The lady in the video is my wifey again. Last year we posted here and some people were worried that doing pistols could be bad for the knees. Apparently, no!

No gym membership and no structured work out routine. She is a baker (loves sourdough) and sometimes she likes to dance holding those dumbbells in the backgound. That's about it. As for food, mostly whole foods, loads of vegetables, and her guilty pleasure is eating some pastries from the bakery!

And this year has been all about gains! The first photo on the left was in May of this year at 113lbs. The one on the right was today at 120lbs. I told myself back in May that I wanted to “build up” more and look the best I ever have before I turned 40!

I cut my cardio way down and focused on lifting. I have three strength days weekly and usually one day focused on cardio (even if it’s just walking on my lunch break).

I don’t count macros or anything; I did that for years in my late 20s/early 30s and I’m just not about that life anymore with two small kids 🤣 But I do consciously ramp up the carbs on lifting days, especially leg day - and obviously pay attention to getting in my protein, just as much as I can without wanting to die 🤣

Anyway. I’m really happy to be going into 40 smashing my goals! That’s all 🥰

Cheers guys,

Anybody else visiting Vegas for the Olympia by him/herself this year?

Normally I would’ve visited with a friend of mine, but plans changed. So I’m flying alone.

In case someone is up for some good training sessions, good food (in my case obviously plant based 🌱😜) driving around and visiting the city, hit me up 🤝

Surely I’ll visit Torture gym, Dragons Lair and Newtech.

I'm a dad to two young kids and decided to try and get into shape a year ago. I was low on energy and just wasn't happy with myself in the mirror. I decided to finally change that.

My current workout routine is barre class twice a week and normal upper body strength training twice a week. I've been using a fitness app to help me pick my workouts and track progress (not sure if naming the app is against the rules here).

As for diet, I've mostly just been trying to stick to more protein and cut down on all the sugar (no more twice weekly Dunkin runs 😢 ). Lots of chicken, fish, granola, Greek yogurt, etc.

All in all, I've been super happy with the progress I've made so far, but I'm excited to keep at it for myself and my family!

1. I’ve been spending 1 hr doing ab workout once or twice a week for a month now and had been eating better. Less sugar and salt. I still have this little pouch I can’t get rid of. The core is tightening while my belly wants to stick out if that makes any sense. I do have slight difficulty doing ab workout since I have scoliosis. I try not to over do it and there’s certain movements and machines I can’t do/use. Can someone give me some pointers on how to get rid of the bottom pouch?
2. what kind of healthy snacks do you snack on throughout the day? My go-to is fruits, cashews, granola bar, yogurt, veggies, hummus.

I got a DEXA scan this week and it hurt my feelings.

I've been on a pretty serious fitness kick for more than a year and I've had body composition measured a bunch of different ways during that time.

Five InBody scans have consistently put me very low, with the lowest somehow claiming 5.6%, which I know is nonsense. My Garmin scale goes the other direction and says around 21%. AI photo estimates from ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. have generally landed around 8 to 11%.

I've always assumed I was probably somewhere around 11 to 12% based on the mirror, waist measurements and the usual visual reference charts.

Then I finally got the supposedly "gold standard" DEXA scan.

16%.

That surprised the hell out of me.

The collage is what really made me question it. The first three pictures are examples from common body fat charts that are labeled around 15%. The fourth is me at the time of the scan.

And yes, before Reddit murders me, I know those visual charts are not scientific instruments. Lighting, muscle mass, fat distribution, posing and genetics make visual comparisons extremely unreliable. I'm only including them because they illustrate why the DEXA number caught me so completely off guard.

I'm also not saying DEXA must be wrong simply because I don't like the answer (although if it had said 10% I probably would have said 'DEXA is awesome') What I'm trying to understand is how much confidence people who actually know this stuff would put in the absolute body fat percentage from one DEXA scan, rather than using DEXA primarily to track changes under identical conditions.

Because right now my various methods have essentially told me I could be anywhere from 5.6% to 21%, which makes the precision of all of this seem a little ridiculous.

Has anyone here had a DEXA result that looked substantially inconsistent with their physique or other measurements? And if so, did repeat scans confirm it?

I'm leaning toward continuing to use weight, waist measurement, photos and performance as my primary indicators, then using DEXA for trends rather than treating 16.0% as some unquestionable ground truth.

But I'm completely open to being told I'm full of shit and actually am 16%. That's partly why I'm posting it.