What Is Body Fat Percentage? What Is a Good Body Fat Percentage for Visit site a Male? What Are the Risks of High Body Fat? What Are the Risks of Low Body Fat? What Is a Realistic Body Fat Percentage? You’ve almost certainly heard the term ‘body fat percentage’ before, whether in conversation in the gym changing room, marketing fodder for fitness transformations, or even in a Men’s Health article. With a little bit of know how, Prime Boosts Supplement the measure can act not just as a motivator on your fitness journey, but better yet, a dependable marker of health. But that begs the question, what is a healthy body fat percentage? When starting on a fitness journey, the odds of you actually sticking to it has been shown to be only 33 per cent,' explains Josh Silverman, Prime Boosts Supplement head of education at Third Space London. Unlike BMI, this measurement takes into account your lean mass as well as total weight.
Let’s chew the fat about body fat. Fun fact: due to it being so active in the body's functioning, fat is technically an organ. Far from being something to fear or vilify, fat is actually essential for human life. There are different types - brown, white, subcutaneous, visceral - and each has its own function, for better or worse. Visceral fat and subcutaneous fat are the two we're going to focus on here. Visceral fat is stored around internal organs as a protective mechanism, explains Silverman. It’s the first fat that is usually used for fuel when you go on an exercise regime,' he says. This is why you might See details the scales go down by your body appears to look the same for the first few weeks.' Visceral fat is the most dangerous kind, but thankfully, it’s also the easiest to lose. The less harmful stuff, subcutaneous fat, is the type that prevents your abs popping.
It’s the one stored between our skin and muscles which give us that ‘fluffy’ look,' explains Silverman. It insulates the skin and acts as stored energy for times where the body doesn’t have food in its system.' Which although evolutionarily important, is practically redundant in today’s landscape where food sources are abundant. What Is Body Fat Percentage? Put simply, your body fat percentage is a measure of the proportion of fat mass in your body. It is the total mass of fat, divided by total body mass, times by 100. If you weigh 100kg and have 10kg of fat, for instance, you'd have 10% body fat. Knowing your body fat percentage can be a good measure of fitness and functionality, says Dr Steven Heymsfield, professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Centre. For men aged 20-39, a score of above 25 per cent is classed as obese, for gents aged 40-59, this cut off point is raised slightly to 28 per cent.
Although higher percentage can represent health risks, the goal should never be to reduce body fat as far as possible: we're talking about gym-goers who strive to get their score as low as possible, aiming for that worrying point where ripped meets translucent. We’re certainly not suggesting you go that low. Pushing your body fat percentage below five per cent is very risky,' says Heymsfield. What Is a Good Body Fat Percentage for a Male? The Royal College of Nursing defines a healthy body fat range as 8-20 per cent for 20-39 year old men, rising to 11-22 per cent if you’re between 40 and 59. 'The value often cited for healthy men with normal BMIs is 15 per cent,' says Heymsfield. Vascular, lean muscle is one thing, a shrink-wrapped human is another. So, what is a healthy body fat percentage? First you need to accurately measure what you’re working with.