Importance of Body Fat vs Body Weight

Managing weight is not the important detail. Managing fat is what you are after. For example, if you weigh 200 lbs and have 35 percent body fat, your body fat would stay the same even if you were on the moon. In fact, you would weigh about 167 lbs fewer and still be 35 percent body fat.

The point here is that weight is not the issue. Fat is.

Calculating Body Fat and Kinds of Fat

White fat and brown fat are the two main types of adipose tissue. You also have fat in every cell membrane in your body. There is no easy way to tell how much of each type of fat you have.

Brown fat is the new kid on the block for fat loss. At one time it was thought to be present only in infants. Recent research shows its presence in adults. It occurs mostly in the upper chest area and around the neck. The importance of this discovery is that the more brown fat you have, the more able you are to balance other types of fat. Brown fat directs the metabolism of that awful belly fat that most folks want to lose.

When you have too much white fat, it shows mostly as too much fat around your belly. White fat also adds up easily on buttocks and thighs and on upper arms.

Losing belly fat therefore means losing white fat. Having more brown fat would make this easier. Laboratory research shows how to get mice to make more brown fat and less white fat. However, we do not yet know how to do this in humans. Drug companies are already looking for miracle drugs that will make this happen. They haven’t found any such thing yet.

Steps To Take About Body Fat

It is easy to measure your total body fat composition. Body fat percentage may be a little misleading, depending on how you measure it. Three main ways to to so offer different levels of accuracy.

Underwater weighing offers the greatest accuracy for measuring body fat composition. This is not useful as a home test, since it requires specialized equipment. However, impedance devices for home use are available. These can be handheld devices or as part of bathroom scales that give body fat readings. In my experience, impedance measurements are about 3 percent higher than submersion measurements.

The least accurate method is the caliper method. It varies tremendously because the strength of pinching varies with the examiner.

Regardless of the result that you get, there is a range of body fat composition that is best for optimum health and weight (fat) management. There is no magic number for everyone. Indeed, numbers are always higher for women than for men, and they increase with age.

The generally accepted ranges of body fat composition for men and women based on age groups are recommended by nutrition experts as follows:

Women

20 to 40 yrs, 21 to 33 percent fat

41 to 60 yrs, 23 to 35 percent fat

61 to 79 yrs, 24 to 36 percent fat

Men

20 to 40 yrs, 8 to 19 percent fat

41 to 60 yrs, 11 to 22 percent fat

61 to 79 yrs, 13 to 25 percent fat

How high can you go? The highest that I ever measured in a client was 48 percent body fat in a woman in her 50s. Amazing! The ideal target range is the foundation for good health. Obviously, having a body fat percent above the maximum in these ranges is the key indicator of obesity and overweight.

Body Fat Percent Can Be Too Low

What may not be so obvious is that numbers below these health ranges are not necessarily healthier just because they are lower. You need body fat in the right amounts, of the right types, in the right places for optimum health and body image.

Looking to find the easiest way to change your body fat composition, then visit BellyFatScience.com to find Dr. Dennis Clark’s the best advice on reducing body fat percent and how you can use the best secret of all.

categories: fat loss, weight loss, health, fitness, medicine