Body Fat vs. A Fat Body
02-12-08
This whole time I have been basing my success at getting healthy on what the scale says and how far I can run.
As you can imagine I am pretty happy with both those indicators.
Last week I finally got around to taking some measurements and figuring out my body fat.
Now I am wishing I had been taking measurements all along. I had really good intentions of keeping track, honestly I did. But when you come home every night to two smiling balls of energy yelling “Daddy’s home, daddy’s home”, you tend to forget those less important things until it’s too late.
So according to this website, I have 24% body fat.
They say the average American male is at 22% body fat, top athletes are at 3 to 10% body fat and the healthy normal range for me should be 15%.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised that I am so far above the healthy percentage, but I still am.
Having watched the numbers on the scale go down overtime, I have context for that success. This number is still arbitrary to me and because of that it feels really high.
It makes me wonder what my body fat would have been at my heaviest.
Scary to think about, isn’t it? I’m not a nutrition expert by any means, but I would think that as long as your height and weight match, and you’re exercising on a semi-regular basis, eating healthy, etc… your body fat percentage is somewhat arbitrary. Just my 2/5 of a nickel.