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FAT FAT FAT …………ALL ABOUT FAT ON YOUR BODY:
Fat is a bad word in the world today. Gym memberships are rising day by day; so are the sale of exercycles. Supermodels are becoming thin to the point of disappearing and entire conversations are devoted to the latest diets. And it's all about battling a deadly enemy called FAT.
You hear people talk about women who have thunder thighs and men with beer bellies. This is because in the case of men, fat tends to settle around their abdominal region. Women, on the other hand, tend to accumulate fat around their hips and thighs.
But you just can't escape it. It's something that just isn't going to go away. Fat is essential in the human body as it regulates body temperature, cushions and protects the organs and is the body energy storehouse.
(Note: Body fat percentage is merely the percentage of fat your body contains). Thus, if you weigh 40 kg and your body fat percentage is 10%, it means that you have 4 kg of fat and 36 kg of lean body mass that consists of bone, muscle, organ tissue, blood, etc.
So how much fat is enough, how much is too much and how much is too little? The American College of Sports Medicine has laid down recommended body fat levels for both men and women.
Male:
Low: 6-10% fat
Optimal: 11-17% fat
Moderate: 18-20% fat
Obesity: Greater than 25% fat
Low: 6-10% fat
Optimal: 11-17% fat
Moderate: 18-20% fat
Obesity: Greater than 25% fat
Female:
Low: 14-18% fat
Optimal:19-22% fat
Moderate: 23-30% fat
Obesity: Greater than 30% fat
Low: 14-18% fat
Optimal:19-22% fat
Moderate: 23-30% fat
Obesity: Greater than 30% fat
By these standards, men who have a body fat percentage less than 3% and over 20% would be considered unhealthy. Similarly, women with body fat percentage less than 11% and over 30% would fall into the unhealthy category.
Factors affecting body fat
The amount of fat in a person�s body depends on his/her body type, dietary habits and level of physical activities.
Genetic body type (somatype)
Body types fall into three basic categories: ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph. Most people are genetically predisposed to develop characteristics of one of these somatypes with secondary traits from other body types.
Ectomorph: possesses a low body fat percentage level, small bone size, a high metabolism, and a small amount of muscle mass and muscle size.
Mesomorph: possesses a low to medium body fat percentage level, medium to large bone size, a medium to high metabolism, and a large amount of muscle mass and muscle size.
Endomorph: possesses a high body fat percentage level, large bone size, a slow metabolism, and a small amount of muscle mass and muscle size.
While there's not much a person can do about his body type as it is genetically predetermined, he can do something about environmental factors within his control like his diet and exercise.
Level of physical activity
Here are some tips on how exercise can help you reduce your body fat:
- Aerobic excercise for 20 minutes, three times a week will improve your cardiovascular system, increase your metabolism, and burn body fat.
- Weight/strength training for 20 minutes, three times a week will increase your muscular strength, enhance your muscular endurance, result in a leaner body mass, and will have a favorable affect your bone density.
- Stretching before and after exercise will increase the range of motion of your joints and muscles. Increasing your flexibility also decreases your risk of injury while exercising.
Diet
Exercise on its own will not make a significant difference in the battle against fat if your diet comprises all the wrong kind of food. Sensible nutritional diets are a must. You need to limit the amount of fat in your diet to not more than 20% of the calories you consume.
Thin and fat�
It may surprise you to know that thin is not necessarily the opposite of fat. A thin person may have very little muscle and a high percentage of body fat. Thus, you can have a thin fat person.
Less fat is not better as people are prone to believe. Extremely low body fat, in fact, can be bad for health. Low body fat percentages reduce a person's immunity to disease. It can also lead to loss of bone density, which in turn, puts a person at greater risk of stress fractures. Low body fat can result in the disruption or the complete cessation of a woman's menstrual cycle.
Good fat and bad fat
Even fat can be separated into the good guys and the bad guys. The fat that is located right beneath our skin, known as subcutaneous fat, is the good fat. The bad fat is mostly located in the abdomen and around the internal organs. This is called intra-abdominal or visceral fat. The more visceral fat you have, the higher the level of free fatty acids in your blood. Bad body fat can clog the arteries and affect the functioning of the liver. Genetically, men ten to have about twice the amount of bad fat as women.
Fat cells and muscle cells
Muscle and fat combined usually account for about well over half a person's weight. Men tend to have a higher ratio of muscle to fat than women. A person's weight depends on the number and size of muscle and fat cells. People with more and bigger muscle and/or fat cells will weigh more than a person with fewer and smaller cells.
We are born with a fixed number of muscle cells. This number remains the same for most of our lives. As a person grows, the size of these cells increases. However, an activity like weightlifting can also increase the size of muscle cells.
In the case of fat cells, people are usually born with between 5 billion and 10 billion of them. As we grow older, this number increases to about 20 billion for a thin person and to about 100 billion for an obese person.
Myths about body fat
Myth number 1 is that fat can be turned into muscle, or vice versa. Muscle is a tissue and fat is a substance. Therefore muscle and fat cannot create one another.
Myth number 2 is that if you weigh more on the scale, you must be overweight. This is untrue. Muscle (lean body mass) weighs approximately 75 percent more than fat. In other words, you can increase your actual body weight without increasing your body fat. You can even increase your body weight and at the same time decrease your percentage of body fat.
Myth number 3 is that the weighing scale is the best way to determine whether you are overweight. In fact, the fit of your clothes and examining yourself nude in the mirror are much better ways of checking that you haven't developed any unseemly bulges.
SMART WAY TO LOOSE YOUR WAIT AND KEEP YOUR BODY TIGHT:
20 tips to help get you through one of life's most oft repeated struggles - the Fight Against Fat.
Aching to lose weight and don't know how to start? You've come to the right place. Here are 20 tips to help get you through one of life's most oft repeated struggles - the Fight Against Fat.
1. Have you tried to give up sugar and haven�t succeeded? Instead of forbidding yourself certain foods - just eat less of them. If you must have sugar in your tea, cut it down from two spoons to one.
2. Ever notice how if you eat when you're ravenous, you tend to overeat? So try eating more regularly, even if it means more frequently. Eat an average of 5 small meals a day, instead of 2 or 3 large ones, where you stuff yourself.
3. Be conscious about what you eat. Keep a food diary and note down everything you eat. You may be shocked at the results.
4. Eat or snack only on the dinner table, not on the couch in front of your television. Once you make a policy out of this, you'll cut down on snacks tremendously. Don't get too comfortable while eating. It�s always better to eat on the go. Always sit straight on the chair.
5. Make rules for yourself. If you experience cravings, give yourself ten minutes before you attack the refrigerator. In most cases, the craving would just die down and you'd walk away.
6. Drink a lot of water. This reduces hunger pangs and gives you more energy.
7. When you decide to finally attack your weight problem, you want it gone by the weekend. But realise that that is just not a realistic approach. If you want it off permanently, you've got to take it slow. It may even take up to a year to get to your desired weight - that's fine, because you've got more of a chance of maintaining it.
8. Join an aerobics class. It's more disciplined and it's always better to work out in a group.
9. Stay busy. Don't just sit around wasting time. Chances are your mind will wander to that delicious chocolate cake� Partake in activities that are not conducive to eating. Join a singing class, take up oil painting or gardening - cultivate a hobby.
10. If you have to snack, try this. Put your hand in the packet of wafers and take out a fistful. Finish off whatever you get your hands on - and that's it.
11. Don't stack up on fattening yummy foods. It�s easiest to control food intake if you just don't have it around. If you feel like chocolate cake, buy a pastry so it doesn't hang out in the refrigerator all week till you polish it off. Similarly, don't keep tubs of ice cream in the freezer. Buy a cup or two and eat it when the mood strikes.
12. When you reach for the refrigerator, stop and question yourself. Are you just bored or are you really hungry? In most of the cases the answer will be the former.
13. Stick little post-it notes on the refrigerator saying, Stop! Or Reach for a glass of water.
14. Buy clothes a size smaller and work towards fitting into them.
15. Don't beat yourself up or lose heart just because you've slipped up a few times. You need to keep a positive outlook and keep encouraging yourself.
16. Visualise how you will look without those extra kilograms.
17. Take up yoga.
18. Find new and different ways to measure how far you've come. Don't just stick to the weighing scale. Scout around in your cupboard and try on old clothes that are big for you � excellent motivation.
19. Find a partner to work out with or to support you. Enlist the help of a friend and go for activities that don't involve snacking. Take up tennis, go cycling� don't just meet friends over lunch or dinner.
20. Get motivated. No one is going to lose your weight for you. You're going to have to do it all by yourself, and if the motivation doesn't come from within you, no amount of friends and family pushing you to lose weight is going to help.
2. Ever notice how if you eat when you're ravenous, you tend to overeat? So try eating more regularly, even if it means more frequently. Eat an average of 5 small meals a day, instead of 2 or 3 large ones, where you stuff yourself.
3. Be conscious about what you eat. Keep a food diary and note down everything you eat. You may be shocked at the results.
4. Eat or snack only on the dinner table, not on the couch in front of your television. Once you make a policy out of this, you'll cut down on snacks tremendously. Don't get too comfortable while eating. It�s always better to eat on the go. Always sit straight on the chair.
5. Make rules for yourself. If you experience cravings, give yourself ten minutes before you attack the refrigerator. In most cases, the craving would just die down and you'd walk away.
6. Drink a lot of water. This reduces hunger pangs and gives you more energy.
7. When you decide to finally attack your weight problem, you want it gone by the weekend. But realise that that is just not a realistic approach. If you want it off permanently, you've got to take it slow. It may even take up to a year to get to your desired weight - that's fine, because you've got more of a chance of maintaining it.
8. Join an aerobics class. It's more disciplined and it's always better to work out in a group.
9. Stay busy. Don't just sit around wasting time. Chances are your mind will wander to that delicious chocolate cake� Partake in activities that are not conducive to eating. Join a singing class, take up oil painting or gardening - cultivate a hobby.
10. If you have to snack, try this. Put your hand in the packet of wafers and take out a fistful. Finish off whatever you get your hands on - and that's it.
11. Don't stack up on fattening yummy foods. It�s easiest to control food intake if you just don't have it around. If you feel like chocolate cake, buy a pastry so it doesn't hang out in the refrigerator all week till you polish it off. Similarly, don't keep tubs of ice cream in the freezer. Buy a cup or two and eat it when the mood strikes.
12. When you reach for the refrigerator, stop and question yourself. Are you just bored or are you really hungry? In most of the cases the answer will be the former.
13. Stick little post-it notes on the refrigerator saying, Stop! Or Reach for a glass of water.
14. Buy clothes a size smaller and work towards fitting into them.
15. Don't beat yourself up or lose heart just because you've slipped up a few times. You need to keep a positive outlook and keep encouraging yourself.
16. Visualise how you will look without those extra kilograms.
17. Take up yoga.
18. Find new and different ways to measure how far you've come. Don't just stick to the weighing scale. Scout around in your cupboard and try on old clothes that are big for you � excellent motivation.
19. Find a partner to work out with or to support you. Enlist the help of a friend and go for activities that don't involve snacking. Take up tennis, go cycling� don't just meet friends over lunch or dinner.
20. Get motivated. No one is going to lose your weight for you. You're going to have to do it all by yourself, and if the motivation doesn't come from within you, no amount of friends and family pushing you to lose weight is going to help.
