percent body fat

[Tracy Sheehy]

Cathe (or anyone else who may know),

I just received my new Omron body fat monitor and it says that I am 23% ( i am 41, 5'7 and 150.) It says that for my age this is normal and that below this is considered low. Though I was surprised that I am 23 and not higher... I would like to lose more and get leaner. What is a healthy low end body fat for my stats?

Tracy

 

[isuretri]

I am certainly no expert! I am training for a figure competition (3 weeks out) and am 40 years old, 5'5" , 115 pounds and at 13.5% body fat. I'm trying to get down between 10-12% but that is for figure competing.

 

[Fit_mommy]

I am not Cathe and definitely no expert either but I don't think it's healthy for any female to purposely try to go below maybe about 12-15% body fat for any extended period of time. Now if you are just naturally that lean, well then your body is obviously okay with that but we are talking about purposely leaning out which is different. I also know that age plays a factor in what % of body fat is considered healthy as well but I'll bet you could push that a bit without having to worry as long as you do it safely.

The poster above is training for a competition (YOU GO GIRL! ), like she said but will undoubtedly not sustain such a low bf% for very long post competition. Competitors' bf percentages always go back up a bit for safety/health reasons once the competition is over.

I have an omron and was once in the 18%-20% BF range and was VERY happy. For someone who is not naturally a lean build, it was amazing! Since then I seem to have hovered in the 23-25% range but am currently trying to drop that number back down again.

 

[NY25]

Back when I used to work out with trainers who were competitive, I was around 21% (I would kill to get back to that by the way). I said I wanted to get down to about 18 or 19 and my trainer said it's actually difficult for women to get below 20% and for many women it's not particularly healthy to do so. He said 18/19 and below are competitive athlete types. For your "average joan" 20-25 is absolutely normal.

 

[Tracy Sheehy]

Ok...thanks for all of your input. I have started eating clean and will see if that does anything with my bf% without really trying and if I drop a couple more percent great otherwise I know I am in the healthy range...yeah!