Overweighted???

[UserNameBella]

So here is my stats- I wear a 2.5mm shorty in salt water. I am around 145lbs give or take (I haven't stepped on a scale in a while so that is a guess) I dive in a regular BCD setup, nothing fancy. I am not overly muscular and a natural floater.
I am diving with an aluminum 3000psi tank.

I have been trying to get my weight down because every divemaster and instructor I meet say I am overweighted. I currently dive with 16lbs, but I can dive with 14 lbs.....but I have a horrible time descending and burn through a lot of air trying to descend by just emptying my lungs, oh yeah and I can't hold a safety stop without using a lot of air because I have to keep my lungs empty the whole time and end up breathing rather quickly trying to keep my lungs empty enough to stay down. Otherwise at 700 psi I pop up to the surface no matter what.

The question is, am I as over weighted as these people say I am (one person thought I could dive with 8 lbs which seemed a little comical to me) and should I keep practicing the techniques I need to practice to get my weight down or just dive with what works for me?

From what I can tell how much weight one person wears isn't just based on their weight, it might actually have something to do with their density....I keep trying to tell people that I am about 35% body fat, not 12 % like they are and even though we are the same weight fat floats, but no one agrees with me.

I have done the eye level test with both 16 and 14 lbs as well after a dive on 500 psi. I stay at eye level on 14 and on 16 lbs I am about an inch below eye level. I am very still when I descend, so that isn't an issue.....
What do you all think?

 

[cool_hardware52]

So here is my stats- I wear a 2.5mm shorty in salt water. I am around 145lbs give or take (I haven't stepped on a scale in a while so that is a guess) I dive in a regular BCD setup, nothing fancy. I am not overly muscular and a natural floater.
I am diving with an aluminum 3000psi tank.

I have been trying to get my weight down because every divemaster and instructor I meet say I am overweighted. I currently dive with 16lbs, but I can dive with 14 lbs.....but I have a horrible time descending and burn through a lot of air trying to descend by just emptying my lungs, oh yeah and I can't hold a safety stop without using a lot of air because I have to keep my lungs empty the whole time and end up breathing rather quickly trying to keep my lungs empty enough to stay down. Otherwise at 700 psi I pop up to the surface no matter what.

The question is, am I as over weighted as these people say I am (one person thought I could dive with 8 lbs which seemed a little comical to me) and should I keep practicing the techniques I need to practice to get my weight down or just dive with what works for me?

From what I can tell how much weight one person wears isn't just based on their weight, it might actually have something to do with their density....I keep trying to tell people that I am about 35% body fat, not 12 % like they are and even though we are the same weight fat floats, but no one agrees with me.

I have done the eye level test with both 16 and 14 lbs as well after a dive on 500 psi. I stay at eye level on 14 and on 16 lbs I am about an inch below eye level. I am very still when I descend, so that isn't an issue.....
What do you all think?

My definition of "properly weighted" is being able to hold a shallow stop with an empty tank. If your BC is truly empty, your tank is 500 or less and you are struggling to hold your shallow stop you need more ballast.

Keep in mind that many BC's are hard to fully vent.

Tobin

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I assume you are a women? 16 lbs is reasonable. It is ridiculous to try to dive with less lead than you need. It is not a contest. A man with your height and weight-- I would recommend 12 lbs as a first estimate.

 

[TSandM]

It takes what it takes. 16 pounds in a shorty sounds like a TON of weight to me, but you need four to five pounds for the empty tank and your BC may be as much as 3 pounds positive. That still leaves 9 pounds to sink you and your shorty -- an interesting experiment would be to get in a swimming pool and see if you can float at all with a four or five pound belt on. I wear an 8 pound belt with my full 5 mil suit, and that makes me just about perfectly neutral, or just a tiny bit negative. I can easily tread water with that setup, but I float a little further down in the water column than I find ideal.

If you find yourself hugely negative with a four pound belt on in fresh water, you're likely negative with nine in salt water. But all in all, you may not be so far off, depending on your gear and your body habitus.

 

[dmoore19]

What I have found is that for my first dive of a trip I need 2-3 pounds more than I do the next dive. I don't know if that plays into for you but it certainly does for me. I think part of it is getting everything all wet again and perhaps a bit of excitement too.

 

[uncfnp]

Doesn't really matter what we think. If you have done the tests and the dives and that's what it takes, ignore the rest. In similar gear I started at 12 then after some experience dropped to 10. I too had trouble descending at times but found if I wet myself and my suit down (from the hose not myself ) before the dive I could descend easier.

But feeling light at your safety stops? No way. Use what you need to safely and comfortably hold your stops.

 

[Azbuceadora]

I hate those weight Nazis. Even if I were a bit overweighted according to them, it's a lot easier to compensate for overweight than underweight.
I can tell if I'm weighted right when I can maintain my safety stop with no air in my BC, and I know how much it I need because it's noted in my old-fashioned paper log book. Usually partway through a ten-day or two-week trip I can shed 2 lbs. as my suit compresses.

 

[TMHeimer]

I seem to agree with all the posts. I do think there are probably a number of things causing people of the same weight needing different amounts of weight. Once in a while you see a heavy person that "sinks" and a skinny one that "floats".

 

[Akimbo]

As Tobin alluded to, a lot of BCs are hard to fully purge. In addition, many have all kinds of soft closed-cell foam padding that quickly compresses loosing buoyancy and protection. IMHO, if you are going to have closed cell foam it should be on your suit where you will get some thermal protection out of the deal in addition to the padding.

Also look a pockets, pouches, and SMBs that trap air. I’m not suggesting that you are lugging too much weight or not. Minimizing the amount of air in your BC at depth makes keeping your trim much easier and reduces drag. Imagine that you are carrying 4¼ Lbs more weight than necessary. At depth that means you will have half a gallon more air sloshing around inside your BC every time you change horizontal attitude. That’s half a gallon of useless volume working against you.

As others have stated, the only test that counts is being neutral at your shallowest stop with a near-empty cylinder. Just to be clear, neutral is sinking when you exhale and ascending when you inhale under normal rest stop exertion.

Once “ideally/minimally” weighted you may need to swim down unless you are happy to very (painfully???) slowly descend with the few extra pounds of gas in you tank at the start of the dive. But at least you won’t be fighting all that weight shift during the whole dive or climbing the ladder.

 

[Patoux01]

I'd like to point out that fat has a density of like 0.95, where muscle is somewhere at 1.05, hence you'd need 10kg of fat instead of 10kg of muscle before you actually need to add 1kg of weight (slightly more maybe, but not more than 1.5).
Imho, there's something very wrong with your breathing and/or dumping of air of the BC. Beginners (as this board is) tend to have no clue what "empty lungs" means, and will tell you "but I breathe out!" with lungs ~60%.