24 Best Cardio Workouts, From 5 to 45 MinutesĪs you've likely heard, BMI is not a perfect measure – for example, it fails to account for muscle mass, which, of course, body fat percentage does.6 causes of a weight loss plateau & what to do.Working it out is simple: just divide your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared. The NHS uses BMI (body mass index), which requires no special tools or tech to calculate. Is your BMI or body fat percentage a better measure of health?ĭepends who you ask. While body fat percentage can be a fairly useful indicator of health – as mentioned, both high and low body fat are associated with certain health risks. What is body fat, exactly?īody fat is measured by percentage, calculated by how much body fat you have in relation to the rest of your body (like your bones, muscle mass, organs, etc.). How to know what's a good place to be resting at? Here's the lowdown. On the flip side of this, people with a low muscle mass and an unhealthily high body fat percentage open themselves up to health risks, illnesses and ailments. Why? Well, as the late biologist Rose Frisch discovered in her research, evaluating weight alone can be misleading – as muscles are heavy (80% water compared to 5-10% water in fatty tissue), meaning that many athletes she analysed appeared in the ‘normal’ weight range, despite having no periods, as a direct consequence of their body composition aka r excessive leanness. Knowing the correct body fat percentage for women might sound a little too heavy on the science for the non-athletes of us out there.īut understanding this can be helpful when it comes to knowing that your physique is in an a-okay place.
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