Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 3.
Questioning Body Fat Percentage
Caroline and Tori are fitness competitors who both got in amazing shape and hit their Venus ratio’s. Both had 23-24% body fat in their legs yet 5-7% in their upper body. The main thing here is everyone, depending on their genetics and heredity, will compartmentalize fat differently on their body. You can’t compare yourself to others.
What is so important about body fat percentage?
Hydrostatic body fat percentage is the gold standard. It is the method which every other method is calibrated on. There are no assumptions; they use just the properties of your body in the water.
What is so important about of your body fat percentage? It’s a number.
It reminds Brad of eating for calories when you need to lose weight when really you just need to eat the right amount of food to lose weight. People like to go to an online calculator and find out they are supposed to eat 2712 calories a day as an example, then they don’t lose weight and they think their metabolism is broken. The calculator just gave them the wrong estimate for their body. People forget that the body is the end game, not the calculator, chart, book, theory, or what someone else did to lose weight.
The total over all body fat percentage does not tell you a whole lot unless you reach a dramatically low percentage that it is irrelevant. It’s just like how your overall body weight on the scale doesn’t tell you a whole lot either.
DEXA/DXA is the most accurate and is the key for a health standpoint because it tells you regional fat percentages.
DEXA/DXA is the most accurate and is the key for a health standpoint because it tells you regional fat percentages.
Everyone stores fat differently
Brad and John have a lot of data to look at and today they focused on two female fitness competitors who were both approximately 15% body fat which is very low for females. This is dramatically low for a woman. One of them had 6.9% Bodyfat in her trunk (her upper body from the waist up). The other one had below 5% in her trunk (she had a full set of shredded abs and her back was totally visible).
Tori and Caroline are fitness competitors that places first and third in their respective categories so they were both in amazing shape. Neither of them looked awkward, they both looked totally feminine.
Both had 23 and 24 percent body fat in their legs. See the difference between the upper and lower body? The main thing here is everyone depending on their genetics and heredity will compartmentalize fat differently on their body.
So another female could have 20% in her legs, but maybe 11% in her upper body, and roughly the same overall body fat percentage as Tory and Caroline and look totally different. If she tries to compare herself to these fitness competitors (or anyone else for that matter) at the same overall body fat it totally falls apart.
Everyone stores body fat in different patterns. These storage patterns are genetic and you cannot manipulate them. There are some schools of thought that you can manipulate them with diet but there is no data or measurements that prove this theory. The theories are purely anecdotal and guess work.
Don’t let body fat measurements hijack your goals
Setting a goal as a percentage body fat can mess you up. It is a form of goal hijacking.
If you get down to your golden ratio and then would need to go a lot leaner to get the ab definition it could change your overall aesthetic to not be as visually appealing. Also total body fat percentage is totally dependent on how much muscle mass is there. Body fat is relative to your lean body mass. So if you increase your lean body mass without losing any fat your overall body fat % drops.
Body weight and body fat percentage is only useful if you have a “shape” to go with it or a measurable goal like Adonis or Venus Ideal or Ratio.
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