In that case I think it’s probably just a case of being mindful about how many calories you are burning on the bike and fueling/replenishing sensibly. Especially if your FTP is increasing and your calorie consumption rate is increasing for a similar feeling effort.
Is there a reliable way to measure body fat at home? I do have calipers but I’m never convinced I use them consistently. I’m very sceptical about scales too.
If you are using Scales, you’ve got to stick to a consistent time as your weight varies a bit over the day. I use them first thing in the morning to monitor that my weight (62kg ish @ 175.5cm) is staying stable post bowel cancer. Its been 6 years now (post) and I really should stop!
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Ive got a scales which reports bodyfat /muscle mass etc but I dont have much confidence in output, seems to go up down in proportion to weight loss / gain.
Calipers is more reliable I find. But as a cyclist I find I can get a bit flabby on top if doing no upper body in the gym / core work despite being low weight and fit.
I don’t think it is a matter of being more reliable, weight can fluctuate significantly and for good and correct reasons change e. g. body fat percentage significantly.
Let’s pretend your scale can accurately determine body fat percentage, period. You step on the scale, measure weight and body fat percentage. Then you drink 1 liter (= 1 kg) and step on the scale again. Your body mass has increased by 1 kg, but your body fat mass has remained constant (as water ≠ fat). Hence, your scale will correctly report higher weight, but lower body fat percentage than when you first stepped on the scale.
You might say this is a contrived example. To which I respond peeing is the reverse of this process, you lower body mass and hence, proportionally increase fat mass.
In my experience, the amount of exercise you did, what you ate, what your GI tract is doing at the moment, whether you have urinated recently, these are all factors that can appreciably change body fat percentage for valid reasons.
Calipers aren’t affected by this. And of course, I am not claiming scales measure body fat percentage correctly. But then neither do calipers.
Personally, I tend to look at averages over longer time scales, which average out the small fluctuations. And that has worked very well.
Same here, although I’d add “after hitting the bathroom”. That’s really important for consistency.
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Visually is more accurate than calipers (in untrained hands) or scales (which are just guessing).
I find InBody to be…decent for what it is. Nothing can really replace a Dexa scan though.
To me the question is whether you want to know trends or exact values. If it is the latter, a Dexa scan is the gold standard. For trends averages taken from a scale should work fine. A Dexa scan can also tell you about e. g. fat/muscle mass in your limbs and such.
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Exactly how I use the InBody scan personally. Controlled variables (pre breakfast/drinks, post bathroom, same clothes every time).
Compare/contrast it at least gives you a ballpark of BF%. It did agree with 2kg more water weight after starting creatine which I found very interesting.
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Those scales don’t work and what are you going to do with the info anyway? Say it goes from 18% to 21%. It’s not like you are going to eat more protein and lift weights in response to the number on a scale. You either want to do that or not.
The only thing those scales can do is show a trend over a long period of time with a low degree of accuracy.