Weight Loss - The Importance of Low Body Fat

When you hear a doctor or a personal trainer say, "Your body fat is too high, or you are borderline obese, what do you think? Does it matter to you? Does it motivate you to lose weight? Or are the numbers on the scale more important to you?

Most people will always have a love - hate relationship with the scale in their bathroom. However, with the dramatic increase in diabetes and obesity cases in America the importance of keeping your overall body fat down becomes the most important issue to ones health.

What does it mean to be obese? This means that thirty percent or more of your overall body weight is fat. When this occurs, your body has already begun to shut down in many areas. Things that are affected by high levels of body fat are; blood pressure, cholesterol, bone density, energy levels, immune systems and on and on. This is the direct reason for the increase in heart disease, diabetes, and strokes in America.

What is happening behind the scenes is this; muscle burns more calories than fat. If you have less muscle then you are going to burn less fat in day. In addition, aging promotes a decrease in muscle mass naturally. The goal is to slow that natural process down. How do you do that? I call this, "Having synergy in your workout and eating plan."

Having synergy in your workout plan is accomplished by incorporating all areas of fitness into your weekly activities. The four main areas are; good eating habits, heart exercising (cardiovascular), strength training (weights) and flexibility training (stretching). When all four areas are working well, you can not help but lower your body fat. 

 

When you lower your body fat levels your; blood pressure, stress and cholesterol levels will lower and your strength confidence and stamina will naturally increase.

Are the numbers on the scale important? To your brain and ego maybe, but in the greater health of things, not as much as lowering your body fat levels.

Weight Loss - The Soft Drink Diet

In the early ninety's doctors were beginning to see the growing trend in American's waist lines. So for a very short period of time they came out on the offensive by promoting better foods to eat. An easy one was endorsing pasta meals. What they failed to mention was the best time to eat pasta and what other things to not eat with it. Thus, fifteen years later, you are twenty percent fatter, and more confused than ever. Pasta by itself is not necessarily the problem, but combine that with soft drinks or wine, then you have the Venus fly trap.

Remember years ago, the sticky strip you hung out in your back yard. Flies would fly by and stick to the strap. Well, that is what soft drinks do in your system. While you may be eating half way descent food groups (not to mention your portions) the sugar drinks act as the sticky fly trap. This hinders the digestive process.

In plain English; the longer the food stays in your system the more of a chance you have of getting fatter. The soft drinks act as barriers. In many cases when it comes to weight loss, the food combinations really get you. The biggest no- no is starchy foods with sugary foods.

If you have wine, cut down on the breads. If you have pasta's cut down on the wines. If you have soft drinks, cut back on the starchy complex foods.

No matter the combination, combining pasta meals with sugary drinks is eating you up from the inside out. If you want to lose a few pounds, lose a few ounces of soft drinks in your daily diet.

Body Fat Calculation and Health

 

Body Fat Calculation and Health

 

The higher your percentage of fat above average levels, the higher your health risk for weight-related illness, like heart disease, high blood pressure, gallstones, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, and certain cancers. Also, the higher your percentage of fat (and the smaller your percentage of muscle) the less calories you need to maintain your weight and therefore the easier it is to gain weight. This is because muscle is more metabolically active than fat tissue.

Body Fat Percentages and Lean Muscle Mass

When in ideal shape, body fat will make up about 15% - 18% of a male's body
weight and 18% - 22% of a female's. The remainder of the body's "lean weight"
is composed of water (55%-60%), muscle and other lean tissue (10%-20%), and
bone and minerals (6%-8%). In other words, a 150-pound woman who is within or
close to her ideal body fat composition range at 22% will have approximately
33 pounds of fat, 86 pounds of weight composed primarily of water, 20 pounds
of muscle and other lean tissue, and 11 pounds of bone and mineral weight.
This total then makes up her total weight of 150 lbs.

Now take the example of another woman who weights 150 pounds, but has 30%
fat on her body. She would have 45 pounds of fat on her body, and the rest of
her weight would be divided among muscle, bone and water. Her non fat body
composition might look like this, 79 pounds of water (53%), 17 pounds of
muscle (12%), and 9 pounds of bone and minerals (6%). Both women weight 150
lbs. and are about the same height, but one looks much different because she
has less body fat.

Body fat percentage is generally accepted as a better gauge of weight loss
progress and fitness than scale weight. The method of calculating body fat
from body measurements as used by HealthSmart Nutrition is the fourth most
accurate method. Hydrostatic testing underwater is first. Electrical testing
of body mass resistance is second and body fat measurement by caliper is
third. Although it is not the most accurate, if you record your measurements
carefully and consistently using the measurement taking instructions given,
you will have a good relative gauge of how much body fat you are gaining or
losing.

For higher accuracy you can override the automatic body fat measurement calculator and enter your body fat percentages done by hydrostatic testing underwater, electrostatic testing of body mass resistance or body fat percentage done by the caliper method. One product we highly recommend is the Tanita bathroom scale. It does very accurate electrostatic testing of body mass resistance to determine your body fat percentage in seconds.

The more accurate of method you use for tracking your body fat percentage the more accurately you will be able to use the Lean Body Weight tracker.

More about Lean Body Weight

The two most important graphs and statistics you want to watch to find out if you are making true and honest progress on your weight loss diet or body building program are, body fat percentage and lean body weight. Increasing lean body weight (mostly muscle mass) is important because if you body fat is going down into your ideal range and your lean body weight is going up you will be able to eat more calories without gaining weight and, it will be easier to maintain your desired body fat percentage when you reach your goal. This is because more lean body weight (composed of increased muscle mass) raises the body's basal metabolic rate
(BMR) and the calories your body burns even when you are doing nothing.

If you body fat is going down to your ideal range and your lean body weight is going up you should be absolutely ecstatic. You have attained two of the three holy grails of honest and lasting weight loss. (The third is keeping within your ideal body fat range for 3-5 years after getting there.)

In spite of lean body weight being such a vital statistic to honest weight loss, we know that tracks it. (To track you lean body weight make sure you have used one of the 4 methods of body fat tracking and your body percentage is entered in your Personal Profile. Then go to the Graphing mode and select the correct date range and Lean Body Weight from among the various graphing options.)

The lean body weight tracking we use is based upon your current weight and the following formula. From your current weight calculate the number of pounds that is equal to your current �X� percentage of fat. (That is the number of pounds of fat on your body.) The remaining percentage of your weight is your non-fat lean body weight. This is composed of muscle and other lean tissue, water, bone, blood and minerals. Over an extended period of time (even considering periodic water retention,) the levels of water, bone, blood and minerals remain fairly constant.