Tuesday, January 25, 2011
by Alex Chaple
Losing body fat is priority one when I meet a new trainee. The leaner you are, the healthier you are, the fitter you are and the more potential you have for improvement in any aspect of physical development. Now, just because you are lean does not mean you are healthy and yes, you can have a person with more body fat than someone else but who is enjoying better health and fitness than their leaner counterpart. However, if you take someone and make them leaner you have also, by definition, made them more healthy. We now know that having a low body fat is a strong predictor of longevity as well as increasing obvious factors like VO2 max and relative strength.
Note: anyone who tells you that by having a body fat that is "too low" (I have heard people quote 6%) you are risking your health does not know what they are talking about. As a male you want to be below 10% and as a female (non-competing) around 15%.
Of course, to reduce someone's body fat you first need to know what their body fat is! Regularly testing your body fat is an important measure to record and should be done by all of those who are in the gym with the intension of improving their health. However, there are only a few methods which I would say are accurate. The gold standard is a DEXA scan (dual energy x-ray absorbtiometry) which literally scans the body and can show you exactly how much fat you have. This is expensive. The next is hydrostatic weighing, which involves being dunked under water and having your underwater weight measured (and works on the principle that fat is lighter than water). This method is obviously not particularly convenient and the margin of error is around 2-3% depending on the amount of air you expel pre-dunking. Then there is body fat testing using skinfold callipers.
Skinfold callipers are the method of choice used by pro athletes, medical practitioners and personal trainers (or they should be). When used properly, they are accurate to within 0.5% of what the DEXA scan predicts and are obviously very convenient and inexpensive as a method of testing - no huge water tank required! However, there are many other methods of testing which are known to be a total waste of time and which are unfortunately widely used and trusted. Below is a short list...
1. First of all there are skinfold calliper measures used by people who have never been trained to use skinfold callipers properly. If the man/woman testing you is not experienced, accurate or even trained, it's a waste of your time and money.
2. The callipers themselves must be Harpenden Skinfold Callipers. These are the brand of callipers used in almost every large clinical trial when body fats are taken through this method. If someone offers to take your body fat with plastic callipers, slap them in the face.
3. In my experience, electronic scales are about as consistent as BAs cabin crew. I spoke to a woman very recently who was clearly lean (no more than 15% max) and her scales had told her that morning that she was 28% (obese). In my experience, they are not accurate. Dont waste your money on them.
4. Any small device that involves sticking small electrodes to your feet or hands are not worth the money. I have personally used some that said I was in the 20% range - not a chance! I have tested one trainee who came to me because she had tried them and they told her she was 42%... She was 31% when I tested her - only an 11% difference?!?
If you want to lose body fat, get yourself tested by someone who knows what they are doing. Its more than worth it to have an accurate picture of what it is you need to do and how you might go about doing it!
Contact me for more details.