Body Fat Percentage – All You Need to Know About It and More

There are a few ways to measure your weight loss progress, or to keep track of your weight, but none of them are more effective than by keeping an eye out on your body fat percentage.

Most conventional diets will either look at measuring your BMI (Body Mass Index) or your weight in order to establish your current health. Or in order to advise you on how much weight (if any) you should lose to reach the optimum health you desire.

The problem with the two methods above however, is that neither takes into account your body composition and build. Which is a major omission, because those are the two things (without going too in depth) that reflect your individual body behavior.

That's where the method of measuring your body fat percentage comes to the 'rescue'. And in my experience you would be cheating yourself if you're using any other means of tracking your weight loss progress or your health status quo.

What is 'Body Fat Percentage'?

% Body Fat is exactly that – it's the percent of your total body weight that is fat. So for example – if I'm 53kgs and have 20% body fat, that means that 10.6kgs of my total weight is fat. Which then tells me that 42.4kgs is all else, i.e. water, lean muscle tissue and so on… And that's the important bit – but more about this in a mo'…

Another thing you should know about your body fat is that the total is made up of Essential and Storage fat.

Essential Body Fat

The essential kind is… well, essential for life. Fat, contrary to its bad reputation is actually vital to our survival. It's involved in many important processes and would you believe it, it also helps metabolize carbs…

We as women, need more fat than men do, and hence why women are known as the curvier gender :o) That's because we have to go through childbearing and we have some different hormonal demands than men. As an aside, men also have different type of fat than ours and they store it differently then us… Go figure – we ARE different after all…

So women need 8–12%, and men 3–5% fat for their basic survival operations. Which end of the range you fall into as your optimum, will depend on your body structure and composition – i.e. are you medium, small, large body frame? How tall are you? Do you build muscle easily? Do you tend to keep lean muscle more than fat and so on.

Storage Body Fat

Everything else over and above the essential body fat you have is storage fat. And how much of it you have in excess will depend on your genes, your diet and on how active you are on a daily basis.

All fat is actually made up of 3 types of fat (generally):

• Visceral fat – or the fat that protects your internal organs, but could also be very bad for your health if you have too much of it packed in your abdominal cavity.
• Subcutaneous fat – this is the fat you can usually pinch – the fat we know and most often want to get rid of. This fat, although unsightly in large amounts, is not the fat that's dangerous for us.
• Intramuscular fat – this is the fat that's interspersed in our muscle tissue.

Needless to say you should not aim to get your overall body fat percentage any lower than your essential value, because that would be dangerous. But it is good to try and keep within your ideal range.

If you want to know how to calculate your ideal weight according to your desired % body fat, please click on the link to read the full article that will take you through the process step-by-step.

Why Should You Care About Your Percentage Body Fat?

The most important reason why you need to know the amount of fat in your body is to be able to get a realistic picture of your status quo in terms of health. Simply weighing yourself is a very one dimensional way of looking at things. Two people with exactly the same height and weight could look totally different on the outside, and could have a totally different health check results.

And yes – it all comes from the fact that muscle tissue and fat tissue look, feel and weigh differently from each other.

So a person who is 53 kgs and has 20% body fat would look relatively lean. Whilst a person at the same height and wight but with 30% body fat, would visibly look overweight. So just weighing yourself will not give you the true picture.

But what about using your BMI as a guideline to your ideal weight?

Well that's another unrealistic way to do it. Your BMI only takes into account your height and weight! How is that looking at you as an individual?

The bottom line is that by keeping track of your percentage body fat, you can effectively see how healthy you are and if you're losing weight, this will be your best way to truly see what weight you are losing. I.e. are you losing water, muscle tissue or are you really losing fat.

How to Use Your Body Fat Percentage to Track Your Weight Loss.

Simply measure your body fat by using one of the methods below. Then calculate what part of your body is currently fat and what is "everything else", using this formula:

Current Body Fat Weight = [(current weight) x (current body fat percentage)]/100

Current "Everything Else" Weight = (current weight) – (the weight of your current body fat)

Then once a week (not more often) measure your body fat again under as similar circumstances as possible. Re-calculate your weight of fat and weight of "everything else". Then compare the numbers.

With the right kind of exercises you should be able to achieve mostly fat loss, and less fluid loss and muscle loss. In all cases you should aim to limit/minimize your lean body mass loss (or loss of muscle). Muscle is your personal metabolic furnace and as such is very valuable to your health and your figure.

OK, so this should give you an above average bundle of knowledge about your body fat and how measuring it's percentage of your body weight as a whole is a much better way of measuring your fitness and health.

Soon, I will post a lot more information on these other important topics you may be interested to keep healthy and to make sure your weight loss efforts are on the right track:

• How to measure your body fat – the different methods and their effectiveness.
  • Using a body fat calculator.
  • With a body fat monitor.
  • Or by using skinfold calipers.
• Full body fat chart and how to know if you're in the healthy body fat range.
• How to effectively reduce body fat. The exercise you can do and the changes you need to make in your nutrition.