Quote Originally Posted by Triskeliongirl View Post
I am going to chime in here. Its been mentioned that some of you feel you have low body weight, yet have too much fat. In the body recomposition world, this is referred to as 'skinny fat.' This happened to me many years ago when I allowed myself to lose too much weight on weight watchers, on a diet that was too low in protein. When I look back at those records, what I realized is that at a certain moment my percent body fat stayed the same, but I started to catabolize my lean body mass (i.e. muscle). Then, without any change to my diet and exercise program, I started to gain fat. That is because muscle is metabolically active, so as it is lost caloric needs go down. In time I gained more weight, of course putting on muscle as well to carry the fat. But this time, I targeted losing only the fat, by eating a diet high in protein (~1g protein/lb of LBM). So today, I keep my weight in the 140s, with a LBM of 110. That keeps my percent body fat in the low 20s, which seems to be comfortable for me to maintain. However, it terms of clothes size, I can still wear the clothes I bought when I was a 'skinny fat' 115 lb. So, ladies that are losing, consider diets that preserve lean body mass, and set your goal not on an arbitrary number on the scale (or too low a number), but on having a high strength to mass ratio, which is really what we should care about as cyclists.
I was concerned about "skinny fat" when losing a lot of weight. I ate high protein and lost weight at the rate of a pound a week. I started out with a very high fat percentage, IIRC, something like 46%. So, the few little fat rolls on the plus size model are nothing to me. It still is high but not anywhere nearly as high. But is sure is not in the low 20s. But I have to keep in mind that I lost a third of my weight and I was extremely out of shape. So I am proud of where I am, even though I remain "too fat" with a body fat percentage of 30%. I went from never exercising to riding 1500 miles on my bike the first year and starting to strength train too. Maybe I will over time and with consistent exercise improve my muscle/fat ratio. But if I don't I am still a lot healthier than I was and will not feel like I failed.