How to lose inches?

[Rook37]

Hey guys. Not sure if this is where I should ask this here, but I figure it couldn't be too off.

I have a question on how to lose inches from my waist and/or gain inches in my neck.

Now, normally I wouldn't be too concerned with these numbers, but the Navy makes me care about them. About three months ago as part of checking in to a new command, they weighed me. Being 5'9", they say that I should weigh 185 which is where I'd like to be, but I've never been that light in my life. Since I'm overweight, they tape my neck and waist, and subtract the waist from the neck to make your body fat percentage. If it's 22% or higher, you fail.

When I arrived, I was 216 lb, 15" neck, and 38" waist (so 38-15=23% body fat)

and now a PRT is coming up, and my division did an unofficial weigh-in. And much to my dismay, despite looking smaller (at least to me) and feeling smaller, all my numbers went up.

222 lb, 16" neck, 41" waist, 25% body fat

I'm having hard time wrapping my head around this since, to me, I look and feel smaller and my clothes feel like they fit better.

The official weigh-in is in a couple of weeks, and I'd really rather not fail, so any tip you have to gain/drop a couple of inches on the neck/waist in two weeks would be awesome. I wish there was some healthy way to drop 40 pounds in two weeks though haha

[JPrev]

Sorry man, this just isn't realistic.  You'd be better off making your peace with the result this time around and laying groundwork for lowering your BF to 21% in the future.  No reason why today isn't the perfect time to start!

 

If the only things that matter for them are your neck and waist measurements, you'll probably want to get your neck to 15" and your waist around 36".  I say 15" for the neck because adding inches there instead of losing them is kinda impractical.  I see your thought given the formula, but the only way to add inches to your neck is by fat and/or muscle.  If you do it by fat, then in the process your waist will grow by a far larger margin and you'll be worse off.  Doing it by muscle could take a year and a lot of specific exercises that, frankly, I think would be ridiculous - especially if the goal is just to lower your BF%.  So you'll want to focus on shrinking your neck, and since it probably won't get much smaller than 15" or so, that means the rest of the change will have to come from the waist.  x - 15 = 21; x = 36.  To satisfy their formula, you'll probably want ~36" around your waist.

 

How many pounds of fat you'd have to lose to drop 5" around your waist is impossible to say, because everyone's body is different.  There's no standard relation between inches and fat.  However, if we believe the Navy's estimate that you're 25% BF, you'll want to lose about 10lbs of fat to become 21% BF and pass their examination.  From your two data points, 6lbs of fat seems to have given you 1 inch around the neck and 3 inches around the waist.  I don't think you can extrapolate this data much, but it would seem that losing 10lbs of fat at least gets you in the ball park of a 15" neck and 36" waist.

 

10lbs of fat loss in 2 weeks is a fool's errand.  Technically possible, but not practical.  That's a 2,500 calorie deficit each day.  You'd need to eat next to nothing while still getting enough protein to prevent muscle break down, fat to absorb vitamins, and micronutrients to prevent disease.  A better method is to shoot for 500-1,000 calorie deficits and try to lose 1-2lbs of fat per week.  It'll keep you sane, remove the risk of hurting yourself, and make you less likely to relapse.

[Shortgorilla]

If you already failed one official weigh in you should have busted your ass to make sure you didn't fail a second one.  Start working out and keeping track of what you eat.  Aim for a caloric defecit of 500 calories a day.