What is a healthy amount of body fat?
Ask 10 different people and you'll get 10 different answers.
At Central Athlete, we have identified the following ranges to be healthy:
Males: 10-20% body fat or lower
Females: 18-28% body fat or lower
99.9% of people want to look good naked. In an addition to the aesthetic benefits, there are several health benefits for having a healthy body fat percentage.
Below are some of the negatives that can happen with unhealthy body fat ranges.
The fatter you are the more toxic you're going to be.
There are around 270 obesogens. Obesogens are chemical compounds that disrupt normal development ad balance of fat metabolism, which in some cases, can lead to obesity.
Increased likelihood of being insulin resistant.
When someone is insulin resistant, glucose cannot effectively enter into the cell; chronically elevated insulin levels create dysfunctional insulin receptor sites on the cell.
Because blood sugar is not adequately entering the cells, it stays in general circulation rather than being stored. As a result, the body must produce higher levels of insulin to remove glucose from the bloodstream, which causes even greater metabolic dysfunction.
There is a 50% increase in the rate of all cause mortality when you start to move from overweight to obese.
We are referencing visceral body fat, the fat around your organs. Visceral body fat has been correlated as the most unhealthy fat to have within your body.
Increased likelihood of being leptin resistant.
Leptin is the hormone that is supposed to tell the brain that we have enough fat stored, we don't need to eat and we can burn calories at a normal state.
People who are fatter have a harder time determining when they are full.
Increase in stress.
This can be any of the following: psychological, emotional, food, sleep, training and etc.
The best way to objectively measure body composition is to periodically perform a body composition analysis. However, doing a body composition test once is useless.
A body composition analysis needs to be conducted on a reoccurring basis to track progress and determine whether your plan is effectively decreasing fat mass and gaining skeletal muscle mass.
To schedule your first body composition test with one of our coaches click the link below.