No one much likes talking about fat … but the truth is we ALL need some fat to survive… it’s biology.
And ladies (don’t shoot the messenger!), we need a little more. That’s because our bodies can do amazing and clever things that blokes can’t do… like grow little people inside us.
Indulge us while we get a bit scientific for a moment…
Body fat can be divided into two categories:
Essential fat and storage (non-essential) fat. As its name suggests, we need essential fat for normal and healthy functioning. We store essential fat in small amounts in our bone marrow, organs, central nervous system and muscles.
For the boys, essential fat accounts for approximately 3% of body weight. However, we lucky ladies need a higher percentage of essential fat… about 12%. This includes gender-specific fat found in the breasts, pelvis, hips and thighs which are important for normal reproductive function.
Storage (non-essential) fat on the other hand is the type of fat we accumulate under the skin, in certain specific areas inside your body, and in your muscles. It does include some deep fat which protects our internal organs from injury but it brings back some gender equity with men and women equally susceptible to storage fat. This is the fat we are all so keen to blast into oblivion!
Here are the guidelines we use to assess health ranges of body fat for our clients and we hope this helps explain why the values slide a little higher along the scale for ladies.
It’s also why we can never achieve 0% body fat… or live to talk about it.
(I also own Physique Science and this post was originally published on my blog at www.physiquescience.com.au)
If you have any questions, drop me an email at info@physiquescience.com.au or
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