boy this thread is really informative and worthwhile richsohnnnnn .... get your ass over to peter lugers and get me a sandwich or your fired
i was thinking about this today and i remembered your post. it's a great question. i'll explain it... weight and body composition are very important. by that i mean, the body fat % can be misleading when comparing 2 or more people that have different amounts of lean (fat free) mass relative to overall weight. as you add muscle, but keep the same amount of pounds of fat, the body fat % will drop, although the pounds of fat may stay the same. examples.... you start at 150 lb. and you have 20 lb. of fat. your body fat % is 13.3%. now say you gained 30 lb. of muscle (you weigh 180 lb.) and still have 20 lb. of fat. your body fat % dropped to 11.1% although you did not lose any fat. so you can see that what your body weight is composed of can make body fat % misleading. in the above example, you could have 2 people with the same amount of pounds of fat, but since one person has more lean mass, their body fat % is lower. in your specific case, you could appear less fat than your friends, but maybe your friends have more lean mass relative to total body weight than you do. because of this, your body fat % could be higher than theirs, although they may look fatter.