What is your body fat percentage (BFP)?
Your body fat percentage (BFP or BF%) is the percentage of your body fat in relation to your overall weight. If you weigh 70kg and your body fat percentage is 25%, this means that your body fat weight (BFW) is 17.5kg. The other 52.5kg is your lean body mass (LBM).
Body Fat Percentage Calculator
Body Fat Weight: 14.1kg
Lean Body Mass: 44.1kg
Formula:
Total Weight X BFP = Fat Weight
There are many different methods for measuring body fat, hydrostatic measuring and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) are very accurate, but they are expensive and are generally only used by professional athletes.
Consumer devices and smart scales are often less accurate, but you can use the same device at the same time; you can get a pattern of how your body fat percentage is changing. Or you can use our body fat percentage calculator above to estimate your body fat percentage.
It is important to understand the differences between men and women when it comes to determining healthy body fat percentages. Mainly, women are healthier with higher body fat percentages than men. This is because women require higher fat levels for safe reproduction.
| Women | Men |
|---|---|
| Obese: > 31% | Obese: > 25% |
| Acceptable: 25-31% | Acceptable: 18-25% |
| Fit: 21-24% | Fit: 14-17% |
| Athletic: 14-20% | Athletic: 6-13% |
| Essential fat levels: < 13% | Essential fat levels: < 2-5% |
How to Lower Body Fat Percentage?
Lean body mass — also known as fat-free mass (FFM) — is everything except fat that your body is composed of (muscle, water, connective tissues, blood, skin, organs and so on). Fat weight and lean body mass make up your body composition. Your body composition is much more important because excess body fat can result in health problems. That’s why it’s important not to focus solely on the your weight. Weight loss alone won’t necessarily lead to huge decreases in body fat since weight loss without exercise will lead to decreases in lean mass as well.
If you really want to decrease your body fat percentage you’ve got to eat better, do cardiovascular exercise and remember to do resistance training to build up your lean mass, otherwise about 25% of every pound you lose will come from lean, calorie-burning muscle. Assuming you do resistance training and all the weight you lose comes from fat, you can use the following handy formula to help you estimate approximately how much weight you’ll need to lose in order to achieve your ideal body fat percentage.
Desired body weight = Lean body weight/(1-desired body fat percentage)
For example, Flora weighs 60kg and has 25% body fat (15kg fat, 45kg lean). Her goal is to have 20% body fat. How much weight will she need to lose (assuming all of the weight loss comes from fat)?
Desired body weight = 45/(1-0.20) = 56.25kg
So she would need to lose 4.75kg to achieve her goal (60-56.25=4.75).
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