I recently learned my body fat percentage. Um, yeah. I’m officially a fitness geek, it’s okay to think it. I went to the Human Performance Lab near where I work and paid $10 to get pinched in seven places with a small pair of calipers. My numbers were entered into a computer and voilà!

Carnie fan that I am, I made the (very professional, very smart) man who oversees the Lab guess, before he weighed me or took any measurements, what my body fat percentage was going to be. These guys are good, really good. “Seventeen,” he said, without batting an eyelash. And 17% is exactly what it was.

As it turns out, most women who are in reasonably decent shape are in the 20’s. A female athlete who trains hard will usually be in the teens. Women who go below 12% often begin having difficulties with menstrual cycles and other things. “Essential fat levels” for women are about 10-13% and for men it’s 2-5%; that’s what you need to regulate hormonal balance and body temperature, protect internal organs, and serve as a fuel reserve for the body. Bodybuilders get down into single digits, and there are physiological prices that you pay. You don’t want to stay down in the low singles for long.

Body fat measurement is a much better indicator of overall fitness than body mass index because it doesn’t need to take into account your height. The BMI test has to make assumptions about what a person of a particular height should weigh, and that’s not entirely helpful, especially if you are an athlete with lots of lean muscle mass.

I only made the trek out to this Lab because a co-worker raved so much about how this was helping him meet his goal of cutting back body fat so his abs would look good for swimsuit season (see, guys do it too). I didn’t have any such goal. My weight is exactly where I want it: I feel strong and by staying at 143 or so I can easily fight in the weight category I’m currently in or cut 4 pounds and be comfortably in the weight category below me. I just went out of curiosity.

But once I saw my body weight percentages I began to formulate a new goal. If I could trade a few pounds of that fat weight for some muscle weight, that might be really nice. Keep my weight the same, but have more power. The more I thought about it, the better it sounded.

SO. I’m shifting my training regimen in order to incorporate heavier weights. I’m looking at those big barbells and nodding in satisfaction. Back up, boys. They’re gonna be mine, all mine.

Image Credit: eschipul on Flickr

View Original Post at theglowingedge.com

• Filed Under:  
• Boxing, Sports, SportsPLUS, Health & Fitness, More, Training

• Tags:
• boxing
• Health
• Training
• fitness
• Power
• weight
• fat
• muscle

There are 2 comments on this post. Join the discussion!

robm

Good for you, Lisa! The added muscle will make you a stronger, more durable athlete.

Saturday, July 25, 2009 at 4:58pm EDT

Lisa Creech Bledsoe

Thanks! I'm writing another post now about how easy it has been to shift up on weightlifting. I'm not sure why I've never pushed that boundary before -- is there some cultural thing that tells us "You can't lift heavy weights"? Whatever it is, I'm through with it, and loving the forward motion toward greater strength. Thanks for reading and double thanks for the encouragement!

Sunday, July 26, 2009 at 2:57pm EDT