What Is Important to Know about Body Fat Percentage

Body fat percentage allows people to understand how much fat in their body. If the ratio of your fat to fat free weight is high you may have health problems, which are caused by excess weight and obesity. Is excess weight your problem? Then you should know and control your body fat percentage. This parameter is very important for the metabolism process and normal functioning of a human organism.

Body fat can be divided into two different types. There is essential body fat and storage fat. Essential body fat is the fat that is accumulated in all organs of a body. Storage fat is transformed into energy that a body uses. Storage fat is considered to be the reserve of an organism. Excess weight problems occur when a body begins to accumulate more fat than it uses. So, body fat percentage is intended to indicate how much essential fat and storage fat a body contains.

Body fat percentage shows the ratio of body fat to lean muscles. There are several methods of measuring body fat percentage. A DEXA test, bioelectric impedance, fold test and water displacement are the most popular techniques, which are used for measuring body fat percentage. The methods differ in their accuracy, price and time required to get the result. It should be noted that normal body fat percentage may be different for each person. In general, normal body fat percentage varies between 18 to 24 for men and 20 to 30 for women. It is difficult or even impossible to determine the normal body fat percentage for children. The point is that the amount of fat is different for boys and girls and can change with time.

Body mass index can be considered as an indicator of excess weight and fat in a body. You can抰 calculate the amount of fat using body mass index. However, high BMI can show that a body has higher amount of fat and action has to be undertaken to prevent problems connected with excess weight and other negative consequences.

When trying to get rid of excess weigh people usually control their weight and neglect measuring body fat percentage. However, it is a big mistake. You should control both your weight and the amount of fat in your body to achieve permanent weight loss results. You should lose both your weight and fat. Do you have decrease in weight, but the amount of fat in your body remains to be the same? This means that you have chosen the wrong weight loss method. Some people choose crash diets, sweat and restrict water to lose weight. However, by applying these techniques people don抰 decrease the amount of fat in their body. So, weight loss results, achieved via these techniques are temporary and insignificant. As a rule, people may have metabolism problems and quickly regain weight after losing it. If you lose weight and have decrease in fat then you are on the right weight to success!

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