Essential Facts about Body Fat & Leading a Healthy Lifestyle

As the holiday parties have come and gone, the foremost thought in most people’s mind is their health! Most importantly, how to lead a healthy lifestyle and learn more about body fat, weight, and muscle mass.
Body composition is the technical term used to describe the different components that, when taken together, make up a person's body weight. It is estimated that approximately 300,000 Americans die prematurely each year of diseases related to obesity. Overweight and obese people face a clear health risk. Obesity has been linked with numerous health conditions including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, gall bladder disease, respiratory conditions, complications of pregnancy, even certain cancers.

Is all Body Fat bad?

Everyone has some body fat. In fact, “essential” body fat helps keep you healthy. It cushions and insulates your joints, tissues and vital organs. It helps regulate body temperature and stores important vitamins. It even helps the body sustain itself when food is scarce. If you have too little body fat, your body would start breaking down muscle tissue for energy.

Body Composition

Not all body mass is the same – you are made of both lean mass and fat mass:

• Lean mass: Includes vital organs, muscle, and bone.
• Fat Mass: Is body fat.

You need a certain amount of body fat for good health. Your ideal weight and fat-lean ratio varies considerably for men and women and by age, but the minimum percent body fat considered safe for good health is 5% for males and 12% for females. The average adult body fat is closer to 15%-18% for men and 22%-25% for women.
It helps the body store energy, insulates, and protects lean mass. Too much body fat, however, is not healthy. Obesity is defined as having an abnormally high proportion of body fat. Obesity is known to be a risk factor for health problems.

Why Measure Body Fat?

The key to long-term weight management and better health is building lean muscle and losing body fat. Being healthy does not mean “getting skinny.” A thin person can have an excess of body fat. A muscular person can technically be overweight, but healthy. Getting and staying lean means controlling your body fat percentage.

Measuring estimated body fat and weight together gives you a more accurate picture of your total fitness. As part of a fitness plan, it helps you set more realistic goals, and better reflects a positive healthy change in your overall body composition.

Exercise

Through regular exercise, you can lose weight by burning fat. With diet alone, you lose weight by losing beneficial muscle and bone tissue.

The American Heart Association recommends 30-60 minutes of aerobic exercise 3-4 times a week to promote cardiovascular fitness. It raises your heart rate, strengthening your heart and lungs while you burn calories. To be effective, you must reach and stay within your “target heart rate” defined as 50-70% of your maximum heart rate. To calculate your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. To determine your target heart rate, multiply your maximum heart rate by 50-70%. If you raise your heart rate above your target range, you will still get an aerobic benefit, but you will NOT burn fat.

Fitness professionals recommend at least 30 minutes of strength training 2-3 days a week. Resistance or Strength Training firms the body and tones the muscles. While these exercises, which include weight lifting, sit-ups, and toning, do not directly burn fat, they do build muscle.

Muscle burns fats while you’re working out and while you’re at rest. The more lean muscle mass you build, the more easily your body can burn calories and reduce body fat.

Your Healthy Lifestyle

Health and fitness isn’t just about counting calories and cutting fat out of your diet. It is about a balanced combination of eating right and exercising: neither dieting nor exercising alone will give you the kind of results you get when they are used together

To achieve a healthy lifestyle, you must set realistic fitness goals and reduce the number of calories you take in, regardless of whether they come from foods high in protein, carbohydrates, etc. and include exercise in your regular routine to lose weight faster by burning fat. Exercise makes you feel better; it helps improve circulation, relieves stress, and speeds up your metabolism.

Helpful Exercise Tips

• Make exercise a habit. Choose a time every day – even 30 minutes – and stick to it.
• Vary your workout. Mix up your activities to avoid burn out.
• Recruit a friend – working out as a team keeps you both motivated.
• Always talk to your health care provider/physician before starting any exercise program.

Helpful Eating Tips

• Make sure no more than 30% of your daily calories come from fat, with no more than 10%   saturated fat.
• Never skip meals – instead, eat sensible portions at every meal and use small, low calorie    snacks between meals to help control hunger.
• Balance your calorie intake with your activity level. Eat less on low activity days than you do   on days where you enjoy rigorous exercise.
• Follow the USDA’s Food Pyramid seen below as your guide to a healthy, balanced eating
   plan.