Would you like to know how to calculate your body fat percentage? When most of us think about about losing weight, the amount of fat you are carrying around is actually much more important than weight.
If you should be measuring anything, it should be body fat percentage, not weight. Your weight does not accurately reflect the level of your fitness.
Body fat is measured with what is known as Body Mass Index, or BMI.
A women that is in shape should have a body fat percentage range from 21% to 31%.
If you are in fantastic shape, your body fat percentage could be as low as 10%.
For men, if you are fit and in shape, your body fat percentage should be between 14% and 25%. If you are in excellent shape, your body fat percentage could be as low as 2%.
To calculate your body fat percentage, write down how much you weigh but you have to be honest. Remember, no one will see this but you. Multiply your weight by 703.
Next, write down your height, in inches. Multiply by that same number. Then you will divide your weight number by your height number. That is your BMI.
For example, if your weight were 150 pounds x 703, your weight answer would be 105,450. If your height is 5’4”, that would be 64 inches x 64 for a total of 4,096. Taking the 105,450 divided by 4,096, you come out with a BMI of 25.7.
There are other ways to measure your body fat percentage but this will give you a quick idea of where you are at.
If you are thinking about about losing weight, remember the amount of fat you are carry around is actually much more important than weight.
If you use the method above to figure out your current body fat percentage, you'll be on your way to a much healthier fitness level.
Have you tried to lose weight after 30? Wasn’t that more difficult than ever before? Guess what? It’s even more difficult after 40! Have you ever wondered why your body reacts differently to the same regimes you apply in different stages of your life?
People that have never had a weight problem get flabbier after 30 without clear explanation. They start exercising and they don’t see any improvement. They eat less, and they still don’t achieve any significant change. What they don’t take into consideration is the aging impact on their body.
Aging is a Reason for Gaining Weight and the Obstacle to Losing Weight
There are more than 20 theories about aging but the most researched one is the “Free Radicals” theory. Free radicals are atoms or molecules in which at least one electron is unpaired causing an instability (a stable atom contains a balance of paired electrons which encircle the nucleus).
This instability causes the electrons to be very reactive – they bond easily with healthy molecules and damage them. According to the free radicals theory, this damage is what causes you to age and to become vulnerable to certain diseases.
The most common free radical is an oxygen radical, which occurs in the mitochondria when an unpaired electron interacts with oxygen. Mitochondria are your cellular power plants, the tiny structures in your cells that provide energy in the chemical form of ATP. This is your “fuel” for all your life functions. It helps your heart to pump and your lungs to distribute oxygen when you breathe.
When free radicals are formed in the mitochondria, they reduce the power of your cellular power plants to produce energy efficiently. You are not running out of energy because you’re aging. You are aging because you are running out of energy. Free radicals gradually shut down your power as if you are slowly turning off a light dimmer.
Free Radicals and Energy Reduction are the Roots of Most Aging Problems
Without energy your metabolic rate drops causing you to accumulate more body fat. You are losing muscle mass, bone mass, facial collagen and you are tired even when you have over-slept.
Energy reduction at the cellular level also decreases the hormone secretion in your glands. The most abundant hormone in the body is DHEA. It is known as the “mother of all hormones” because it is involved in manufacturing of other hormones, especially the sexual hormones estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.
DHEA peeks at the age of 20 but afterwards declines sharply so at age 45 you have 50% of your high peek DHEA, and at the age of 65 you have only 10-20% of what you had at age 20. As the mother of all hormones DHEA represents a decline in other hormones as Human Growth Hormone, (HGH), Testosterone (in men), estrogen and progesterone (in women).
Studies show that as lower your hormone level is, as higher your tendency to accumulate fat.
Weight gain after 30 is a result of a vicious cycle of aging. Aggressive free-radicals decrease energy production which decreases hormone level and your metabolic rate to levels that most diets cannot help.
Anti-Aging Can Support Weight Loss by Neutralizing Free-Radicals
The most common way to fight free radicals is by increasing significantly antioxidants in your body. Your body produces antioxidants naturally or it gets it from food like fruit and vegetables.
Antioxidants are form of enzymes that attack free radicals by attaching to the unpaired electron and neutralize it. There are 2 kinds of antioxidants:
The first type patrols the body, blocking the formation of free radicals.
The second type disarms the already existing free radical before they bind with healthy molecules.
Studies show that today’s fruit and vegetables are not rich in antioxidants as few decades ago. It is impossible to get the recommended level without supplements as multi-vitamin, vitamin C, and vitamin E in the right dosages. But this by itself doesn’t make the difference. No one lose weight just by taking antioxidants.
Anti-Aging Can Support Weight Loss by Boosting Energy in Your Cells
You can increase your cells energy if you exercise regularly and supplement your food with energizers. Energizers are vitamins and minerals that increase the energy production in your cells. Well studied energizers are Lipoic Acid, Chromium Picolinate, Coenzyme Q-10, and others. Cardio training is the best exercise to boost your cellular energy. Cardio training is what you may know as aerobic exercise like jogging, cycling, rowing or other activities that ramp your heart rate.
Anti-Aging Can Support Weight Loss by Increasing Hormone Level and Accelerating Metabolic Rate
An expensive and still questionable way to increase your hormones is Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). Hormone replacement therapy must be recommended and supervised by a doctor. But criticizers recommend staying away and not messing with the side effect risks of hormones.
You can boost your hormone level significantly without a doctor and for free if you engage in resistance training like free weights, weight machines, bands, cables or even body weight.
Studies show without a doubt that resistance training stimulates secretion of HGH and testosterone. But that’s not all. Resistance training has many other benefits. It helps to gain muscle and reverses the aging damage of losing muscle. The more muscles you have, the more fat you burn because mussel growth accelerate you metabolic rate.
Aging is Not an Obstacle Anymore to Weight Loss
You reverse your aging damages backward and slow your aging forward when you burn fat and gain muscle. You can accelerate this process by reducing free-radicals and increase energy production using supplements. But there is no way to achieve it without special exercises that boost hormone level and nutrition that decreases blood sugar.
Weight loss is a common problem millions of Americans today struggle with. Very few Americans have been successful at losing a desired amount of weight.
The main problem is that most cannot stick to the designated program. For instance, a general weight loss program includes both diet as well as exercise. Most of the time an individual trying to lose weight will at least attempt one of these. Often times what happens is that the exercise may be too strenuous for that person since they must have lacked exercise for so long going back to why they are in such shape.
Another perspective is the diet. Most people looking to lose weight are usually in this pandemic because of eating not only food with high amounts of sugars and fats, but also food in high quantities of these fats ans sugars. This becomes a significant problem because changing old habits for anyone is such a difficult process especially in America since you can’t walk two feet out your door without seeing a McDonald’s.
So in the end dieting or weight loss in general is such a difficult process because of the extreme new “way of life” you would have to adapt to. A recent statistic said that of those who fail to reach an ideal weight goal in a diet actually gain more weight trying the diet rather then losing.
The reason for this is once you “give in,” you start “binge eating” meaning you eats almost everything in site with no restrictions. This is a one negative impact of dieting viewed by many. Of course most researchers/doctors say diet and exercise are essential for a healthy life, whether losing weight or not.
Winter weight gain of a few pounds over the winter, happens quite often. It seems that every winter we acquire a few pounds, and come summer we don't lose them all again either. A few of them always stick around, adding to our weight every year. They can be quite hard to lose, those extra pounds!
Why does this happen and what can we do?
There are quite a few things involved. First, it seems likely that we have an inherited trait to store more fat as winter approaches. Several animals do this and it was probably necessary to survival for our antecedents. More layers of fat on the body protect us against the winter temperatures and then can be used as fuel in the late winter and early spring when food stocks would historically be very low. We likely have a tendency to eat more in the fall, when food is abundant after harvest time, to help this process along. We may also probably choose foods that are higher in fat
content at this time.
Hormone levels can also affect our weight gain. The interaction of hormones and other chemicals in the brain can bring about changes in appetite and desires. Some neurotransmitters can also affect the way we eat. People who have difficulty losing weight often have low levels of these neurotransmitters and the consequences can include excessive appetite, depression and sleep disorders. At the same time, the lack of daylight caused by the shortening days during late fall and winter can bring on Seasonally Affected Disorder(S.A.D.) or winter depression.
(question-Does vitamin D play a roll?)
One of the fastest ways to give a lift to the energy levels and emotions is to eat foods, that have a high carbohydrate level, including sugar treats, chips and cereals that give us a rapid blood sugar 'fix'. So people who feel down in the winter will tend to overeat or eat the wrong foods, leading to weight gain, more depression and a vicious cycle that is difficult to break.
(note: S.A.D. shouldn't be confused with clinical depression or bipolar.)
So altogether there are plenty of reasons why we eat more high carbohydrate foods such as cookies, pies and chocolate in the winter, and to make matters worse, most of these foods also have high levels of fats. The best way to handle this is generally to substitute other foods that are also high in carbohydrate so that we get what our body craves, but which are fat free and have plenty of fiber. This means potatoes, wholegrain bread without butter, wholegrain rice, cereals, and fresh whole fruit.
It is also important to take more exercise. Often our physical activity levels reduce in the winter and we have a tendency to want to stay home and rest. This is common when it is cold outside. But we are not our ancestors! We have heating in our homes and can be sure that there will still be adequate food in the stores come February. We do not need to store fat the way that they did. Join a gym or get a stationary bicycle for the den. Transform those carbs into energy now instead of keeping them on the waistline until spring. Winter weight gain is easily avoidable this way.
Weight gain is a lot easier as you grow older particularly as the motivation to exercise also wanes, but you can turn it around it does not matter how old you are. You should start to weave some sort of exercise into your daily life.
One type of exercise that you should consider to do is weight training, also known as strength training or resistance training. Weight training will not only help with losing weight but will also trim and tone your body. Age does not matter it has been shown that women as old as 70 who have started to weight train and have improved their body strength within a very short while.
Weight training is an important element in fighting flab; maybe it is the most important. If you do aerobic exercise you only burn fat during the exercise but with weight training you burn fat even when you have finished. The body is still burning fat for up to as much as twelve hours after finishing the exercise whilst it is building the muscles worked, so you can still be burning fat while you are resting. But that is not the end of the story.
A body full of muscle uses far more calories than a body full of fat, so you will find that you will need to eat more to maintain your weight and your muscle. You do not need to worry that you will bulk up like a body builder, as you do not have the right makeup to do this, as a woman you will only elongate and define your muscles, and build lean muscles.
When you first start to weight train you might find that your weight will actually increase. This is because muscle is heavier than fat but as muscle is smaller so you should notice the body getting smaller even if the scales do not show an decrease in weight.
The additional benefits from weight training are:-
1. It helps to strengthen and increase the density of your bones because the act of the muscles pulling and flexing the bones helps to lay down more bone fibre.
2. Stronger muscles helps your body to be more steady and so helps to prevent falls.
3. It has also been found that it can fight the build up of abdominal fat by lifting weights at least twice a week.
Finally when weight training make sure that you change your routine around so that the body can not get use to the routine. It only takes the body about six weeks for it to learn how to work efficiently if keeping to the same routine and therefore you will stop seeing any weight or body changes.
So have fun and start weight training to lose weight and tone your body.
Motivation is one of the key variables for the equation that yields long term weight loss success. The question is how do you maintain the motivation to attain the ultimate goal? Regardless if your weight loss goal is 20 pounds or 100 pounds you must change your thinking to change your behavior and writing makes that happen.
Weight loss really does begin in your head. Every successful athlete understands that his thinking process is either working for him or against him. The same holds true with weight loss. If your internal dialogue is negative, your results will eventually manifest the same result! You can’t degrade yourself to a healthy new you! You must change your thinking to work for you, to build your resolve, and to maintain that all important motivational factor.
Writing is an exercise that will help your mind change its thinking! It allows you to process the negative emotions and helps to instill the positive changes. Start with these simple exercises:
1. The Negative Emotions Daily Dump: Many success coaches advocate writing out your negative thinking on a daily basis. Simply spend approximately 15 minutes writing out all the frustrations, bad feelings, and discouragement. This helps you to process these bad feelings out of your system so that you can make room for positive affirmations. Do not reread the entries and do not keep them. Write it out, and then throw it out. We call this the Negative Emotions Daily Dump.
2. Affirm Your Goals: Prepare a list of affirmations that will help your subconscious work with your conscious brain to make those all important behavioral changes. Then write your affirmations at least twice a day. Write them once after you have written your Negative Emotions Daily Dump. Don’t do the Negative Dump without filling it with the positive affirmations. You should always end with this. Write the second set of affirmations either right before you go to bed or first thing in the morning. Read your affirmations several times a day.
3. Understand your Motivations: In order to stay motivated you must understand your real reasons for losing weight. In other words, understand why YOU want to lose weight. Not why your spouse or friends want you to lose weight but why losing the weight is important to you. Do you really want more energy? Do you just love skinny clothes? Do you want to participate in an activity that would be easier if you were slim and healthy? Write these motivations out in detail so that you can solidify them in your head and they can continue to motivate you through the entire weight loss journey.
4. Accountability: Keep a food diary. Keeping a food diary has been proven time and time again to increase your weight loss success by as much as 50%! A food log is your accountability factor. It keeps you honest with yourself.
5. Visualize: Visualize yourself enjoying the portions of your weight loss program that you are currently struggling to do. For instance if you hate the cardio portion of your day, start seeing yourself loving it. See it as “”your time”. It can be your time to read while you’re on the stationary bike. Or your time to watch all those movies you feel guilty watching any other time. Once you begin to visualize positive feelings about a certain activity the easier that activity will become.
6. The Pat-On-The-Back: Keep a written log of your weight loss success. By writing down your weight loss on a weekly basis you are validating your efforts and giving yourself a pat-on-the-back. This will go a long way to keeping you on track.
Keep in mind that if you are utilizing the assistance of a personal fitness trainer or weight loss professional that they may use techniques to help you face your self-defeating habits. This might feel harsh and negative, however it isn’t. Honesty is necessary to motivate change and this is different than running yourself down! Sometimes we have to hear the hard words to make the hard changes. Keep in mind that these professionals are seeking your ultimate success. Your success is their success. Let’s face it, the weight gain started with you and to change that behavior you may have to deal with some uncomfortable feelings. A good trainer will help you feel cared about while still insisting that you deal with your bad habits. It’s a good thing to be pushed past your comfort zone to becoming a better you!
Writing is the new “exercise” that can make all the rest of your weight loss efforts including good nutrition, exercise, and resistance training work for you because you will be working with these principles instead of against them. You will start seeing these weight loss techniques as a positive and permanent part of your life, instead of a temporary device. That will result in faster results that last forever!
