Vegetarian Weight LossBurn Excess Fat, Not Essential!
What keeps you warm?
Fat... found beneath your skin.
Basically, your body stores fat as a survival strategy. Hence, it deposits fat in common places (such as belly, buttocks, hips and thighs) where it can transport easily for use as fuel in times of need. Not only that, it acts like a foam cushion to protect your vital organs such as brain, heart, kidneys, liver, spleen and spinal cord against trauma.
As such, you still need to maintain an essential amount of fat to keep your body functioning normally while eliminating excess fat at the same time.
In men, essential body fat occupies about 2 - 5% while women carry more essential fat at 10 - 13% (found in hips, thighs, butt and breasts) to support their childbearing function.
Sadly, many people do not know much about essential fat. Thanks to the media and fashion industries, our society perceives all body fat as evil and over-emphasizes on a fat-free body image. Such ignorance brings health risks as people may unknowingly do away with their essential body fat needed for overall health and well-being.
How Much Fat to Burn Without Over-Burning?
To answer that, we need to find out your percent body fat. Once you know your body fat content, you can then determine how much fat you want to remove, without hurting your body.
Sophisticated techniques like dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scanning or hydrostatic (underwater) weighing give closer body fat estimation, provided you can well afford their hefty cost (about $20 - $75 per hydrostatic weighing and around $200 per DEXA scanning) and traveling time spent because they're done only in labs, universities and hospitals. That's not the end. You need to measure your body fat on a regular basis so you can keep tabs on your body fat until you achieve your target.
By then, how much would you have spent on those measurement techniques? Thousands.
A more handy way is either get yourself a body fat scale at a one-off price or use our cost-free Body Fat Calculator (together with just a measuring tape) to do your own measurement at home anytime you need.
Whether you use body fat scale or our body fat calculator, make sure you stick to just one technique for consistent tracking over time. Switching between different techniques can result in inaccuracy and confusion.
Body Fat Calculator
Body Fat Chart
| Essential Fat | 2 - 5% | 10 - 13% |
| Body Fat Level | Men | Women |
| Athletic | 6 - 13% | 14 - 20% |
| Fit | 13.1 - 17% | 20.1 - 24% |
| Acceptable | 17.1 - 26% | 24.1 - 31% |
| Dangerous | > 26% | > 31% |
How to use our Body Fat Calculator?
— For GUYS: enter your height (in either cm or feet-inches), weight (in either kg or pounds), neck (taken below your Adam's apple) and waist girth (in cm or inches), in the respective yellow boxes. Reason: men generally accumulate fat around the waist ("apple-shape" body).
— For LADIES: You must measure and enter your hip girth too. Reason: Fat "loves" to lurk around the hip (giving you a "pear-shape" body).
Reminder: Make sure you enter your neck, waist and hip either ALL in cm or ALL in inches or the Body Fat Calculator won't work.
To measure your neck, waist and hip, simply surround the tape at the level as shown. For neck girth measurement, surround the tape at the narrowest point.
Whether you use our body fat calculator to track and monitor your progress over time, these are what you should know.
First of all, what does a body fat calculator tell you about your body fat percentage?
Let's assume you, as a woman, got 33% body fat. According to body fat chart under Women category, you carry 13% extra fat above the 'Fit' level or 19% above the 'Athletic' level.
Next, think about which level you want to achieve. If you want to stay at just the 'Fit' level, you can set 22% body fat as your target, meaning, you need to cut 11% of fat mass off your body.
Now, connecting back to 1. How to Kickstart Weight Loss the Right Way, let's assume again that with a current weight of 180 pounds, you plan to lose 40 pounds based on your desired BMI value. Remember I mentioned earlier that 40-pound loss consists of both fat loss and lean body mass loss?
Therefore, with a targeted 11% fat cut, you can then aim to remove 19.8 pounds (11% of 180 pounds) of fat together with 20.2 pounds off your lean body mass (i.e. mass of body water, muscle, connective tissues etc) in order to achieve the overall 40 pounds weight loss.
Bear in mind that you must regularly monitor your body fat percentage to ensure it doesn't fall below the upper limit of essential body fat level (5% for men / 13% for women).
To recap, essential fat will protect your body and keep your body functioning properly. You can't afford to burn away the essential fat by accident or mistake. That's why I couldn't stress enough that you must check your body fat level regularly (at least once a week).
Truth About Body Fat Calculation
Though our body fat calculator can help you save hundreds of dollars at stages where you still got much excess fat to burn, it does bear limitation in providing accurate body fat percentage. In fact, NO body fat measurement techniques can yield exact body fat percentage due to too much variables in a human structure, even the best measurement techniques like hydrostatic (underwater) weighing and DEXA scanning provide only close estimation.
But at certain point where your body fat composition (based on the body fat calculator you use) drops to about 15% (for men) or 23% (for women) which falls within the 'Fit' range, I'd advise you, if it's within your financial means, to check your percent body fat using BOTH DEXA and hydrostatic weighing techniques. Doing so will provide a closer estimation of your true body fat level than relying on our body fat calculator (or any body fat scale out there) alone. Furthermore, the results from both can serve as comparisons to help you better assess your fat loss progress.
Now you know how much excess body fat to lose, next, let's go find out how best to burn that extra body fat by working ingeniously with calories.
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