Want to Reach Your Ideal Body Fat Percentage? Here Is Your Target
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Want to Reach Your Ideal Body Fat Percentage? Here Is Your Target
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People are slowly catching on to the idea that their body fat percentage is an essential indicator of fitness (one that tells you far more about how fit you really are than your weight does). Once you tumble to that idea of course, the next thing you’ll want to know is what your ideal body fat percentage is.
Of course, everyone has their own idea of what ideal means. But there are generally accepted healthy ranges of body fat for men and women of different ages. So if by ‘ideal,’ you mean a generally-accepted healthy percentage, then you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading to see what your ideal percentage is.
The Ideal Body Fat Percentage Depends on Two Factors
If you think about it for a minute, it makes sense that the ideal body fat percentage would vary from person to person. After all, how likely is it that the healthy percentage for a 16-year old boy would be the same as that for a 60-year old woman?
So you won’t be surprised when I tell you that the experts who figure out such things have come up with different healthy ranges, depending on your age and your gender.
You also won’t be surprised to hear that the healthy range gets higher as you get older. That is, the older you are, the higher your percentage of body fat can be without it being considered a problem.
What About Sex?
Ok, so we know how the percentage varies with age. What about with gender?
When it comes to gender, the ideal body fat ranges for females are significantly higher than those for men of the same age. Once again, this makes sense. Women naturally carry more fat on their frames than men do, meaning that their healthy range will be higher than for men of the same age.
Now don’t get upset with me here. We’re talking about natural physiological differences here. Women and men just have different targets. A female’s higher range doesn’t mean that women have an advantage over men when it comes to maintaining their ideal body fat percentage.
And it doesn’t mean that a woman who is in her ideal range is less fit than a man in his ideal range. In case you haven’t noticed yet, women and men are different in many ways. One of those ways is the specific numbers they must hit to achieve a healthy body fat percentage.
Okay. I understand that you are tired of listening to explanations for why the numbers are the way they are. You want to know what your ideal numbers are, don’t you? Fair enough. Let’s talk about those numbers, ladies first.
Ideal Body Fat Ranges For Women
Based on my own research online, here are the generally-accepted ideal body fat ranges for women:
Ages 18-39: 21% to 32%
Ages 40-59: 23% to 35%
Ages 60+: 24% to 36%
Ideal Body Fat Ranges For Man
That same online research yielded these generally-accepted ideal body fat ranges for men:
Ages 18-39: 8% to 19%
Ages 40-59: 11% to 22%
Ages 60+: 13% to 25%
Once again, let’s be clear. These numbers are generally accepted healthy ranges. You won’t die if your percentage is higher than the target range. And you won’t die if it goes lower either. But stray too far away from the healthy range for too long and you will increase your risk of future health problems.
But Wait, There’s More
One of the reasons that we give healthy ranges instead of a single percentage is that your genetics come into play too. Your body fat percentage tells you how much fat you have on your body overall. But your genes control the distribution of that fat.
For some people, the genes dictate that whatever fat they have is distributed evenly across their frames. For others, the genes dictate that the fat is stored mostly around their middles. This makes a huge difference appearance-wise.
When your fat is distributed evenly, you will appear to have less of it than someone whose fat primarily settles in one spot. So two people of the same age, sex, height, build, and body fat percentage could look very different depending on how their genes distribute that fat.
In other words, getting into your healthy range for body fat doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be happy with what you see in the mirror. In particular, if you want to be one of those people that everyone stare at on the beach, the ones with great muscle tone and six-pack abs, an “ideal” body fat percentage won’t cut it.
But getting into your ideal range does greatly increase your chances of a happy and healthy life, and provides a great base for whatever you want to accomplish next in life.
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