Hi, I'm Charlotte Lawson, a registered and licensed dietitian. You may be looking at different ways to evaluate your health or fitness level, and may have heard of different sources of fats. We have the BMI on one end, and also our body fat percentage, and you're probably wondering, how do I understand what these mean? Well, body fat percentage is actually a more specific way to tell how much of your body is actually fat percentage, versus lean muscle and organs, or a non-fatty tissue. The different percentage levels really depend on our athletic ability, and whether or not we're male or female. And, it's also very difficult to actually do a body fat percentage on an adolescent, as this is a time of a lot of change, and a lot of muscle and mass differentiating; changing and morphing and phasing into, you know, as our hormones change and they grow and develop, especially even more muscle mass with the younger men. Now, a woman should never really drop to below ten percent body fat, as this is really what's the base essential needed fat for her hormone production, to continue her menses cycle, really, for daily bodily function. A man, on the other end, could drop down to even four percent, and still be at a healthy range. Now, what we look at as acceptable, or a healthy range, is really anywhere from twenty-two to twenty- six for women, and a higher range, even so... well, a little bit lower, excuse me, for men. Close to around the eighteen percent. But again, all within healthy range. Now, looking at overall BMI, or our health risk, there's a little bit of a different range there, but this is more similar for men and women. The healthy range is anywhere between eighteen and twenty-five. Anything above twenty-five is considered overweight, or obese after you hit thirty, but this also increases your risk for health and chronic diseases. So, even dropping one BMI level significantly improves your chronic health risk. Just a little bit of information on BMI and body fat. I'm Charlotte, and eat happy.
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