Healthy body fat range for women

For non-pregnant adult women aged 18 to 40, the core reference range for a healthy body fat rate is 20% to 25%. However, this value is never a one-size-fits-all hard standard. It will fluctuate with age, physiological stage, and exercise habits. It is unscientific to judge health based on body fat number alone.

Last week, I measured the body fat of new students in the studio. A young girl from the 2000s had just graduated. Her face collapsed when she took the Inbody report. She said that all the fitness bloggers I read said that body fat exceeding 24% is "borderline obese" and that it must be reduced to less than 20% to develop a clear vest line. I looked through the annual physical examination report she brought. My aunt’s cycle is stable at about 30 days, her blood lipids and blood sugar are all within the normal range. She also dances jazz dance three times a week. Her core strength is much better than that of many office workers who have been sedentary all year round. This 26% body fat is not a problem at all, and she cannot be on a blind diet for the sake of numbers.

Speaking of which, there are indeed differences in the judgment of healthy body fat in different fields. Doctor friends who are engaged in clinical nutrition have talked to me. When they judge whether women's body fat reaches the standard, the bottom line is never a fixed number, but "whether they can maintain normal physiological functions." Because women are born to bear the physiological needs related to childbearing, the required body fat rate (that is, the minimum body fat threshold to maintain the normal operation of endocrine and menstruation) is 17%. As long as it is not lower than this line and there are no problems with hair loss, fatigue, or menstrual disorders, even if the body fat is between 18% and 19%, it is completely considered healthy. There is no need to stick to the so-called standard line.

If you switch to the fitness circle, the standards are different. I know a few female coaches who have been working out all year round. Their muscle mass is 4 to 5 kilograms higher than that of ordinary women. Their body fat is maintained at 17% to 20% all year round. Their abdominal muscles are always online, and all physical examination indicators are normal. For them, this body fat range is comfortable and healthy. Even female bodybuilders who are preparing for competitions can reduce their body fat to 12% to 15% in the short term. However, people in the industry know that this state can last for a month or two at most. If you stay in such a low body fat range for a long time, there is a high probability of amenorrhea and reduced immunity, which is not worth promoting at all. I met a girl two years ago. In order to look good for a photo shoot, she starved herself for three months to reduce her body fat to 15%. After the photo shoot, she fainted in the gym. It took almost a year for her endocrine adjustment to return to normal.

As age increases, the standards must be adjusted accordingly. For women over 40 who enter perimenopause, their estrogen levels will decline, body fat will naturally accumulate toward the waist and abdomen, and their metabolic rate will also decrease. The healthy range can be relaxed to 22% to 28%. Don’t compare numbers with a twenty-year-old girl. A 45-year-old sister came to consult about fat loss before. She was told to reduce her body fat from 27% to 25% and eat only boiled vegetables every day. In three months, she lost 2 points of body fat. However, her menopausal symptoms of insomnia and night sweats worsened, and she was not as good as before when her body fat was slightly higher.

There are also special physiological stages that need to be mentioned separately. It is completely normal for women's body fat rate to rise to 23% to 30% during pregnancy. These fats are "strategic materials" that provide energy for the fetus and reserve postpartum breastfeeding. Don't control it blindly for the so-called "pregnancy only grows the fetus but not the body." When my best friend was pregnant with her first child, she was afraid of getting fat. She strictly controlled carbohydrates and kept her body fat at 19%. As a result, the baby weighed only 5 pounds after birth. She spent more than half a year pursuing nutrition to catch up with children of the same age. I still regret it now.

In fact, there is really no need to worry about the fluctuation of a few tenths on the body fat scale. Home body fat scales have an error of ±3%. When measured on an empty stomach in the morning and after drinking milk tea in the evening, a difference of 2 points is normal. If you really want to get a relatively accurate measurement, you might as well spend dozens of dollars to buy a personal fat clamp, and pinch the sebum on the back of your upper arm at the same time for a week to calculate the average. It is much more reliable than standing on the body fat scale and moving around.

After all, body fat is just a reference number, far less honest than how your body feels: Are your menstruation regular? Do you get out of breath just by climbing two floors? Do you always catch a cold when the seasons change? Are you more afraid of the cold in winter than the people around you? If there is no problem with these, even if the body fat is 1 or 2 points higher than the so-called standard, it will not matter at all. There is really no need to treat yourself harshly for the "perfect body fat" posted online. After all, what we want is a comfortable body that can eat hot pot and run and jump casually, not a string of cold numbers that look good on a report.