Body Fat

Amount of Fat in the Body

The body of an untrained man consists of 15-20% fat tissue. The body of a woman consists of approximately 25%.

The amount of body fat can be reduced to less than 10% through physical activity.

Marathon runners have the lowest amount of fat.

Generally it can be said that the longer you are subjected to an activity, the more energy is proportionally provided by the fat metabolism.

How much fat is too much???

More than a hundred years ago the French doctor Paul Broca invented the formula for the allegedly healthiest weight. The normal weight is your height (in cm) minus 100 in kilograms.
Broca defined the ideal weight as normal weight minus 10% for men and minus 15% for women.

However, many medical doctors and nutritionists consider such rigid definitions wrong, since the different build is often not taken into account. Body proportions and the muscular structure are important, too.

An athlete might weigh a lot more, despite being slender, because he or she has a lot more muscle mass.

There is also another way to estimate healthy body weight. This is the body-mass-index (BMI).

In this case, the weight is divided by the squared height:

Medically speaking, the weight is perfectly normal with a BMI between 20 and 25.