Body fat is better than weight or BMI at the individual level, but still only captures one small piece of body health. Taking a broader view, body mass index (a metric that divides weight in kilograms by height in squared meters) on the population level is great for predicting cardiovascular disease, but is awful at the individual level. Medical definitions of healthy body fat may need rethinking, especially for women.īody fat, like weight, is a proxy for rather than a direct measurement of health. This will ensure that you are able to best measure change over time in a valid way. Thus, we emphasize the importance of picking a single method and sticking with it. Each method is continually working to mitigate these inconsistencies, but it is a considerable challenge. Furthermore, methods may be better suited for some body types than others – DXA, for example, tends to overestimate elite athletes and underestimate obese individuals, while Naked tends to overestimate curvier women compared to DXA. Calipers and bioimpedance scales found in the home nearly always underestimate clinically-used methods such as DXA and dunk tank. Each method (DXA, dunk tank, Naked, bioimpedance, calipers) is derived from another method and is subject to a wide variety of error sources. Different methods will yield different (and sometimes wildly different!) numbers.Īs we’ve written a whole series on this topic, I won’t go too much into depth here – but remember that body fat is an estimation. The bottom line? Being fit, or thin, or having a flat stomach, or even a thigh gap does not mean your body fat percentage will be under 20, under 25, or even under 30. These women are runners, triathletes, tennis players, weight lifters, dancers, and more. It is possible to be very fit at many different body fat percentages.Īll of the women in the images below exercise. These graphics are not accurate in depicting the true diversity in bodies at different body fat levels 3. And this doesn’t even account for the fact that google images (like the one below) aren’t clear on how they calculate body fat – I’d be willing to bet it’s not using a clinically validated method like DXA. This is why googling “what does 25% body fat look like” can be so misleading! It’s just not that simple – there’s no one way a person at a single body fat looks. Just because two people both receive a 25% body fat reading on Naked or DXA (or any method, for that matter!) doesn’t mean their bodies look the same – or should! Their weight may be drastically different, they may weigh the same but distribute fat differently, they could be very muscular with fat, or very lean with little fat. Women (and men!) with the same body fat percentage can look wildly different! While it’s tempting to compare your body and body fat percentage to your best friend, sibling, or training partner, it’s important to remember that you can really only compare you to yourself. Our uniqueness is a wonderful part of being a human but also makes it incredibly challenging to quantify health or fitness in a way that conveys a singular meaning for all people. We’ve seen this first hand as we’ve scanned thousands of people. Even identical twins are different! Bodies come in hugely different shapes, sizes, colors, and packages. Take a minute to think about this: literally no two bodies are the same. I will provide commentary for each image separately, but as you are looking through the visuals below, here are a few key takeaways I’d like to highlight: 1. Although this logic stands for men and women alike, given that we’ve received more feedback about scans of females, we’re going to tackle women first! To help get you up to speed on our learnings, I created this blog post to illustrate how different body fat percentages can look on different people. We hear your concerns – we’ve had many of the same questions as we’ve been developing and validating Naked. We as a company have learned a great deal over the past three years about bodies, body fat, and how the numbers do and (often) do not mesh with our preconceptions about what bodies at different body fat percentages should look like. It’s really tempting to get angry, frustrated, or dismiss the number as untrue – and sometimes that is certainly the case as body fat is not a perfect or precise science. ![]() I’ve personally come away from many DXA scans despondent about the number I received, even though I know that I am healthy and fit. muscle distributions.įurthermore, body fat is very sensitive. Many members of the community have asked questions and expressed concerns about the accuracy of our body fat – and for good reason! Body fat is notoriously difficult to measure, especially given the extreme variability of body shapes, body sizes, and fat vs.
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