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Whenever someone reaches out to me to help them with their health and fitness goals, the conversation inevitably veers towards weight loss. There's a good reason for this. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, two-thirds of Australian adults are overweight, whilst 31% are classified as obese. Even more worrying is that children aged 2-17 had an obesity rate of 8.2%, whilst 1 in 4 were overweight. Not a great start! Alarmingly, the rate of obesity in the US increased from 30.5% in 2000 to 42.4% in 2017, with almost 1 in 10 considered alarmingly, or morbidly, obese.
Clearly, the health, financial and social impacts of the current weight problem needs to be addressed. And that's why people like me do what I do - help individuals look, feel and move better.
Once we discuss weight, we then move to body composition, that is, how much fat and how much muscle the body is holding. The reason it's important to know how much bodyfat you have is twofold:
you have to know where you're starting to be able to measure progress;
it helps your fitness coach develop an appropriate nutrition and training plan.
There are many ways to calculate your bodyfat percentage, some more accurate than others. However, the easiest, if least scientific way, is to take a look at the above charts and compare how you look to each of the people in the pictures. So, where do you sit, and where do you want to get to?