How To Figure Out Body Fat Percentage | What Is A Healthy Body Fat Percentage Range

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome to the video. Welcome back to the channel. In this video, you and I are going to be covering everything you need to know about how to figure out your body fat percentage. We are going to cover all of the different kinds of, you know, how to measure your body fat, whether it's a DEXA scan, whether it's an InBody, whether it's a Bod Pod, whether it's whatever it is. We're going to cover all of these modalities of how people measure their body fat percentage. We're going to talk about which ones are the most accurate, which ones maybe aren't the most accurate, the error rate percentage and all of that good stuff. Then we're going to be talking about what you should be also tracking if you are looking to track your body fat percentage. We're also going to talk about the body fat percentage for men and the body fat percentage for women that you want to be roughly around. Because let's be honest, there is a direct correlation with how healthy you are in terms of your body fat percentage, whether people like to admit that or not. Sometimes there's a direct correlation with how healthy you are. And trust me, you're going to see we don't need to be a fucking bodybuilder or step on a bodybuilding show or be a bikini model, but we are going to talk about what the healthy ranges are for both men and women. And that's the whole reason why we would even figure out what your body fat percentage is in the first place is because number one, it might help determine like how many calories you need to eat and things of that nature. But mainly number two is, are we healthy? Are you in a healthy range? How do you know if you're in a healthy range? And then last but not least, speaking of health, we're going to touch on something that I think most people don't talk about when they talk about body fat percentage and where I need to kind of, I think I the need to talk about, which is there's going to be something that is unhealthy when it comes to body fat percentages in general. So stick around for that and we can talk about what that is at the end. But first, let's dive into all of these body fat measurers. So we have, like I said, we have the DEXA scan, we have a Bod Pod. This is kind of where like you submerge yourself in water and it's supposed to like track your body fat percentage. We have an InBody scan where like you step on something. You can also usually hold something as well, kind of like out by your sides, uh, like the handheld things where you just hold something and it calculates your body fat percentage. Uh, the calipers where like you take calipers and like do this with your skin. Actually, and one I forgot to put on here is those, uh, body fat scales, right? Where like you step on the scale in the morning and it kind of like your feet are on the thing and it's supposed to tell you your overall body fat percentage from those, uh, from that particular scale. And here's the deal. I'm not going to go super in-depth into every single one of these and like how the intricacies work and all of that stuff. If you want to learn about all of that, I'm going to recommend you read this book right here. It is called The Science and Development of Muscle Hypertrophy by Brad Schoenfeld. It has an entire chapter in here discussing every single one of these kind of like mechanics that is used to track Your body fat percentage. So if you want to know all of like how they work, because like for example, I told you the Bod Pod, right? You like submerge yourself in water and like the Bod Pod is going to be able to tell you how much like you float versus you not float. And that tells you how much your body fat percentage is. Or like that InBody, for example, you step on the scale, you hold the 2 things, it sends an electrical current kind of like through your body and however fast it goes, That can determine your body fat percentage. So in terms of like knowing exactly how all of these work, I'm not going to go over that because that would take me probably 50 minutes. But what I am going to tell you is I'm going to give you the 2 like most effective ones, but even then, so the 2 most effective ones are really going to be number one, the DEXA scan, and number 2, I mean, even it's a, it's a far away number 2, but the Bod Pod. Uh, those 2 would typically be like, Or like an MRI would be the most efficient, or to be honest with you, an autopsy would be the most efficient, but I don't want you watching this video to get an autopsy to check your body fat because I think it's going a bit over the top. But those typically would be the 2 most accurate, but even then, my point here is with all these things, they're all very inaccurate for tracking your body fat percentage. They can give you anywhere between a 5% Up to a 15% error rate. Yes, anywhere between 5 to 15% error rate for really any one of these given things. The DEXA scan might be like 3 to 6%, which is why I say that one might be the best. But honestly, all of them can be, you know, inaccurate and they can all like change. Like I used to coach people in person in a gym and we would do those, uh, the InBody or like the handheld ones, right? And I could literally have somebody come in fresh before a workout, they could take their body fat percentage and it was 28%. I could have them run through a workout, I would take their body fat percentage after and it was 21%. The only reason— that's a massive change, right? But the only reason it would change is because that person now had less muscle glycogen in their muscles, which would tell their body there's less body fat percentage showing. The modalities and the methods used to track your body fat percentage for all these things are just wildly inaccurate. And I really, you know, I have never done this with any one of my clients. I don't necessarily recommend you doing this because I think it's somewhat of a waste of time and somewhat of a waste of money. Now you'll have some people give the argument of like, well, Eric, even if there is an error rate, if you take it over time, then like you can see the trends and so on and so forth. And to a degree, you know, to a degree I agree. Like let's say you're doing an InBody and every single time you do the InBody, You do it as soon as you wake up, right before your workout, you haven't eaten beforehand, all these things, right? Cool. You can, even if there is a 6-7% error rate, so if it says you're, you know, 30%, you could be 23%, but even if there is an error rate to that, you know, it's still consistent over time, sure, but there's just so many things that could influence that, right? Like the night before, maybe you went out to eat and you had a meal that was way higher in sodium and way higher in carbs. than you normally have. So that would make like your body fat percentage spike up because of the way, you know, carbs store more water in your body. So the, you know, electrical current of the in-body is going to be a little bit slower. So your body fat percentage is higher. And just, there's just, there's so many variables that you need to have like perfect every single time to track these things, which is why I would honestly say I really wouldn't worry about any of these things to be quite frank with you. Side note here, these fucking scales that like you step on a scale, it's supposed to tell you your body fat percentage. Way fucking off. So like I get that question all the time. Like people will buy these high-tech scales that's supposed to tell your body fat percentage way, way fucking off. So I really wouldn't worry about that one either. But any of these things, I wouldn't worry about it. And I really, again, there's, there's just too big of an error rate for me to be able to tell you, oh yeah, like go ahead and spend $200 on a DEXA scan. Like, cause that's how much they cost. I just absolutely not. I would not encourage you to do that. So all of these things really inaccurate. Well, if that's the case, What the hell do you recommend, Eric? What do you recommend for measuring your body fat percentage? Well, I'm going to tell you right over here. This is something I have done in the past with all of my clients and for every single person who joins us inside of the clubhouse now. We track 4 main things. The first one is going to be your measurements. I know I talked about the calipers over here. I'm not talking about the calipers for measuring body fat percentage. I'm talking about over time, tracking your waist measurement. Like for most of our clients, we do like your waist measurement at the belly button, above the belly button, below the belly button, right? We do our glute measurement. We do our quad measurement. You know, I'll have guys— girls can do this too, but I'll have a lot of guys do their chest measurement, their arm measurement. And what we will do is we'll get those measurements and we track them every 2 weeks. So it's not just like we're getting the measurement one time and like doing it 2 months later. It's like every single 2 weeks, We're getting these measurements, getting this data to be able to look at the data and say, are we trending in the right direction? Are your— if your goal is to lose body fat, are your measurements going down? Uh, you know, is your waist going down? Is, is your quad going down? You might want to build your quads, but you get what I'm saying. Are your measurements trending in the right direction? And it's not just like one particular like moment in time, whereas opposed to, again, the caliper, for example, if you're doing like a caliper for like one time, it's like, oh, this is your body fat percentage. Who knows? Like maybe you were, You know, you didn't squeeze it as hard one time, or, you know, maybe you are— you're storing more water weight that day, or whatever the case may be. So that measurement could be way, way, way off. And so this is why we like to get our measurements and track them over time. It's not just one thing, it's over time. And if, if your measurements are trending in the right direction over time, that means that you are trending in the right direction with the progress that you are seeing. And really, When it comes down to body fat percentage, that's what matters. Are you seeing progress and trending in the right direction over time? And by the way, I've done an entire video on how to take your measurements, what measurements to take right here on YouTube. I'll link it here above in that top left-hand corner or right-hand corner, left. I don't know, whichever one. The second thing we're going to talk about tracking is our body weight. And I am somebody who I'm a fan of tracking your body weight every single day. I know some of you might be like, Oh my God, Eric, that's insane. What are you talking about? Listen again, I've also done an entire video here on YouTube as to why I think you should track your body weight every single day, but I want to explain it to you like this. Think about if you were a manager of a Starbucks. Think about, let's just say you went in 4 times a month and you were to get the sales for that day. So you went in on like every Monday of every single week, right? You got every single sale for that day. Well, what happens if one day, that Monday, was a holiday and nobody was working that day and your sales were way down? Or what happens if you ran a sale on a specific Monday and your sales were way up? You have these data points, but there's really no context around it because you just have like 4 data points out of the month. So how would that person who's running and managing that Starbucks, how would they know if they're making money, if they're losing money, if they're staying the same? How would they know? Because they only have 4 data points out of 31 potential days. That's the same way I think about tracking your body weight, as opposed to like, for example, just weighing yourself once a week, or for example, just weighing yourself once a month. So many things can happen, as opposed to— again, you could have had a meal that you went out to eat that was higher in sodium, so your weight spiked up that day. Or maybe you were sick and you couldn't eat, so your weight was really super down that one day. Like, 4 data points in a month is just not that much to again know where are we trending over time. The more data points that you get, the more you're going to be able to see where is your data trending over a period of time, which again, like we talked about with our measurements, it's not just a one-off weigh-in here and there whether your weight went up or whether your weight went down. Your weight going up one day or going down the next day, that's fucking irrelevant. What is your trend doing over a period of time? And again, if your goal is to lose body fat, is your body weight trending down over time? It's going to fluctuate just like in Starbucks. They have busier days and less busy days, but where is it trending over a period of time? And again, if you want to learn more about that, I've done a video on YouTube, so check it out if you want to. But we track our body weight. The next thing we track is our progress pictures. And again, so keep this one in mind because we're going to bring this one up a little bit later as well. But again, If you're taking progress pictures month by month by month by month, you will be able to put those progress pictures side by side and see for yourself. Are you making progress? Is your body changing? Is your stomach going down? Are you losing your back fat? Are things changing and are you heading in the right direction? Because if you're putting your side-by-side pictures, you know, side by side obviously, and they're looking different, You're losing body fat whether you know exactly what your body fat percentage is or not. We'll talk about how to know that here in a second, but whether you know exactly what it is or not, if you're looking better side by side, month by month by month by month, and you compare month 1 to month 6 and they're 2 different people, your body fat percentage has— is going down and it has gone down. So once again, you're trending in the right direction. And the last one we track is our workouts because remember, Your body fat percentage takes up your body fat, but also your muscle mass. And so, you know, if you are somebody who's strength training, you're working out, you're lifting weights, you very well could be adding some lean muscle to your frame and doing, you know, losing body fat, building muscle at the same time, which is what we call body recomp, which is why, like for example, if maybe your body weight isn't going down a ton, but we see your measurements are going down, we see your progress pictures look differently, and we see your workouts, like you're getting stronger in your workouts, you're doing more reps, you're lifting more weight, all of that good stuff. Well, that lets us know, okay, if all of those things are happening— measurements, progress pictures, and your workouts— that lets us know you are in fact building some muscle. Because that workout component of it, again, if you're trending in the right direction, not just like you had a bad workout here or there, or you had a good workout here and there, if over time your workouts are trending in the right direction, you're getting stronger, having progressive overload, that's going to be a way to know if you are gaining muscle, for example, which can also affect Your body fat percentage. So those 4 main things are what I would start tracking for you. And if you couldn't already get the memo, take them and look at them over time. Look at the trend over time. Get the data, look at the trend, see if you're going in the right direction. So many of you are not fucking doing that, for lack of better terms, which is why, like for example, inside of the clubhouse or with our clients or whatever, again, we make people every single day track their body weight, you know, take their measurements every 2 weeks, take their progress pictures 4 weeks, track workouts. All of that good stuff. And that allows you to get all this data that quite frankly you're probably not getting right now. So you would look at all those things to see if you're trending in the right direction. And that's the biggest part that matters. Now, when we talk about like knowing your specific body fat percentage, I'm going to give you like what is a typical range for both men and women. So a normal healthy body fat percentage for most men are going to be somewhere around that like Call it 10 to 17, 18-ish percent body fat, maybe up to like 20% if you're somebody who really, you don't, you don't care a ton about like having abs and stuff like that. So maybe anywhere in that, like call it, just call it 10 to 20% body fat range. That's normally a healthy body fat percentage range. And then for women, typically somewhere around that like 18 to 25-ish percent body fat, you know, give or take a percentage here and there. But typically between that 18 to 25, 26, 27-ish percent body fat range. Now again, how do you know if you're in that range? Number one, like I just said, you would track all of those things and see. Number two, here's what I'll say. I wouldn't necessarily, again, wouldn't recommend you using this, although if you do use these, just know there's a 5 to 15% error rate. So if you take one and it says 30%, you know, you very well could be 23%, right? But the next part I would look at is your progress pictures. I told you we were going to come back to that earlier, right? When you look at your progress pictures, that is a really good way to know if you are seeing progress. And I'm going to put here some pictures of my clients and kind of put their like roughly body fat percentages kind of like right next to them. And you can kind of see, you know, like here's the thing with body fat percentages, much like your weight is going to fluctuate, right? Like you're going to be in a range. Like I don't know if you ever heard me speak about maintenance calories and being in a maintenance range, you're never going to weigh one exact number the entire time. You're going to have a range, like you'll weigh between 145 and 155, for example. That'll be your maintenance range. And so when we talk about body fat percentage, it's less about, no, oh, you're 17.5% body fat. It's like, who fucking cares? That's irrelevant. Like, are you in the range, right? Like, are you in roughly that kind of like, you know, again, if you're a male, for example, Are you in that, you know, roughly a 10 to 17-ish range? If you're a female, you know, are you in roughly that like 18 to 25-ish percent range? The exact number is fucking irrelevant. Like that's really, it's not that big of a fucking deal. Just like your body weight. If you were to weigh 151 one day and then 153 the next day and then 149 the next day and 150, it's like you're in the range. It's really all that matters, right? So I would really not worry about your exact number. Just kind of get a ballpark range of where you're at. And again, like I said, I, you know, I can kind of like put up here some of my clients' pictures and I can kind of like show you roughly about what that would look like. But what you can also do as well, to be honest with you, is if you just go to Google and just type in like male body fat percentage, female body fat percentage, if you just type that into Google, go to Google Images, it'll come. I don't want to put them here for like copyright reasons. I don't feel like dealing with that. But if you just Google that, it'll come up and kind of show you, oh hey, you know, for a woman, this is what, you know, 18% looks like. This is what 20% looks like. This is what 25% looks like. Same thing for guys. It'll show you what 2% looks like. It'll show you what 8% looks like. It'll show you what 15% looks like. And again, as long as you're like in the range of that like healthy body fat percentage range, like we'll just take a guy for example. I said, What, 10 to 17%? Whether you're 12%, whether you're 14%, whether you're 16%, who the fuck cares? As long as you like how you look, as long as you're healthy, as long as you're strong, as long as like you're in that healthy range, the exact number is fucking irrelevant. And it will also fluctuate. Like, you know, you might have periods of times where you're a little bit more dialed in. You might have periods of times where you're going traveling and this, that, and the other. And maybe sometimes you're leaning more towards that like 12%, but maybe sometimes you lean more towards that 17%. 17%, and that's normal. As long as you're in that healthy range, that's really all that matters. So that's how to know like the percentage and so on and so forth. And I just want to say this one last thing. We talked earlier about like the reason you would want to know your body fat percentage for most people is you don't want to be unhealthy. You want to be in a healthy range. There's no denying that like a very high body fat percentage is a direct correlation to all-cause mortality. It's a direct correlation to diabetes to high blood pressure to cholesterol spikes to heart attacks to, you know, you fucking name it, to strokes to heart disease. There's so many things it's correlated to. So you don't want to be too high of a body fat percentage, but you also don't want to be too low of a body fat percentage. And I think this is where most people have a warped conception of reality. You know, you see people on Instagram, you see people on bodybuilding shows, you see people on magazines and you're like, oh my God, They look like that all year round. Here's a newsflash for you. They fucking don't look like that all year round because it's not healthy to be— for a guy, for example, it's not healthy to be 5% body fat. It's fucking— it is very unhealthy to be 5% body fat. If you're a female, it's very unhealthy to be 15% or 10% body fat. It's very, very, very unhealthy. Like for a female, for example, women who like lose their period, right? That's not healthy. That's your body telling you, hey, you're at too low of a body fat percentage. And so we have to literally cut off our reproductive system, like hormonal process. We have to cut that off because we don't have enough body fat percentage to go around. Or like men, for example, for males, you know, a lot of times what will happen is your sex drive and your mood and your stamina, everything will just plummet. And it's like if you're too low of a body fat percentage, that isn't healthy either. And I really think we have to bring that to light and talk about that because so So many people, they like fantasize about being the super low body fat and being shredded and seeing their abs and doing all these things, which like, you know, mazel tov for you if that's what you want to work for. But just please understand being too low of a body fat percentage is not healthy either. And a lot of these people you see on Instagram are either not actually looking like that all year round or they're on performance enhancing drugs or they're just putting up pictures of like They did a photo shoot in, you know, 2021 and they had 1,000 fucking photos and videos and they just keep like replaying those, reposting and replaying those videos even though they were 6% body fat in that fucking picture. But right now they're 22% body fat. So just keep that in mind when you're talking about like what a healthy body fat percentage is. Not healthy to be too high, but it's not healthy to be too low as well. And guys, hopefully this video helped you. That's all I got for you. If it did help, please feel free to leave a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. If it did help you, leave a comment below. Be happy to just kind of hear from you and chat with you in the comment section. Other than that, thank you for watching and we will chat soon, okay?