According to LifeBeat Online, your body needs a certain amount of fat to maintain health. Fat is an important source of energy and provides some nutrients that are only available from food, rather than from supplements. Too much fat can cause weight problems and contribute to the development of various diseases. Determining your target body fat percentage will help you tailor your diet and exercise plans to ensure you stay within healthy goals.
Calculation
Healthy ranges of body fat depend upon your height and weight. You can also calculate body fat percentages using expensive methods such as dual X-ray absorptiometry, skinfold thickness measurements or underwater weighing. Alternately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends calculating body fat using the Body Mass Index, or BMI, because it is inexpensive and correlates to other measures of body fat.
The BMI calculation uses a person's height and weight to determine body fat percentage and identify potential weight problems. Although the calculation is the same for children and adults, BMI goals vary based on age and gender for children. Your BMI number will tell you whether you are underweight, normal, overweight or obese.
To calculate your BMI if you use measurements in pounds and inches, take your weight in pounds, divide it by your height in inches squared, and multiply the result by 703. In metric units, use your weight in kilograms and divide it by your height in meters squared with no further calculations.
Children
Because the amount of body fat considered normal varies with the child's age and gender, determining a healthy body fat percentage for children can be more complicated than for adults. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends using a BMI-for-age chart to determine whether your child's BMI percentile ranking is acceptable for his age and gender. Your pediatrician should determine whether your child's BMI is within the normal range during routine checkups.
If you want to evaluate your child's BMI, check out the BMI percentile calculator for children listed in the Resources section. If your child's BMI is below the 5th percentile, he is considered underweight. BMI measurements from the 5th to the 84th percentile are considered normal. Measurements between the 85th and 94th percentile are considered overweight, while BMI measurements in the 95th percentile and above are considered obese.
Adults
The CDC's BMI calculator is available at the website noted in the Resources section, and will perform the BMI calculation if you prefer not to use the formula listed in the "Calculation" section above. If your BMI is lower than 18.5, the CDC considers you to be underweight. Normal BMI ranges between 18.5 and 24.9. A BMI between 25.0 and 29.9, is considered overweight, and a BMI of 30.0 or over is considered obese by the CDC.
Setting Goals
After you have calculated your BMI, you can take action through diet and exercise to move the number up or down. Talk to your doctor about healthy options for setting goals to change your body fat percentage.
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