I tried to change my body composition for a year. Here are 3 things I did to reduce my body fat mass by 7% without hating my life.

• In 2025, I received 3 body composition tests at Life Time Athletic Club.

• The scans helped me track my progress in losing fat and building muscle.

• I lost over five pounds and 7% of my body fat mass by making simple changes like walking more.

At the start of 2025, I knew I wanted to lose some body fat. I just didn’t want to be miserable doing it.

All of the weight-loss tactics I grew up internalizing — painstakingly tracking calories and steps, feeling “naughty” for eating half a cupcake, pretending raw almonds were a treat — weren’t just a challenge to my soul. I was also pretty sure it wasn’t working for me.

So I got a body composition analysis: a free service offered through membership at Life Time Fitness, an athletic club. On average, membership costs between $100 and more than $330 in the US.

Using an InBody machine, the analysis took five minutes and involved me holding hand electrodes while stepping on a scale. The machine, using bioelectrical impedance analysis, then scanned my skeletal muscle mass, body fat and water content in proportion to my total weight.

I got another review about halfway through the year to track my progress and a final one in December to see how far I’d come – if at all.

To my relief, the simple lifestyle changes I made were largely effective. At the beginning of the year, my visceral fat score, the number that estimated the amount of dangerous fat around my organs, was a 10—the very end of the healthy range. Midway through the year, it dropped to 8, more concentrated in the healthy range, and stayed there until December.

I also reduced my body fat mass, or total body fat weight, by just over 7% and lost exactly 5.5 pounds.

While there is still room for improvement, such as gaining more muscle for better joint health and easier fat loss, I’m glad that all it took were a few easy, sustainable habits to see results.

I chose to walk rather than run

For the past few years, I have focused solely on running as my primary form of cardio exercise. I jogged about four times a week and took up to two strength training classes.

I couldn’t fathom adding more exercise to my schedule. Then I realized: I could walk a little more on the days I didn’t run. I started walking anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour on strength training and rest days.

Not only did it help me knock off a few hundred calories here and there, but it also introduced a calming habit into my routine. Most importantly, it made me less sedentary, reducing my risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, inflammation, and osteoporosis.

I also started planning vacations around the move. I’ve done a few hiking trips, organized weekend hikes upstate with friends, and walked Manhattan in one day, just for fun.

Matching meals with workouts

Every trainer who did my body composition analysis told me the same thing: I couldn’t rule out my diet.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to do a complete overhaul. I just had to be a little more careful.

On days focused more on strength training, I add protein powder to my coffee and eat a protein-rich meal like salmon with farro and veggies.

On run days, I would focus more on carbs while adjusting portion sizes. If I’d just completed an easy three-mile run, half a whole-wheat bagel sandwich felt like enough fuel. The same thing happened with sugary treats and alcohol: cutting back on portion sizes and opting for more mocktails helped me enjoy myself without feeling like I was setting back my progress.

In general, I started focusing more on high-fiber foods like salads and grain bowls, which kept me full longer and provided other essential nutrients like folate and vitamin C in greens like kale and arugula.

I use values ​​to my advantage

About halfway through the year, I also did a VO2 max assessment where I ran with an oxygen mask and a heart rate monitor to determine my unique cardio zones or heart rate ranges that correspond to exercise intensity levels. Zone 5 is the most challenging, corresponding to close to maximum heart rate.

I learned that having hard numbers helped me challenge myself in every part of my workout routine. I started taking Orangetheory classes, which use heart rate monitors to give you real-time feedback.

I also bought a scale – something I’ve always been against in theory. It took me time to adjust to weighing myself every day and not taking the numbers to heart. Once I started looking at the data objectively, I found it useful to give me quick (albeit incomplete) feedback on my performance.

I was able to write down my weights so that I could progressively overload: gradually using heavier weights or increasing the number of repetitions over time. Without it, I would never build muscle.

I won’t lose more fat until I gain muscle

There was one area where I didn’t make progress: building muscle mass. I learned from a trainer that this likely limited fat loss because muscle is a metabolically active tissue that helps the body burn more calories, even at rest.

I lost about a pound of muscle, which slightly lowered my basal metabolic rate (BMR), or the number of calories I burn at rest. It fell slightly below that of the average woman.

The solution? Focus more on strength training, the trainer said, especially making sure I was consuming enough protein to supplement my workouts. It doesn’t necessarily require a huge overhaul: Just taking an extra class a week and snacking on more protein-rich foods can make a big difference, she added.

In the end, it’s just another little habit to stack on top of the others. No, I didn’t go through a massive body transformation this year. But what I gained—or technically lost, in terms of fat—was much more sustainable (and much more fun).

Read the original article on Business Insider