A heck of a lot if you are losing weight to look good or be healthier.
Weight is a measurement on a scale of all of your body parts. Bone, muscle, fat, water, connective tissue etc. Muscle weighs more than fat. If your body composition is high in fat and low in muscle you can weigh less than someone who has a lot of muscle and not much fat. But guess who LOOKS significantly better, healthier and yes smaller? (muscle may weigh more but its more compact. Its like comparing a tonne of feathers against a tonne of bricks).
This is why BMI and weight are not good indicators of health, fitness or fat! You can have two people who weigh the same, are the same height, and one's waist measurement may be 20 cm higher than then others. Its all about body fat. The best indicators for health, are waist measurement, hip to waist ratio, and body fat.
The gold standard for measuring body fat is a dunk in a water tank to see how much water you displace compared to your weight. Whilst its very accurate, its very expensive. There are other ways to do it including skin fold tests, bioimpedence (done electrically on scales) and tape measurements like we are doing. Tape measurements are probably the least accurate due to errors in measuring, and the formulas used make predictions on body shape based on your measurements. But for the purposes of this challenge, they provide us with a consistent cheap way of measuring change.
As far as where you are now, below is a table of how to classify your body fat results. However, you need to add caution to this as I've already mentioned that the results we have are not very accurate. For example, if I've measured my body fat using this method, + a different formula ( the one we used last challenge + skin callipers + bio impedence) and come up with four different results. They are all within about 6 %, but the formula we are using comes out the lowest, the others put me at about 5 % higher. So if you are close to or in the acceptable range, I would suggest your body fat is actually slightly higher than this - please don't let this make you complacent. You can also tell how good your body fat is by looking in the mirror - are you "pudgy or soft" in some spots - this is fat.
Here's the table
So what about waist measurements?
For most people a waist measurement of greater than 94cm for men or 80cm for women is an indicator of internal fat deposits, which can coat the heart, kidneys, liver and pancreas, and increase the risk of chronic disease. So you need to get your waist measurements below this for good health.
The body fat equation is why careful attention to your diet is really important. If you don't get enough protein in your diet you will not maintain your muscle bulk (or develop it) and you will lose muscle as well as fat when you lose weight ie your body fat % will pretty much remain the same. You can see the protein in your diet in the meal planner on the right hand side. Try to hit your protein targets as well as your calorie targets. Yes, there's a lot of protein in foods like red meat and cheese, but they also come with a lot of fat and/or calories, so lean protein choices are better, like egg whites, chicken breast, turkey, tuna, and whey powder
Changing your body CAN NOT be just about eating less. It has to be about eating better.
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