Body Fat Calculation and Health

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I've heard the only really accurate way to measure body fat is to be hydrostatically weighed? How accurate is this body fat calculator?

You are absolutely correct - the most accurate way to measure your percentage body fat is using water immersion. Sadly, this is not readily available and it's expensive. The fat calculator I'm using here is based on the work of Dr. Covert Bailey who is the author of the Fit or Fat series. He has been using measurements using a simple tape measure and then correlating them with the results of the water immersion hydrostatic weighing for many years to come up with this formula.

So is this body fat calculation and health test 100% accurate - probably not, but I'm prepared to hazard a quess that it's accurate enough for most people and a whole lot more accurate than scales which are notoriously inaccurate and really tell you nothing of value because they don't tell you 'what' your body is composed of. They don't tell you how fit or fat you are.

How do I know whether my percentage 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 and men can have very low percentages of body fat and be increasingly healthier.

18-22% for women from puberty onwards unless they are pregnant or menopausal

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

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I've used this body fat calculator on soccer players who've had only a 4% 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. Except if you are amorexic or orthorexic in which case too little body fat can kill you.

The major difference is that while they are large, they're also very active, they gets lots of rest and they eat well. They don't eat a diet of highly processed and refined or diet 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 surprised researchers who thought that fat is ALWAYS a health ogre but found that examples of populations around the globe proved them wrong. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think our knees and backs like carrying around extra weight, nor do I think our heart and other organs do....BUT...there are exceptions around the globe to the usual storyline of 'fat is ALWAYS bad, fullstop' that prickle my curiosity!

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. However, I predict that as more men take to dieting they will land up unwittingly changing their body composition so that they too carry more fat relative to muscle, especially if it's those quick weight loss diets.

Men generally weigh more on a scale than women of the same height - this is partly because they usually 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 fat does.

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.