Removing weight to dive without a wetsuit

[TN-Steve]

Buoyancy is all about volume displacement. I two years ago I weighed 220 pounds with a 38 inch waist. I needed 12 pounds to get down. Today I weigh 220 pounds but I have a 33 inch waist. I only need 4 pounds to get down. So my experience is that muscle is more dense than fat. So now I have more muscle, less fat but same body weight. I displace less water and therefore I'm less buoyant.

A guy I served with in the Army was built like a middleweight fighter in training. Muscle, tendon and bone. When we did drownproofing in the pool, he could take a deep breath, hang in the water, and slowly sink down. Had another guy who was more a doughboy, and he could float like a cork. We used to joke, worst case, we were strapping them together.

Steve

 

[Steve_C]

Muscle has a specific gravity very close to water.

Fat varies but is around 0.85-0.9. Grease and fat float. Cooks use that all the time. Each 10 pounds of pure fat requires about a pound of lead.

 

[lidja]

So... If I weigh 165lbs (middle of healthy range) with 35% body fat (top end of healthy range), that means I'm carrying approximately 58lbs of fat, which means I need @ 6lbs of lead weights to get to neutral? If I were to get my body fat down to 23% (the very leanest that is recommended for my age and gender), I'd still be carrying about 40lbs of fat. I'd still need 4lbs of lead weights to get to neutral. Not a big diff in how much weight I'd still need to carry, but a heck of a lot of work to trim that much body fat!!!


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[spthomas]

But as in all things your mileage may vary. After getting sick and gaining weight, I stayed away from diving for many years because I envisioned how unpleasant it would be to add soo much lead to offset the fat buoyancy. But when I got back in the water, I added about about 2 lbs of lead (without wetsuit, 205# I carried 4#, at 230# I'm carrying 6# of lead). And that may decrease as I get my diving chops back (when I was at my peak form, at 195# I carried 2# in salt water). So breathing has a lot to do with it too.

Again, this was just my experience, loose the 3/2 wetsuit and dropped 4# lead.