Body Fat Calculation and Health

How do I know whether my % body fat is healthy or not?

I wasn't wanting to give guidelines about what is deemed healthy levels because there really isn't all that much consensus.... but from doing loads of reading over the years - it seems the most common amount of body fat experts agree on is:

15% or lower for men - regardless of their age.

18-22% for women from puberty onwards

25-30% for women who are pregnant or going through menopause.

But please don't get too hung up on numbers!

Surely height makes a difference? Why doesn't this calculator take height into account?

For women, the size of your wrist measures your bone structure, the size of your calf measures your learn body mass (your muscle), and the difference between your thigh and hips measures your fat proportion of fat.

For men, wrist measures bone structure, forearm measures lean body mass, and difference between hips and wait measures fat. The difference comes about because men and women carry fat in different areas.

That's why you don't need height in the equation

I've used this fat calculator on soccer players who've had only a 3% body fat - they were lean, very active and fit. The higher your fat proportion, the less fit you are and the more it indicates a need to incorporate more fun exercise into your life.

Remember you can be healthy at any size so long as you're living an active and healthy lifestyle.

The trick is that while they are large, they're also very active, they gets lots of rest and they don't eat a diet of highly processed and refined foods. Their percentage body fat and health seem to work for them.

But interesting enough, Japanese sumo wrestlers aren't the only example where being fat has yielded research results that suprised researchers who thought that fat is always a health ogre, but found that examples of populations around the glove proved them wrong.

In reality, the jury is still out regarding what is good fat and what is bad fat because the percentage body fat and health also changes depending on your gender and your stage of life too.

For example fat gain is directly related to fluctuating sex hormones during a woman's life-cycle.

Here's what we do know for sure about percentage body fat and health. Men biologically have more muscle than women from puberty onwards.

Men generally weight more on a scale than women of the same height - this is partly because they generally have a bigger bone structure, but it's also because they have a higher percentage of muscle which weighs on a scale three times what women do.

The higher your percentage muscle, the faster your metabolism and the quicker you will burn up calories. This is why men, generally speaking can eat more than women without gaining weight because they have a higher percentage of muscle.