored all of our fat in our arms hands feet and legs it would be a functional disaster. We wouldn’t be able to walk or move our arms.
So as people get heavier they start to look like a sphere, with the additional fat all accumulating in the gut and butt area.
The reason it seems to take so long to burn fat from these areas is simply because more fat accumulates in there.
It takes longer to remove enough fat from these areas to see a difference. So when you’re losing weight it shows up in places with minimal fat first, such as your face, hands and arms. This doesn’t mean you’re not also losing fat from your belly or hips/butt, it just means there is more to lose from those spots and it doesn’t show as quickly.
We don’t like to admit it, but many of us have or had enough fat stored in our bellys/hips/butt that a 10-20lbs loss still doesn’t look like much…that just means you have another 20 to go before these area’s really start to look lean.
Every fitness competitor and bodybuilder I’ve known or worked with is always shocked the first time they diet down and realize how much fat they really had to lose.
It’s always more than they think, and they always end up lighter than they guessed they would be by contest time.
John
13 Responses to “Bodyfat Distribution Patterns”
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July 20th, 2010 at 10:28 am
A total “amen” on the the last three paragraphs. So sad but so, so true. And it’s true not just for a 10-20 pound loss, but for much bigger losses, too. I’ve gone from 255 to 193-4, but I’m still *fat.* (At first I wrote “chubby,” but I realized I was lying to myself, so I deleted it and wrote down “fat” instead! lol.) I’m really just a smaller version of myself at 255. Less round, obviously, especially my stomach, but the difference between the 255 pound me and the 193 pound me isn’t nearly as big as I would have imagined.
We all know that we don’t just lose fat, we lose water weight, etc. But I think we may still vastly underestimate the amount of weight that we lose that isn’t fat. It makes me wonder if only 30 or 35 of the 62-3 pounds I’ve lost are really fat. (Not that I really know what 30 pounds of fat looks like, so I’m just guessing.)
My original goal was 175-185 pounds (5’11″, 29, male, not a small frame.) I thought that was realistic, but it’s obvious that 185 absolutely will not be anywhere near low enough. No way in hell. I’ve adjusted my goal down to 170-175, but that may still be on the optimistic side. Unless I put on significant muscle mass, 175 probably won’t be enough either. Maybe lose 25-30 pounds of fat, gain 5-7 pounds of muscle, somewhere in that ballpark, I guess.
July 20th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Jordan,
First of all, congrats on your weight loss!!! You’re doing amazing. Keep it up and do send us pictures when you’re done. You can be one of our star profiles.
It really is amazing isn’t it! And only people who have finally started to lose weight like you realize how much we overestimate what our final body weight will be.
Well my friend, you are in a rare group of people who have taken the initiative and are actually making it happen.
Keep going brother.
JB
July 20th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Thank you, John! I appreciate the words of encouragement. I needed it, to be honest. I’m happy and proud that I’ve lost over 60 pounds, but it’s also a little daunting that I still have so much further to go. I’m hoping that the difference between 195 and ~170 will be a lot more dramatic than the difference between 255 and 195. That would make all the dieting and waiting totally worth it.
I’ll definitely be taking pics. Unfortunately, I was very averse to taking pics, so I didn’t take any when I was 255. But I did take some when I was 195. Yeah, pictures don’t lie! It’s the Photoshop and lighting and whatnot that lie, not the pictures! lol. I already knew I had a long way to go, but the pics made it even more clear. The mirror seems more forgiving than pics, for whatever reason. I look forward to much better “after” pics!
July 20th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
I’m 5’10 and started at 242. I thought FOR SURE I’d be ripped at 170lbs. I’m at 173lbs now and I’m in the same boat as you, not nearly where I want to be. My new guestimate is 150-155lbs. I never thought in a million years that I’d have to drop from heavyweight all the way to lightweight. But my mindset is shifting slowly but surely and “being heavy” doesn’t matter nearly as much as “being ripped” does these days.
July 20th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Well said, Dan. And fortunately for you that’s MMA lightweight, not boxing lightweight! Otherwise, that would be an extra 20 pounds to lose!
July 20th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
OMG! Wow Jordan…. you could cross out your name in the post and put in mine. I’m at the same height and build (but 20 years older)and my experience has been exactly the same.
My goal weight was 185 lbs, which I thought was ambitious but doable… I figured that would put me in the teen range of Body fat. I hit that mark, and to be honest.. I could stop here and be content… size 32 pants, medium shirt, and happy-wife!
On last physical my BMI was still in the overweight catagory, but this time the doc didn’t carry on about weight-loss! I got the “loose-skin” (ie fat)around the belly, so my goal has also been revised down-ward to 170 (a nice even number~!) mainly just to get rid of that.
July 20th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Wow, the beauty of the internet is having a large enough population to “meet” people just like yourself; hello Jordan, pastadano and jaxon. At 5’10″ I was fat at 231 when the year began. I was hoping just to get back below 200, but after watching some transformation video in January I was inspired to reset my goal to 180, the ‘realistic’ weight goal I’d set when I was still 200. Now I’m sitting at 173 and wondering where the bottom is… my guess is maybe 160, but until I get a body fat percentage from something more reliable than my bathroom scale I just don’t know.
July 20th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
John,
Great point about needing to lose more weight than you think you need to. I used to be 5’10″ and weighed a little over 200 lbs. and I would always assume that 10 to 15 lbs was all I needed to look good. I quickly realized that I need to drop over 40 lbs to look really good. It’s amazing how much weight you need to lose to look really lean (think Brad Pitt fight club lean).
- Tim D
July 21st, 2010 at 6:40 am
I think this is the main reason why most of us think that losing weight is mostly means losing water and muscle and fat comes last..
July 21st, 2010 at 10:49 am
We’re all so similar. That’s wild!
I think it also goes to show how muscular Brad and John are. John is 6′ and low 180′s and Brad is 5’10″ and low to mid 170′s, and they obviously look very good at those weights.
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:04 am
You guy’s stories all hit home for me. I am 6′ and started out at 286 my goal was 190 I thought that would be enough. I’m now at 189-190 and have a ways to go still.I pictured myself ripped at this weight when I got here I felt a little disappointed,I’m proud of what I have done but still not happy so I’m not giving up until I get there.
July 22nd, 2010 at 3:08 am
ok. so my quick story. In my wife’s pregnancy I put on some weight. I was always a lean (skinny) child and I always wanted to be heavy and muscular. So I put on some “mass” and it was not muscle but fat. i tried to follow the bb principles, but never used roids. I went to gym again in 2009 summer and at the end of 2009 I was 211 pound and 5,9. It was a torture to tie my shoes
. Beacuse I have a family, job and didn’t want to eat 6 times a day spend money to supplements so on. I found Your site and Pilon and begin to follow what You say. (but to tell the truth sometimes still in doubt) I tried to eat simply less. Sometimes IF-ing. Skip breakfast because I tend to believe it is not the most important. I dont do cardio only take a walk with my family. I go out, dont stress about food, I am not in panic when I have to skip a meal. I go to gym 1-2 times a week ( I want to try Adonis workout sometimes but it seems more serious than I can follow right now)
. Thanks.
I am 176 pound now. So about 30 pounds gone. I am still nowhere to be ripped so I have to go on. I can see some abs definition in good light lol but nowhere to 6 packs. There is a comparison picture first is from 2009 summer (but I looked like the same in 2010 january) and the second is yesterday. Maybe i could achive better body if I took more serious, but I eat what I want, pie at night for example. No bad or good food, dont care about ratios, macro-micro nutrition so on.
http://imagerz.com/QEJHWktvAwJRAw5KRwVR -sorry bad phone quality and hope nobody will have nightmares
July 23rd, 2010 at 6:05 am
I also had some false expectations about my body shape and appearance after losing 45 lbs of body fat. I figured by body fat % would be about ~15% range (which it is), but the loose skin around my waist is really an incentive to keep loosing more weight. The “loose skin” I thought was not fixable except with surgery!, but it appears to just be body fat around the waist. That doesn’t need surgery! -just healthy eating with moderation.