We recently had a TV crew in to film some people who were committing to lose a lot of weight (ie, fat).

One of them, Julie, has a huge task ahead of her because she is carrying as much fat as my total weight (68.9kg). See part of her report below.

At Bodyscan, while we don’t focus too much on body fat percentage (preferring fat mass index), Julie would be in a far better place at around 26.5% body fat, which means she should lose about 35kg of fat from her total weight of 127kg.

Just a few minutes struggling with the barbells in my local gym yesterday (above) made it easy to know what it would feel like to be 35kg heavier (and then 35kg lighter once I’d managed to put the barbell back in the rack). It was hard work. It also made it obvious why very overweight people have super-high muscle mass – they’re doing a very strenuous workout with every step they take.

If you’re overweight, work out how much fat would be good for you to lose: women take 26.5% of your weight, men 18% of your weight, in order to arrive at a better fat mass. Then see how much higher than your current total fat mass it is. That difference is how much fat you could aim to lose. Now go and pick up that weight in the gym to get a sense of how much better you’d feel without that ballast.

If you’re below those body fat percentages you’re doing well.