Dropping weight as you improve...

[ericpheifer]

Thank you everyone for your responses! I appreciate that you experts are taking time to give advice to newbies like myself!

Kern, et al. - I have performed a proper weight check and I am not at eye level with my BCD deflated and a normal breath of air. I sink...fast. I'm going to try and drop 4 lbs and do another proper weight check this weekend. Hopefully that will give me a better idea of where I need to be weight-wise.

FYI - I am usually diving in 15-30 ft of water with a 7mm wetsuit and steel LP 100 tanks. I'm 170 lbs (~14% body-fat) and I've been using 24 lbs of weight in my BCD. I need a lot of air in my bladder to get started, but I'm feeling better about my neutral buoyancy every time I dive. I feel like I am adding a ton of air between 15 ft and 30 ft though to stay neutrally buoyant. Is that to be expected? I'm able to begin my ascent by taking in a big breath of air, then deflating as I go up.

I'll try dropping a bit of weight, doing another proper weighting check, and seeing how it feels during the dive. I will keep in mind that it is better to be overweighted rather than underweighted. RJP - I'll make sure I devote time to working at 5 - 10 ft depth. Thanks for that great suggestion!

Thanks again for everyone's advice.

 

[boulderjohn]

FYI - I am usually diving in 15-30 ft of water with a 7mm wetsuit and steel LP 100 tanks. I'm 170 lbs (~14% body-fat) and I've been using 24 lbs of weight in my BCD. I need a lot of air in my bladder to get started, but I'm feeling better about my neutral buoyancy every time I dive. I feel like I am adding a ton of air between 15 ft and 30 ft though to stay neutrally buoyant. Is that to be expected? I'm able to begin my ascent by taking in a big breath of air, then deflating as I go up.

I weigh over 200 pounds, have more than 14% body fat, and if I were to dive with a 7mm wet suit in fresh water with an aluminum 80 tank, I would use less than 20 pounds of lead. We have our students use 7mm suits in fresh water with AL 80s, and I have not yet put 24 pounds on a student. I did have one student who needed something close to that once. With an AL 80, I would probably target about 16 pounds for you to begin with and then do a weight check.

When I dive with a conventional BCD (back inflate), a dry suit, and a steel 100, I use 16 pounds.

 

[Laurie S.]

Is there any sort of a formula to use for determining how much weight to subtract when you've lost weight? I've lost almost 20 pounds in the last three months and am aiming to drop another 20 by the end of the year to get back to my college weight. I've been using 18 pounds with my 3 mm suit when diving since I started last November. Any suggestions of what I should use when I dive the end of this month again? Should I start with 16 pounds or a lower amount?

 

[spectrum]

I would start with the same but place a few pounds so you can remove them for a test at the end of a dive. Do it with your tank bled down and in the 15-10 foot range. 20 lost pounds won't make a dramatic difference. One factor will be the nature of change to your body. If you lost 20 pounds of fat that's a small change in buoyancy. If you lost 30 pounds of fat and added 10 pounds of muscle then your density will increase more and you can drop more weight.

I want to say someone with the right background opined that a 1:11 pound ratio was likely. So a few pounds may be ready to go. It won't be enough to spoil a dive so don't go in light.

Pete

 

[Mike Boswell]

Is there any sort of a formula to use for determining how much weight to subtract when you've lost weight? I've lost almost 20 pounds in the last three months and am aiming to drop another 20 by the end of the year to get back to my college weight. I've been using 18 pounds with my 3 mm suit when diving since I started last November. Any suggestions of what I should use when I dive the end of this month again? Should I start with 16 pounds or a lower amount?

You can take off roughly 1 pound of lead for every ten pounds of fat weight loss. This is because fat floats: A given volume of fat weighs about 10% less than the same volume of water.

It's my guess that the number depends somewhat on how you lose the weight because some dieters lose mostly fat, some also lose muscle, some lose fat and gain muscle, and some lose a lot of water weight.

 

[Dockmaster]

Wetsuits "gain experience" too.

Nothing is more buoyant than the new wetsuit the newly minted diver buys.

Squash it a few dozen times and it will be less buoyant.

Squash it a few hundred times and a 7 mm suit is now a 5mm, and a 5mm is now a 3mm etc.

Tobin

Aint that the truth! I was helping with an OW checkout dive in fresh water this weekend as part of my DiveCon class, just the student, the instructor, and myself. The student was wearing a new 7 mm farmer john/jacket suit and al 80 and it took 44 lbs. of lead to keep him down! He started with 32 lbs and then took 4 lbs. from the instructor and 4 lbs. from me. The student, although right around 200 lbs., is an avid cyclist and is in good health. Every time we tried to pull a few pounds out of his BC, he would rise to the surface.

 

[fjpatrum]

Eripheifer, for what it's worth, I am 165-170 pounds (but about 3% body fat) and had on a lot more neoprene than you when I did my cert dives. I only had 18 pounds to start off then dropped to 16 pounds and I still feel like I was slightly overweighted. This is in cold fresh water with 13mm on my core, with various (slightly lower) levels of coverage elsewhere, but completely covered with gloves, hood, booties et al.