Importance of Body Fat vs Body Weight
The best way to tell whether your diet, fitness, or other weight management programs are working for you is to keep track of changes in your body fat composition. Imagine that you weigh 200 lbs on Earth and are 35 percent body fat. On the moon you would instantly lose about 167 lbs because of lower gravity. However, your body would still be 35 percent fat.
The point here is that weight is not the issue. Fat is.
Types and Amounts of Body Fat
Now it gets a little dicey, because there is no way to know how much of the different kinds of fat are in your body. Your total consists of brown fat and white fat (both referred to as adipose tissues), and even cell membrane fat.
The newest research on fat types is about brown fat. It used to be known as just baby fat. Now we know that it also occurs in adults. Adults carry it mostly it around the neck and in the upper chest area. Scientists now know that the more brown fat we have, the better we are at balancing our body fat composition. This means that brown fat helps us from gaining belly fat.
White fat is what we carry in excess. It shows up mostly around the belly. It also accumulates on thighs and buttocks and on the upper arms.
Ideally, the best fat loss would therefore be white fat loss. Indeed, better weight management would include getting your body to make more brown fat and less white fat. So far, scientists have succeeded in getting mice to do this in laboratory research. We do not yet know whether this will work in people. Of course, drug companies are seeking a new miracle drug that will do this for you. No such thing is available at the moment.
Body Fat Recommendations
Keep in mind that measuring total body fat can be misleading, even though it is currently the best indicator of body fat composition. The accuracy of the main three methods of measurement varies.
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.
Calipers provide the least reliable data. Calculations of body fat percent based on pinching with calipers relies too heavily on the strength and accuracy of the examiner.
No single body fat percent is ideal for everyone. Good health and fat management spans a range of body fat composition. Recommended percentages of body fat are higher for women. They are also higher 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
These are the target ranges for good health. It is probably obvious that being above these ranges is the foundation for overweight (i.e., overfat) and obesity. There may be no limit to how high it can go. One of my clients, a woman in her 50s, measured at 48 percent body fat. Wow!
Lower Body Fat Percent Is Not Healthier
Low body fat may seem impressive. However, you can go too low. Percentages below these ranges are not optimum for good health. The right amounts of brown fat as well as white fat, in the right places, are part of overall good health and body image.
Learn more about body fat composition. Stop by Dr. Dennis Clark’s site where you can find out about the simplest secret of all for reducing body fat percent that nobody else knows and what it can do for you.