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How to calculate the ideal weight and determine the best percentage of fat for your body.
In this article, I write about the best way to determine the ideal weight and the importance of calculating the body's components of fat and muscle mass.
There are two important quotes: The first quote is from the book Natural Hormonal Enhancement by Rob Feigen:
The weight you see on the scale has no indication of your fitness, health, appearance or attractiveness. Your body weight may be of interest to you if you are a professional athlete who wants to enter a tournament in a specific weight class. As for the important thing, it is the components of your body from muscles and fats.
The percentage of fat in your body determines the rest of the components of your body, and it determines your appearance, fitness and fitness.
The second quote from Biomakers by William Evans:
It is wrong if your goal is just to lose body weight; But the right goal is to burn fat and increase muscle size.”
In several previous articles, we have talked about the importance of muscle mass in increasing metabolism. And how muscle fibers consume quantities of calories per day, even at rest. While adipose tissue hardly consumes any amount of calories.
One of the benefits of muscles is that they give both men and women an athletic, graceful and attractive appearance. All attractive celebrities in Hollywood, both men and women, do exercises to increase muscle mass in order to give them what is called a “sculpted” or slender body.
I do not want to go into this article about misconceptions among Egyptians and Arabs. Like women's fear of turning overnight into muscular men. Or the conviction of most men that exercises with iron come into play after “slimming”. Or the fear of turning muscles into fat!
We return to our main topic, which is the measurement of body components during dieting. Many dieters follow their progress in dieting in many inappropriate ways!
Mistakes you may make when calculating your ideal weight and fat percentage
by scale.
It is for the obese to stand on a “bath” scale that he bought from the pharmacy, or to measure his weight in the clinic of a slimming specialist. There are two big problems with the scale:
The scale does not determine the percentage of fat and muscle in your body.
Scale measurements vary greatly due to the amounts of water and food trapped inside the body.
The truth is, it's easy to lose weight on the scale. But burning body fat and gaining muscle mass is a greater challenge.
By strange arithmetic equations based on length
It is to subtract 100 from the height in meters if it is a man and 110 if it is a woman. Meaning that if a man is 180 cm tall, his ideal weight is 80 kg. And if a woman's height is 160, then her ideal weight is 50 kg.
Here, the same problem is repeated in this method, which is not taking into account the percentage of body fat, muscle weight, and body shape. For example, a bodybuilder who weighs 90 kg and is 170 cm tall is considered overweight, even though his body fat percentage is 4-5% at the time of the tournament.
On the other hand, you may find a woman who is 170 and weighs 60 kg, but her body fat percentage is 30%, which means that her body is full of fat. So, determining the ideal weight based on height is a completely inappropriate method for those who want a fit and athletic body.
Through the Body Mass Index (body mass index)
The Body Mass Index, or BMI, is also a popular way to try to calculate your ideal weight. The BMI is equal to the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in metres. And according to the BMI table, and I do not see the importance of putting this table here, the man is overweight if the BMI exceeds 27.8. A woman is considered overweight if her BMI exceeds 27.3.
I will use the example of the bodybuilder I used in the previous article, who is 170 cm tall and weighs 90 kg. We will find that his BMI is 90 / 1.7 ^ 2, which is equal to about 31, which puts him in the category of severe obesity!! Although the percentage of fat in his body is about 4-5%!
Ronnie Coleman
You may also find women and men with a low BMI (less than 25) and a high percentage of body fat.
So, determining ideal weight by BMI is an imprecise method, as is calculating by height.
So, what is the most appropriate way to measure body composition?
The best way to know your body composition of muscle and fat is to measure your body fat percentage. And there are several ways to do that. For example, by means of a measuring meter or by measuring the thickness of the leather with simple measuring instruments. There are more complex methods, but they are not readily available in the Arab world, such as: Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (Dexa Scan) and Hydrostatic Testing. This last test is done by completely immersing your body in water, and then your body fat By buoyancy according to Archimedes' theorem, and then measure your body weight, which is lighter because of the buoyancy of the fat, and by subtracting your body weight underwater from your total body weight, the weight of your body fat will be shown.
What is the average percentage of fat between men and women?
The average body fat percentage for men is 17%, and the average body fat percentage for women is 23%. This is because levels of the female sex hormone (estrogen) are higher in women. Also, the percentage of body fat increases with age and the size of the muscle mass decreases in men and women. And there is research that revealed that a man loses about 3 kilograms of his muscle mass every ten years (and this is a significant number) and the rate of loss of muscle mass increases after the age of 45. The same study also revealed that the average percentage of fat for twenty-year-olds is 15% While this percentage rises to 25% for middle-aged men (age 40).
So, what is the ideal percentage of fat for a man and a woman?
For a man, the ideal body fat percentage is 10-14% and for a woman it is 14-18%. This is a picture showing body shapes with different fat percentages. Body fat percentages include essential fats for your life and health. You find them around the liver, kidneys, heart, brain and marrow. Therefore, it is impossible to reach zero fat while you are still alive. Also, the low percentages that bodybuilders reach on the day of the tournament (3-4%) are very difficult to maintain for long periods.
Conclusion for calculating ideal body weight
The BMI and calculating the ideal weight by height are completely inaccurate methods. The best way to calculate the ideal weight and make a plan to reach this weight is to measure the percentage of body fat. In future articles, we will teach you how to measure your body fat percentage in a simple way.