How to Calculate Body Fat Percentage
Body fat percentage, experts say, is more accurate in assessing fat than weight as the latter is simply the grand total of the muscle, fat, bones, organs, body fluids and connective tissue. It’s the amount of body fat expressed as a percentage of total body weight. If your total body weight is 120 pounds and you’ve 24 pounds of fat, your body fat percentage is 20%. The higher the percentage above average levels, the higher your health risk of having high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis and certain cancers. A body fat test cum body fat calculation will “separate” the fat from everything else. A long time ago, when I started my weight loss program, I didn’t give thought to calculate body fat percentage or the amount of fat I need to lose. No wonder I was going nowhere in the weight loss compartment! That was then. Now, I get “smarter”. I take body fat test to know how my body fat would fare, to get me going in the right direction about how much fat I would have to
There are many methods out there to calculate body fat percentage. Let’s see. We’ve got: • Skin-Fold Calipers Special calipers measure folds of skin around specific spots on your body. This isn’t the most precise method; but it’s quite accurate if a trained tester conducts the test. Accuracy wise, this method assumes that 50% of your body fat is under the skin with the rest located around organs and in muscle tissue. Genetics, exercise levels, eating habits and obesity are factors that can skew results. Also, there are more than 100 different equations used to compute the numbers, and so accuracy can be off by as much as 6%. Other factors that can affect the results are: One, the tester’s skill – must be skilled at separating fat from muscle and pinch precisely the right spots. Experienced testers can have difficulty testing if you’ve lots of excess fat, taut skin or well-developed muscles. Two, the formula used – different racial groups carry fat in different places. Three, the tester
