Your body fat percentage is the percentage of your body that is made up of both essential and stored fats. This number is a great indicator of the condition of your body. Having too much body fat, regardless of how much you weigh, is a very dangerous thing and steps should be taken to get your body fat percentage in the right zones. To do this, you must first understand what affects your body fat percentage.
Essential Fat
Essential fats are necessary for your body to function. Due to the necessity of essential fats, women's body fat percentage should be no lower than 12%, and men's should be no lower than 3%.
Stored Fat
Stored fat is the excess fat that the body does not need to function. Stored fat is used when the body exerts more energy than normal, such as exercising. When not burned off, stored fat accumulates over time and leads to being overweight and obesity. When body fat percentage is calculated, it is the stored fat that indicates how healthy or unhealthy a person is in regards to fat content. For instance, it is healthy for a woman to have a body fat percentage of 14% to 25%. This means that they have 12% essential fat, and then another 2% to 13% of stored fat in the body. However, if the percentage of body fat increases to over 32%, the person is considered to have too much stored fat and is overweight.
Consumption of Fat
Consuming too much fat will increase the amount of stored fat that the body accumulates. This will lead to a higher body fat percentage. On the other hand, if there is not enough fat consumed, then the body will not have enough fat to store, and it will lead to a lower, and possibly too low, body fat percentage.
Consumption of Sugar
Sugar is not fat; however, when the body does not burn off the sugar that is consumed, it turns into fat that is stored in the body. This means that the amount of sugar that is consumed can increase or decrease the body fat percentage.
Exercise
During exercise, the body burns calories that are readily available -- these calories usually come from the food that is still going through the digestive system. Once these calories are used, the body resorts to the fat that is stored in the body. Therefore, if the food in the digestive system is not burned off, then it will be stored as fat, but if those calories and more and used, then stored fat will be burned off as well. Exercise is a great way to lower your body fat percentage because it directly burns the calories that your body turns into stored fat.
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