What is Body Fat and How to Measure It

Body fat is nothing but stored food. Your body converts food to energy and if you don't use the amount of energy consumed, it is stored as body fat. The process is similar to what animals in the wild will do when gorging on food fattening themselves up for the winter months when there is no food available.

The problem comes when the food is constantly available and people over eat and don't expend the food calories by doing some form of exercise. The calories then turn into fat and your waist line gets larger and larger.

In men, the fat first goes to the waist or stomach area and this area is usually the last to lose the fat. In women, it goes to the thighs and butt first and those areas are also the last to lose when they start a fat loss program.

Each person is different, but on average men should aim for a body fat level of 8-14% and women should shoot for 11-19%. Again that is an average and each person may vary in how they look at certain body fat levels. If your trying to get your abs to show, you typically need to be under 11% body fat for that to happen.

There are numerous methods for measuring your body fat. The most accurate is to have it done in a water tank. The tank give you a very accurate body fat reading. The more convenient method is to use calipers and measure certain areas of your body and do some calculations with your weight and height.

For our purposes, we are going to show you how to measure your body fat with a set of inexpensive body fat calipers.

1. You will need to purchase or borrow a good body fat caliper. We used the FatTrack II for this article.

2. The good thing about today's calipers, is the device will do all the math for you after you have entered in your information and taken the skin pinch measurements.

3. Enter your vitals into the calipers device. (Typically, age, height and weight)

4. Pinch the skin in the 3 set areas described in the devices instructions.

5. Get your result

It's that simple with today's measuring devices.

The old BMI index is worthless. It does not take muscle into account. According to the BMI index, many of the most in shape people are considered obese because their body weight consists of muscle and not fat.