A Low Body Fat Percentage Doesn’t Mean You Are Healthy
Having A Low Body Fat Percentage Doesn't Mean You Are Healthy!
Nowadays the gold marker by which all health and fitness levels seem to be measured seems to be body fat percentages. Ask just about anyone that is seriously into their fitness regime what their body fat percentage is and nine out of ten times they can tell you exactly what it is. When I started out as a personal trainer, some 18 years ago, I kept calipers as part of my training kit and was very dedicated to measuring my clients on a regular basis. One day my coach came to me and asked me why I had the calipers and the clipboard and I answered that the training manuals said that it was key to measure body fat percentage as an indicator of progress. He laughed and gave me some of the best advice I ever got as a trainer and said that if a client can’t look in the mirror and see the differences themselves in their body, then I am not doing my job! He added that at the end of the day, a change in numbers means nothing when they still have a sizeable layer of fat obscuring their midsection. To this day I don’t use body fat testing as a tool in the Naturally intense System of Diet & Exercise, and in this post I wanted to explore the various ways of testing available on the market to toady as well as why in the end it is really how you look that matters, not just the numbers.
Body Fat Measurements- BMI Examples
Body fat testing can serve a useful purpose to some degree in that it helps give some idea of how much body fat and how much muscle you are carrying at any given time, a reading that the scale or simple Body Mass Index estimates sometimes cannot give. I remember when I enlisted in the U.S. Navy and weighed in at a hefty 220 lbs at a height of 6 feet even. I was told that I was significantly overweight and would have to lose at least 30 to 40 lbs before I could get in. My BMI was 29.8, which gave me a reading saying I was in the higher end of the overweight chart and almost at the point of being obese. I couldn’t tell you how funny that was as I had a body fat level of 6% at the time, with my abdominal muscles rippling and not an ounce of fat really visible on my frame and when the recruiter saw what I looked like under my clothes, he said not to worry about it, and that I would be fine. To this day at 225 lbs and at a body fat level of 5% or lower I am just about listed as being obese, which really highlights the limitations of the BMI scales. (To be fair- it is a noted fact that an athletically built human being’s measurement cannot be used to determine BMI using traditional methods.)
Body fat is a bit more reliable, but again, there are always limitations based on the method used to define it. There are many ways to measure your body fat, some being more accurate than others, but at the end of the day, it isn’t the number that matters, but the changes in the numbers as you keep on measuring using whatever method you choose.
The Simple Tape Measure Method
With tape measure and caliper testing, people who are muscular can get numbers 3 to 5 percent higher than their true percent body fat percentages. This is because they don’t have a lot of fat inside their muscles, so their measurements may be lower than this tape measure test indicates.
Conversely, if a person is skinny but doesn’t have much muscle, this body fat test may yield a number 3 to 5 percent lower than his or her true percent body fat. Though they look thin, unfit skinny people really have more than the usual amount of fat inside their muscles, which you can’t see from the outside. So, what’s the bottom line? For many people, this tape measure test is quite accurate, it puts you in control, it can be done frequently and it costs nothing.
Bioelectrical Impedance Testing
Bioelectrial impedance testing is a fairly common method and is being used more and more in scales that you can have at home. The way it works is that a small electrical charge is sent through the body. The greater the resistance (measured in ohms), the more fat is present, because fat interferes does not conduct electricity as well as muscle does. The lesser the resistance, the more muscle tissue is present, because lean tissue is highly conductive due to its high water content. It can be off by quite a wide margin, as to be accurate hydration levels have to be exactly the same each time as well as the amount of food in your stomach and intestines. The test also tends to overestimate percent body fat in very lean individuals, (sound familiar?) and underestimate body fat in obese people.
Additionally the handheld devices only measure fat levels in the upper body- sending a current through one arm and out the other arm, while and digital scales only measure fat levels in the lower body- current goes up one leg and down the other). Both types models won’t take abdominal fat storage into account, so you’re not getting a full picture of the fat level of your entire body at any time.
Skin Fold Caliper Testing
With the skin fold testing, calipers are used to pinch certain parts of the body and then determine the body fat percentage based on the assumption that the amount of fat stored at these various sites is proportional to a person’s overall body fat, thus by measuring several sites, total body fat may be calculated. It is a pretty reliable test, if the same person performs it each time (it is a skill and there can be wide ranges in reading from different people performing them, as it does take some practice to master.) However there are limits. Some people just don’t pinch easily- and it is hard to get reading from them. Others have such high body fat levels that the calipers cannot open wide enough to pinch accurately and the tests will thus underestimate their levels.
The Golden Standard- Hydrostatic Testing
This can be a pretty involved (and expensive) process, bordering on the extreme for most. Hydrostatic testing for years has been the golden standard, where you are completely immersed in water and then asked to blow as much air as possible out of your lungs. Not exactly a great way to spend and afternoon, but it does give a very precise reading, but is far more involved for most people (myself included) and while more accurate than the caliper tests or simple measurement estimations based on taking measurements from various parts of the body, it still has some degree of error, especially when it comes to athletes- who tend to have higher bone densities than the rest of the population and thus can read to have a higher fat percentage than is actually true. Differences in bone densities based on race also can throw readings off to a degree as well.
There are other methods that are being used more and more, from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (Cat Scans), Near Infrared Interactance and Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry. All seeking to find more and more accurate ways to measure body fat. Most are way too expensive and time consuming for most as part of a regular regime to record someone’s progress outside of a clinical setting.
What Is A Healthy Body Fat Percentage
Personally, I shy away from the whole idea, as with the Naturally Intense System of Diet and Exercise, a healthy body fat percentage is attained when you can look in the mirror and see very little evidence of fat on your body- end of story. The numbers and the charting means very little to most of us if we don’t look great with our clothes off. That being said, there are some standards that you should know to start off with, in terms of what is healthy and what is unhealthy.
The American Council on Exercise and says men’s body fat should be 6-25%, and women’s should be 14-31% while the American Dietetic Association recommends that men have 15-18% body fat and women have 20-25% body fat.
Healthy male athletes might be as low as 5-12% body fat, and healthy female athletes could be as low as 10-20%.
Body Fat Is Not The Only Indicator Of How Good You Will Look Or Good Health
One of the reasons that I stress that the mirror is more important than any reading you may have, no matter how accurate the method used, is that where you hold your body fat is more important than what your percentage is. For example, my experience has been that two people can have exactly the same body fat percentages and look as different as night and day. Some people can have rippling abs with 15% body fat whereas others have to go as low as 6% to start seeing real definition in their stomach areas.
More importantly the risk of fat related conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, stroke, diabetes and certain cancers is determined by where you hold your body fat. Fat around the abdominal area holds the greatest risk for potential health problems, while fat around the hips and thighs for women seem to be relatively harmless with respect to these health problems.
Although two people can have the weight or the same body fat percentage, that doesn’t mean they face the same health risks. Where body fat is located can place a person at far greater risk for fat-related health conditions such as: cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes and even certain types of cancers.
It is important, for health and well-being, to not only know your body fat percentage but to also pay attention to where that fat is located. Fat around the abdomen may present the greatest risk for health problems. In contrast, fat around the hips and thighs is most common in females and seems relatively harmless with respect to these health problems. So don’t get too hung up on the numbers.
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