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Body Fat Percentage - How to Find It and Why It Can Help You

 

This article provides details about what body fat percentage is, why knowing it can greatly help in the struggle to lose fat, and the best ways to obtain a body fat percentage measurement.

The bathroom scale holds sway over many a dieter's mood and can be responsible for anything ranging from renewed motivation because of a pleasing drop in pounds or a sense of failure over a small weight gain. Many people do not realize, however, that scale weight is only one part of a bigger picture. In order to really track fitness progress, it is important to keep track of all of the changes the body may be displaying even if the scale weight stays the same or rises slightly. Tracking your body fat percentage, or the percentage of your body that is composed of fat, over time can help you get a more accurate picture of your results and let you know if your program is working perfectly or if changes need to be made.

Frequently, new exercise programs, especially ones that include some form of resistance training such as weightlifting, will cause a slight increase in body weight over the first few weeks. While discouraging, there is actually another reason besides fat gain that may be causing this result. If you find that you have gained a few pounds since starting your new diet and exercise program and feel tempted to scrap the plan altogether, it might be worth it to take a closer look at your body fat percentage. It will help you determine whether your weight increases are due to increased lean mass or whether you have been overcompensating for your exercise by eating too many calories, and have therefore gained fat.

Muscles that have been thoroughly worked have tiny amounts of damage all throughout the fibers. When the body heals this damage, the muscle becomes larger and stronger, leading to muscle hypertrophy and strength gains. What happens in the meantime, however, is that the muscles hold a greater amount of water than usual which can not only lead to an increase in scale weight but also a slight increase in size. Both of these effects are temporary, and neither have to do with eating too many calories or gaining fat.

In this scenario, you are actually increasing your lean body mass in proportion to your fat body mass, thereby reducing your body fat percentage, which is the goal of the majority of fitness plans. Ideally, a reduced calorie diet combined with the calories burned during exercise should take care of the fat loss part of the equation.

In order to determine whether you have gained fat mass or lean body mass, you must first find your body fat percentage and track the changes over time. Ideally, you would take your first measurement at the beginning of your exercise program so you can use the results to judge the effectiveness of your plan.

Most people do not have access to the most accurate means of measuring body fat percentage. Doctors and health clubs sometimes offer body fat testing with professional equipment, but this is usually too expensive and inconvenient to be done on a regular basis. Three less accurate but much more affordable options include plugging circumference measurements into a body fat percentage calculator, using a bioelectric impedance device, or using body fat calipers.

Hundreds of body fat calculators exist online and some are more accurate than others. There is a fairly large margin of error for these, and the results between them can vary widely. It can be helpful to take an average between measures from two or three different calculators or simply choose one and use it as a basis of comparison against future measurements with that specific calculator. Many people also find it very helpful to record the body circumferences and track those over time as well.

Bioelectric impedance devices can be found in bathroom scales and hand-held devices. They send small amounts of electricity through the body and measure precisely the time it takes for the electricity to move from one sensor to the other. It sounds painful, but in reality the electric charge is unnoticeable.

Body fat calipers are used to pinch and measure exact points over the body. The measurements taken from the calipers are then compared to a chart to get the body fat percentage estimate. High quality calipers can be expensive, and often require the help of a second person to get an accurate reading, although there are a few less expensive brands that you can use by yourself.

Unfortunately, not even bioelectric impedance devices or body fat calipers give an exact measure of body fat percentage. They are best used for comparing progress over time than finding an exact, accurate number. This estimate, however, in combination with your scale weight, will give you a much more accurate picture of your fitness than weight alone.

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