Let's say you're a 150lb woman with 32% body fat, and your goal is to lose 30 pounds.

Your initial body fat is: 48lbs (150lbs x 0.32)

Your lean body mass is: 102lbs (150lbs total weight - 48lbs of fat)

Your goal to lose 30lbs puts you at 120lbs.

But, the goal of losing 30lbs may not be realistic.

At 120lbs, you'd have 102lbs of lean body mass, but would only be carrying 18lbs or only 15% body fat. From the chart above, unless you're an Olympic athlete in training, this is a very low percentage for the average woman.

A better goal might be to reduce your body fat from 32% to 26%:

150lbs x 0.26 = 39lbs of body fat

102lbs of lean body mass + 39lbs = 141lbs goal weight

To achieve an "acceptable" range of 26%, you'd need to lose only 9 pounds of fat (48lbs body fat - 39lbs body fat = 9lbs), reducing your scale weight from a current 150 pounds to 141 pounds. Then, based on how you look and feel at that point, you can shoot for a lower body fat percentage, say going from 26% to 22% or losing 8lbs to weigh in at 133.

Keep in mind, the lower your body fat goes, you also reduce your overall lean body mass (usually metabolically-active muscle tissue), which isn't good for the long term. I can break this down section later, but here's a summary: use one part of the year to lose weight and use another part of the year to build muscle, you can't do both at the same time. By including weight lifting while your shed the fat, the most you can do is maintain your current lean mass as best you could. That's another topic for another post.

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Back to the body fat goals, does that all make sense?

For years, I had a hard goal of weighing 130lbs. Period. Why? I used to weigh that at some point in my life. But after I learned how body fat worked, I revised my goal and now my range is 135-145lb. Even if I end up in the 150's, by shedding enough excess fat, I can still shimmy into jeans I wore at 130

Before you decide that you need to "lose weight", consider that "weight" also consists of both lean body mass and body fat. Keep your weight loss goals realistic, and remember, keep the calorie-burning muscle (do your weights), and lose only the fat (do that cardio!)

Tomorrow we'll look at body fat calculators and feel free to share yours. Calculator that is

In the mean time, ponder your current "weight loss" goal and see if what you have in mind, matches up with guideline and if you really need to lose as much as you think.