Evaluate Your Health and Fat Patterns | Health tips img#wpstats{display:none}Health tips empower your best health and live longer!Home pageDiet & FitnessDietDiet tipsFitnessCardioStrengthYogaDiseasesAlphabeticalAids & HivAllergiesBack PainCancerBreast CancerCervical CancerColon CancerLung cancerProstate CancerCholesterolCold & FluDiabetesHeart DiseaseOsteoporosisFamily HealthChild’s healthMen’s healthWomen’s healthNutritionEat rightRecipesMind and BodyBeautySkin careMindAnxietyDepressionHeadachesPersonalityStressWellnessAgingChild’s healthOral careQuit SmokingMen’s healthSleepWomen’s healthMenopause Your Are Here: Health tips ? Diet & Fitness ? Diet ? Fat burn ? Evaluate Your Health and Fat PatternsEvaluate Your Health and Fat PatternsSeptember 26, 2013 - Jean-Paul Marat + - Fat burn - Tagged: BMI, body fat percentage, body mass index, High-density lipoprotein, Low-density lipoprotein, Muscle, obesity, Weighing scale - no comments(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
Usually being overfat is something that creeps up gradually with age. One of the last things my team and I always do when we evaluate people who enroll in my Fat-Burning tips is take front-, back-, and side-view “before” photographs so that they can really and truly see what they look like and compare these images with their “after” photos. For most, it is a great surprise to suddenly perceive an overweight person on the film because our inner image of ourselves is usually much thinner, leaner, and younger. I have had clients express shock or even burst into tears when they really looked at these pictures. It is truly as if they were seeing themselves for the first time.
While I find it important to help my clients establish an accurate perception of their outward appearance, it is also important to help them establish an accurate perception of their internal health. Knowing that you are bulging over the belt of your pants or your skirt does not tell you anything about your cholesterol, triglycerides, or percentage of body fat versus lean muscle.
Are You as Healthy as You Look?
I often work with men and women who everyone else would consider healthy because they are elite athletes at the height of their profession, and they are paid huge salaries to play their sport. A highly respected NFL lineman, 6 feet 5 inches, came into my program weighing 328 pounds. He had a BMI greater than 36, a 51.7-inch waist, and a total cholesterol of 227. His HDL was low at 29. Since his triglycerides were 467, we couldn’t get an accurate reading on his LDL because, as my doctors tell me, excessively high triglycerides almost always skew the LDL reading. His glucose was 120, just 6 points below the diabetic classification. The real shocker was his blood pressure, which was 190/120. We found out that he had stopped taking his blood pressure medicine and failed to tell either his trainer or the team doctor. If he had not come to us for help, it is highly likely that in the near future he would have had a stroke right there on the field. And this man was considered to be a world-class athlete.
The appearance of health is not always the same as true health. Sometimes the way a person looks can be very deceiving, especially in the case of someone who is fairly slim and exercises regularly. I once worked with a thirty-three-year-old world champion athlete. With a body fat of 9 percent, this man was certainly not overweight. But when we evaluated him, we found that he had an abnormal stress test, an elevated total cholesterol of 260, and an LDL of 190. When we took his family history, we discovered that there was a lot of heart disease present. If this man had continued to ignore his cholesterol for ten more years, he would have ended up with damage to his arteries, resulting in cardiovascular problems.
Learn How to Accurately Evaluate Your Health
With all of the confusing information in the media and in diet and fitness books these days, people really do not have a good idea of what constitutes a healthy body. Our parents never taught us—they didn’t grow up eating processed foods, living a physically inactive lifestyle, and facing the kinds of daily stressors that we face—and the great majority of us do not have wellness programs in our workplace. Nor do we understand how to monitor our health and risk factors as we grow older. Somehow we have developed the misconception that staying vigorous and healthy is an intuitive process.
That is why it is so important to have the proper tools for health evaluation. During my thirty years of experience with thousands of clients as a performance enhancement and fitness consultant, I have come to clearly understand the definitions of good health and poor health because I have seen these scenarios played out so many times. And the dozens of top medical professionals with whom I have worked in my Fat-Burning tips and the Ochsner Clinic Foundation have helped to acquaint me intimately with the science behind state-of-the-art health care and health evaluation.
The Fat-Burning tips questionnaires presented on this website are simple and straightforward guides to help you understand how overfat you are and how healthy you really are, both inside and out. Some people will find that they might not have to lose an enormous amount of weight, but they will need to lower their cholesterol, raise their HDL, reduce their overall body fat, develop healthy eating habits, and/or learn how to exercise properly. Others will discover that they are seriously overfat and will face life-threatening health risks such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes unless they change their lifestyle.
The Fat-Burning tips Self-Evaluation in this post covers two main areas:
How you measure up. This includes common indicators of risk factors such as high scale weight, body fat percentage, BMI, and waist measurement.Your overall body measurements, which will help you see where you are holding your fat. These measurements will be retaken at the end of the basic Fat-Burning tips (and every four weeks after that if you continue with Modules 2 and 3) to help you quantify how much body fat you are actually losing and how hard and lean you are becoming.
You are only as strong as your weakest link. But be assured that the lifestyle, nutritional, and exercise programs offered on this website have worked for thousands of overfat men and women.
I suggest that you make a photocopy of the Fat-Burning tips Self-Evaluation Questionnaire so that you can keep a record of your progress. As you work your way through each section of this post, you will learn how to fill in the blanks. I describe why each of these criteria is an important indicator of overall health and how you can use them to build an accurate picture of how you measure up. In subsequent posts I will help you to evaluate your lipid profile and glucose levels, your level of human growth hormone and your thyroid function, and your stress levels.
The Fat-Burning tips Self-Evaluation Questionnaire
Age ____
Gender ____
Height ____
Scale Weight ____ lb.
% Body Fat ____
Fat ____ lb.
Lean Muscle ____ lb.
Body Mass Index ____
Overall Body Measurements:
Arm ____ in.
Forearm ____ in.
Chest ____ in.
Waist ____ in.
Abdomen ____ in.
Hips ____ in.
Thigh ____ in.
Calf ____ in.
Waist-to-Hip Ratio ____
How Do You Measure Up? Learn the Six Basic Health CriteriaHealth Criterion #1: Scale Weight
Weight gain has become a problem of epic proportions in our society. In 1905, only 5 percent of the population was obese, but that figure has been growing at an alarming rate. In the last decade alone, obesity has risen 8 percent. About 97 million people over age twenty—that is, 60 percent are either overweight or obese. Of that number, 12.5 million are severely overweight, and 2 million are morbidly obese. These people are at great risk for life-threatening health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some types of cancer.
You need to know your scale weight to complete the Fat-Burning tips Self-Evaluation Questionnaire. To get an accurate scale weight that you can track over the twelve weeks of this program, it is important to have access to a fairly good scale—either a good bathroom scale or one at your gym. Ideally, you should weigh yourself nude first thing in the morning before you have eaten breakfast. If you weigh yourself with clothing at the gym or at a doctor’s office, you might deduct 1 or 2 pounds for shoes and clothes.
Health Criterion #2: Body Fat
Your scale weight does not tell the whole story—far from it. A bodybuilder might weigh 250 pounds on the scale but have a total body fat of 8 percent. Someone might not be that much overweight according to the scale but may carry an unhealthy amount of body fat for his or her age. Men or women with big bones and a large frame will naturally weigh more than those with small bones and a delicate frame. To really understand how overfat you are, you need to calculate how many of your scale pounds represent body fat. This chart defines healthy and unhealthy body fat percentages for men and women:
BODY FAT PERCENTAGE
LevelMenWomenAthletic<11 data-blogger-escaped-air="" data-blogger-escaped-bese22="" data-blogger-escaped-fat18="" data-blogger-escaped-lean11="" data-blogger-escaped-ood="" data-blogger-escaped-p="" data-blogger-escaped-verage15="">It used to be that men and women past age fifty were expected to be out of shape and carrying a larger amount of body fat. Some charts in doctors’ offices or magazine articles will even allow greater amounts of “healthy” body fat for men and women who are middle-aged or older. I do not really follow those guidelines because experience has shown me that people in their fifties, sixties, or even seventies do not have less of a capacity to lose body fat and build lean muscle than younger people. An article in the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology reports that studies on sarcopenia (loss of lean muscle mass with aging) unequivocally show that older muscle tissue has the same, if not an even greater capacity, to respond to a vigorous bout of resistance exercise than younger muscle does.
Age is not the issue; metabolic fitness is the issue—that is, how efficiently your metabolism burns fat, which is based on how much lean muscle you have, what and how often you eat, how much and at what intensity you exercise, and how balanced your body’s hormonal systems are, especially those hormones that regulate the burning of nutrients as fuel or cause their storage as fat.
Three Techniques for Measuring Body Fat
There are several popular methods for measuring body fat. Following are three of the most popular:
1. Hydrostatic weighing, in which a person’s mass is measured both in and out of a tank of water, is considered to be the gold standard for measuring body fat. This test is based on the assumption that lean tissue is denser than fat—that is, lean tissue will sink and fat tissue will float. This test costs between $100 and $150 and can be performed at your local health club, hospital, university, or wellness center. Some mobile units may even charge as little as $45 for this service.2. Skin fold measurement with a caliper involves measuring subcutaneous (under-the-skin) fat with a caliper at certain points on the body. Since this test has been around for quite some time, you can get it done at YMCAs, health clubs, dietitians’ offices, physical therapy centers, and universities.3. Anthropometric measurement is a test you can do at home. This test is based on the assumption that fat is distributed at certain sites on the body such as the neck, wrist, and waistline. Muscle tissue is usually found at sites such as the biceps, forearm, and calf.
The following two anthropometric tests—one for males and one for females—will help you ascertain your percentage of body fat. These formulas are from Philip L. Goglia’s book, Turn Up the Heat: Unlock the Fat-Burning Power of Your Metabolism, and have a plus or minus error rate of 5 percent. All you need is a cloth tape measure and a calculator.
AT-HOME BODY FAT TEST FOR MALES
Step 1: Taking Measurements
Height in inches ____Hips in inches ____Waist in inches ____Weight in pounds ____
Step 2: Determining Your Percentage of Body Fat
Multiply your hips (in.) ____ x 1.4 = ____ minus 2 = ____ (A)Multiply your waist (in.) ____ x 0.72 = ____ minus 4 = ____ (B)Add A plus B = ____ (C)Multiply your height (in.) ____ x 0.61 = ____ (D)Subtract D from C, then subtract 10 more: (C – D) – 10 = ____ % fat
Your answer will be your approximate body fat percentage if you are a male.
AT-HOME BODY FAT TEST FOR FEMALES
Step 1: Taking Measurements
Height in inches ____Hips in inches ____Waist in inches ____Weight in pounds ____
Step 2: Determining Your Percentage of Body Fat
Multiply your hips (in.) ____ x 1.4 = ____ minus 1 = ____ (A)Multiply your waist (in.) ____ x 0.72 = ____ minus 2 = ____ (B)Add A plus B = ____ (C)Multiply your height (in.) ____ x 0.61 = ____ (D)Subtract D from C, then subtract 10 more: (C – D) – 10 = ____ % fat
Your answer will be your approximate body fat percentage if you are a female.
You do not necessarily have to get your body fat tested to know that your body composition is improving. If you have been exercising and eating properly and your clothes begin to feel looser, if you find yourself taking in your belt a notch or two, or if you observe increased strength and muscularity, you will know that you are losing fat and gaining lean muscle.
Calculate Pounds of Body Fat and Lean Muscle
The final step is to take your total weight and calculate how many pounds of fat you carry and how many pounds of lean muscle. Use the following two formulas:
Total weight (lb.) × percent body fat = total pounds of fat
Total weight – total pounds of fat = total pounds of lean muscle
For example, if you are a woman weighing 200 pounds and you find that you have 35 percent body fat, calculate the number of pounds of fat you carry using the following formula:
200 lb. × .35 (% body fat) = 70 pounds of fat
To calculate your pounds of lean muscle, use the following formula: 200 lb. – 70 lb. of fat = 130 pounds of lean muscle
Health Criterion #3: All-over Body Measurements
As you work through this Fat-Burning tips, your all-over body measurements, which I will ask you to take every four weeks, will be another indication that you are losing fat and building lean muscle. You will become leaner and trimmer.
To take accurate all-over body measurements, follow these instructions. I have provided drawings for both men and women to help you to accurately measure each area of your body.
Arm: With your arm to the side of your body, measure the circumference midway between the shoulder and the elbow.
Forearm: With your arm hanging downward and slightly away from your trunk and your palm facing forward, measure at the maximum forearm circumference between the wrist and the elbow.
Chest: For a woman, measure across the widest part of the chest marked by the nipples. (For older women with very large hanging breasts, this might be slightly higher. See illustration for guidance.)
For a man, measure the widest area of the chest across the nipples.
Waist: Measure at the narrowest part of the torso, above the belly button and below the rib cage.
Abdomen: Measure at the level of the belly button.
Hips: Measure at the maximum circumference of the hips or buttocks region, whichever is larger.
Thigh: With your legs slightly apart, measure at the maximum circumference of the thigh.
Calf: Measure at the maximum circumference between the knee and the ankle.
Health Criterion #4: Why Waist Circumference Is So Important
In both men and women, one of the most important and accurate indicators of obesity, the potential for cardiac disease, and other health risks is the circumference of the waist. This is because an increased measurement in the waist always indicates an increase in abdominal fat (and the ratio of body fat–to– lean muscle in general). For a woman, who naturally carries her fat in her hips and thighs, an increased waist measurement indicates a reverse fat pattern.
Since fat is three times the size of lean muscle tissue, it is possible for scale weight and BMI to remain the same with aging yet for the waist to increase as lean muscle is lost and fat storage is increased through inactivity and poor nutritional habits. One doctor I know had a 7-inch increase in his waistline after retirement even though his scale weight did not change.
In the book It Can Break Your Heart, Dr. J. Pervis Milnor III and coauthors write that a waistline greater than 35 inches in a woman and 40 inches in a man increases the risk for developing higher cholesterol levels, which lead to coronary disease, and type 2 diabetes. According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a man whose waistline is 42 inches or greater is more likely to have erectile dysfunction than his leaner counterparts.
Of course, a waist measurement of 35 inches in women or 40 inches in men is not always an absolute indicator of health risks. You should take into consideration factors such as height, body type, and bone structure. A 35-inch waistline on a woman who is 5 feet 11 inches tall with a large frame would represent less of a health risk than the same waist circumference on a woman who is 5 feet 2 inches tall with a small frame.
Health Criterion #5: Calculate Your Waist-to-Hip Ratio
The value of the waist-to-hip ratio is that it helps to give you a more accurate idea of where you carry your fat. When fat is stored around and above the waist, it results in a higher risk for diabetes, heart disease, and some types of cancers. The person with upper body fat distribution (the apple shape) loses fat more quickly than the person with lower body fat distribution (the pear shape), but a smaller amount of fat stored above the waist is more dangerous than a larger amount of fat stored below the waist.
To get this ratio, measure your waist at its narrowest circumference and your hips at their widest. Then divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. For example, if you have a waist of 30 inches and a hip measurement of 42 inches, your hip-to-waist ratio is 0.71.
My waist measurement is ____. My hip measurement is ____. My waist-to-hip ratio is ____.
RANGE OF WAIST-TO-HIP RATIOS
Excellent Good Average High Extreme
Male<0 data-blogger-escaped-.85="" data-blogger-escaped-p="">0.85–0.90.91–0.950.96–1.0>1.0Female<0 data-blogger-escaped-.75="" data-blogger-escaped-p="">0.75–0.80.81–0.850.86–0.9>0.9
Keep in mind that this measurement does not tell you anything about your total body weight or body composition. It just gives you an indication of where your excess fat is located and therefore your health risk relative to fat deposition.
Women must especially watch this ratio during and following menopause when hormonal fluctuations, poor nutrition, and lack of activity can result in abdominal weight gain, leading to a reverse fat pattern. The National Cancer Institute has shown that a woman with a lower than normal waist-to-hip ratio is eight times more likely to get cervical cancer than a woman with a normal ratio.
Used alone, this ratio can be deceiving in some people. As we have seen, once abdominal obesity sets in, especially as a reverse fat pattern, the waist-to-hip ratio can become skewed because at this point both genders are gaining weight above and below the waist. So as the waistline goes up, the hips go up, often in tandem. This is just another reason why no single method of measuring fat storage is infallible. It is important to look at the bigger picture when evaluating your health and fat patterns.
Health Criterion #6: Body Mass Index
The Body Mass Index or BMI is another important tool to help ascertain how overfat you are. Sometimes the BMI can be misleading. For example, a 240-pound bodybuilder who is 5 feet 11 inches would have a BMI of 34, which would appear to put him in the very highest risk category. But if that same person has only 8 percent body fat, this changes the entire story.
However, for most readers of this website, a high BMI will be a red flag predicting many health risks. For example, a recent study published by the American College of Sports Medicine has shown a direct correlation between a high BMI and increased levels of C-reactive protein. High CRP is an accurate indicator of inflammation in the body, which increases the risk of a first cardiac event (heart attack), even after adjustments have been made for risk factors such as age, smoking, and body weight. Exercise and increased levels of physical activity, which result in weight loss and lowered BMI, have been shown to reduce a person’s level of CRP. So while the BMI is not an infallible standard by which to measure how fat you are, taken together with other factors it is a useful tool for helping to create an accurate health profile and can serve as an early warning system for heart disease.
BMI is defined as your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared. To save you the trouble of converting pounds to kilograms and inches to meters, I have done the math for you. Simply look up your BMI in the chart provided. Your height can be found in the left-hand column and your weight (in pounds) runs along the top of the chart. Your BMI is where both points intersect. Because people between 5 feet and 5 feet 2 inches tall generally have a lighter frame, we have included a different chart for them.
Interpret Your BMI
If your BMI is below 20. Unless you are an athlete with a very high ratio of lean muscle–to–body fat, a BMI this low might mean that you are too thin and are possibly compromising your immune system.If your BMI is between 20 and 22. This range is associated with living the longest and having the lowest incidence of serious illness.If your BMI is between 23 and 25. These numbers are still within the acceptable range and are associated with good health.If your BMI is between 26 and 30. Now you are entering the zone where there are serious health risks. A BMI this high puts you at risk for developing heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some kinds of cancers. You should definitely lower your weight through diet and exercise.If your BMI is over 30. This is the worst-case scenario where you are definitely putting yourself at risk for all of the diseases mentioned above. It is imperative that you begin to lose weight and exercise.BODY MASS INDEX1001101201301401501601701801902002102202302402502602702805’0?202224262729313335373941434547495153555’1?192123252728303234373941434547495153555’2?192022242628293133353637394143444648501201301401501601701801902002102202302402502602702802903005’3?212325272830323436373941434446485051535’4?212224262829313334363840414345464850525’5?202223252728303233353738404243454748505’6?192123242627293132343637394042444547495’7?192022242527283031333536383941424446475’8?182021232426272930323435373840414344465’9?181921222425272830313334363738404143445’10?171920222324262729303233353637394042435’11?171820212224252728293132343536383941426’0?161819202223242627293031333435373839416’1?161719202122242526282930323334363738406’2?151718192122232426272830313233353637396’3?151618192021232425262829303133343536386’4?151617182021222324262728293032333435376’5?141517181920212324252627293031323334366’6?14151617192021222324252728293031323435
According to a study done in the New England Journal of Medicine, having a BMI over 25 may cause your life span to decrease significantly. If your BMI is higher than 30, your life span may decrease even more sharply. Studies show that 59 percent of American men have a BMI over 25 and almost as many women. For those who have a BMI over 35, health care costs are likely to be more than twice those of individuals with a BMI between 20 and 25. Treatment of diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease count for much of this spending.
Compare Your BMI and Waist Measurement
As we have seen, BMI can be skewed by factors such as frame size and the percentage of lean muscle that you carry on your frame. One tool that I have found useful in deciding whether your BMI is in the healthy range is the comparison between BMI and waist measurement. Here is a chart that compares ranges of BMI with waist measurements in men and women.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BMI AND WAIST MEASUREMENTSHealth CategoryBMIMen’s Waist (in.)Women’s Waist (in.)Normal18.5–24.934.3–38.531.1–36.1Overweight25–29.938.6–42.836.2–40.4Obese I30–34.942.9–48.740.5–45.2Obese II>-35>-48.8>-45.3
If both your BMI and your waistline fall into the same category, you can be fairly certain of the health classification.
Bo Walker: The Inches Melted Off and the Numbers Went Down
Let’s take a look at a client of mine who completed the Fat-Burning tips as part of a makeover I did for Let’s Live magazine: a forty-year-old radio personality named Bo Walker. When Bo first came into my program, he carried 250 pounds on his 5-foot 10-inch frame, had a body fat percentage of 34.5, a BMI of 35.85, a waist measurement of 48, and a waist-to-hip ratio of 1.0. As you can see, all of these figures put him into the very highest risk category.
Bo was concerned about his health because he and his wife had a young child. “I knew I was headed in the wrong direction. My father had died at a very early age, fifty-nine years old, from a heart attack and complications with diabetes. I knew that if I continued on this path and stayed in the 250 weight range—or worse—I was probably headed for the same fate. I wanted my kid to know who I am and I wanted to live long enough to enjoy my life with my wife.” Bo was also facing the stress of having just lost his job.
Over the course of twelve weeks, Bo saw dramatic changes in his overall body measurements. I have included some of his statistics to demonstrate his total transformation.
BO WALKER’S MEASUREMENTSDate5/1/20035/17/20035/31/20036/26/20037/12/20038/1/2003% Body Fat34.5027.8024.8023.2023.2020.80BMI35.8534.733.9133.4133.4132.4Weight250242236.5233233226Girths: Left/RightBicep–Left151413.751413.7513.5Bicep–Right141413.7513.7513.7513.75Forearm–Left11.7511.75121211.75Forearm–Right1212121212Thigh–Left27272525.525.523.5Thigh–Right27262525.252523.75Calf–Left1615.515.2515.2515Calf–Right16.516.516.2516.2516Hips46.547.545.754544.7542.75Waist4847.546.545.754543.75Shoulders5452.7552.55352Chest494947.7546.546.545.25
As you can see, Bo lost 24 pounds and his body fat dropped 13.7 points, from 34.5 percent to 20.8 percent. If we plug this into the formula I gave you, he started out carrying 86.5 pounds of fat and 163.5 pounds of lean muscle. At the end of 12 weeks, he was carrying only 47 pounds of fat and 179 pounds of lean muscle—a dramatic change. If you interpret these figures from a slightly different perspective, in terms of conversion from fat to muscle, Bo lost 39.5 pounds of fat and gained 15.5 pounds of lean muscle. Quite impressive!
All of Bo’s other measurements decreased as well. His BMI dropped from 35.85 to 32.4 and his waistline shrunk from 48 to 43.75, a loss of 4.25 inches. His hip measurement dropped from 46.5 to 42.75, a loss of 3.75 inches, resulting in a waist-to-hip ratio of 1.0, which is identical to his former ratio. This is a perfect example of the shortcomings of looking only at this measurement, as discussed earlier in this post. As I explained, when taken alone, the waist-to-hip ratio is not a reliable indicator of health risk. When a man has developed a reverse fat pattern, as Bo did, at first the waist and hips will shrink in tandem with one another as the body is normalizing.
In extreme cases of the reverse fat pattern, such as Douglas Daniels, the waist-to-hip ratio will actually increase before it goes down. The reason is that the hips are not a normal place for a man to store fat. The rule is that the last fat gained is the first to be lost.
Bo still has a distance to go, but he looks and feels better than he has in years, which is a strong motivator for him to continue with the plan. Your body could also look great after only four weeks on the Fat-Burning tips.
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rel=author">Jean-Paul Marat
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Usually being overfat is something that creeps up gradually with age. One of the last things my team and I always do when we evaluate people who enroll in my Fat-Burning tips is take front-, back-, and side-view “before” photographs so that they can really and truly see what they look like and compare these images with their “after” photos. For most, it is a great surprise to suddenly perceive an overweight person on the film because our inner image of ourselves is usually much thinner, leaner, and younger. I have had clients express shock or even burst into tears when they really looked at these pictures. It is truly as if they were seeing themselves for the first time.
While I find it important to help my clients establish an accurate perception of their outward appearance, it is also important to help them establish an accurate perception of their internal health. Knowing that you are bulging over the belt of your pants or your skirt does not tell you anything about your cholesterol, triglycerides, or percentage of body fat versus lean muscle.
Are You as Healthy as You Look?
I often work with men and women who everyone else would consider healthy because they are elite athletes at the height of their profession, and they are paid huge salaries to play their sport. A highly respected NFL lineman, 6 feet 5 inches, came into my program weighing 328 pounds. He had a BMI greater than 36, a 51.7-inch waist, and a total cholesterol of 227. His HDL was low at 29. Since his triglycerides were 467, we couldn’t get an accurate reading on his LDL because, as my doctors tell me, excessively high triglycerides almost always skew the LDL reading. His glucose was 120, just 6 points below the diabetic classification. The real shocker was his blood pressure, which was 190/120. We found out that he had stopped taking his blood pressure medicine and failed to tell either his trainer or the team doctor. If he had not come to us for help, it is highly likely that in the near future he would have had a stroke right there on the field. And this man was considered to be a world-class athlete.
The appearance of health is not always the same as true health. Sometimes the way a person looks can be very deceiving, especially in the case of someone who is fairly slim and exercises regularly. I once worked with a thirty-three-year-old world champion athlete. With a body fat of 9 percent, this man was certainly not overweight. But when we evaluated him, we found that he had an abnormal stress test, an elevated total cholesterol of 260, and an LDL of 190. When we took his family history, we discovered that there was a lot of heart disease present. If this man had continued to ignore his cholesterol for ten more years, he would have ended up with damage to his arteries, resulting in cardiovascular problems.
Learn How to Accurately Evaluate Your Health
With all of the confusing information in the media and in diet and fitness books these days, people really do not have a good idea of what constitutes a healthy body. Our parents never taught us—they didn’t grow up eating processed foods, living a physically inactive lifestyle, and facing the kinds of daily stressors that we face—and the great majority of us do not have wellness programs in our workplace. Nor do we understand how to monitor our health and risk factors as we grow older. Somehow we have developed the misconception that staying vigorous and healthy is an intuitive process.
That is why it is so important to have the proper tools for health evaluation. During my thirty years of experience with thousands of clients as a performance enhancement and fitness consultant, I have come to clearly understand the definitions of good health and poor health because I have seen these scenarios played out so many times. And the dozens of top medical professionals with whom I have worked in my Fat-Burning tips and the Ochsner Clinic Foundation have helped to acquaint me intimately with the science behind state-of-the-art health care and health evaluation.
The Fat-Burning tips questionnaires presented on this website are simple and straightforward guides to help you understand how overfat you are and how healthy you really are, both inside and out. Some people will find that they might not have to lose an enormous amount of weight, but they will need to lower their cholesterol, raise their HDL, reduce their overall body fat, develop healthy eating habits, and/or learn how to exercise properly. Others will discover that they are seriously overfat and will face life-threatening health risks such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes unless they change their lifestyle.
The Fat-Burning tips Self-Evaluation in this post covers two main areas:
How you measure up. This includes common indicators of risk factors such as high scale weight, body fat percentage, BMI, and waist measurement.Your overall body measurements, which will help you see where you are holding your fat. These measurements will be retaken at the end of the basic Fat-Burning tips (and every four weeks after that if you continue with Modules 2 and 3) to help you quantify how much body fat you are actually losing and how hard and lean you are becoming.
You are only as strong as your weakest link. But be assured that the lifestyle, nutritional, and exercise programs offered on this website have worked for thousands of overfat men and women.
I suggest that you make a photocopy of the Fat-Burning tips Self-Evaluation Questionnaire so that you can keep a record of your progress. As you work your way through each section of this post, you will learn how to fill in the blanks. I describe why each of these criteria is an important indicator of overall health and how you can use them to build an accurate picture of how you measure up. In subsequent posts I will help you to evaluate your lipid profile and glucose levels, your level of human growth hormone and your thyroid function, and your stress levels.
The Fat-Burning tips Self-Evaluation Questionnaire
Age ____
Gender ____
Height ____
Scale Weight ____ lb.
% Body Fat ____
Fat ____ lb.
Lean Muscle ____ lb.
Body Mass Index ____
Overall Body Measurements:
Arm ____ in.
Forearm ____ in.
Chest ____ in.
Waist ____ in.
Abdomen ____ in.
Hips ____ in.
Thigh ____ in.
Calf ____ in.
Waist-to-Hip Ratio ____
How Do You Measure Up? Learn the Six Basic Health CriteriaHealth Criterion #1: Scale Weight
Weight gain has become a problem of epic proportions in our society. In 1905, only 5 percent of the population was obese, but that figure has been growing at an alarming rate. In the last decade alone, obesity has risen 8 percent. About 97 million people over age twenty—that is, 60 percent are either overweight or obese. Of that number, 12.5 million are severely overweight, and 2 million are morbidly obese. These people are at great risk for life-threatening health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some types of cancer.
You need to know your scale weight to complete the Fat-Burning tips Self-Evaluation Questionnaire. To get an accurate scale weight that you can track over the twelve weeks of this program, it is important to have access to a fairly good scale—either a good bathroom scale or one at your gym. Ideally, you should weigh yourself nude first thing in the morning before you have eaten breakfast. If you weigh yourself with clothing at the gym or at a doctor’s office, you might deduct 1 or 2 pounds for shoes and clothes.
Health Criterion #2: Body Fat
Your scale weight does not tell the whole story—far from it. A bodybuilder might weigh 250 pounds on the scale but have a total body fat of 8 percent. Someone might not be that much overweight according to the scale but may carry an unhealthy amount of body fat for his or her age. Men or women with big bones and a large frame will naturally weigh more than those with small bones and a delicate frame. To really understand how overfat you are, you need to calculate how many of your scale pounds represent body fat. This chart defines healthy and unhealthy body fat percentages for men and women:
BODY FAT PERCENTAGE
LevelMenWomenAthletic<11 data-blogger-escaped-air="" data-blogger-escaped-bese22="" data-blogger-escaped-fat18="" data-blogger-escaped-lean11="" data-blogger-escaped-ood="" data-blogger-escaped-p="" data-blogger-escaped-verage15="">It used to be that men and women past age fifty were expected to be out of shape and carrying a larger amount of body fat. Some charts in doctors’ offices or magazine articles will even allow greater amounts of “healthy” body fat for men and women who are middle-aged or older. I do not really follow those guidelines because experience has shown me that people in their fifties, sixties, or even seventies do not have less of a capacity to lose body fat and build lean muscle than younger people. An article in the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology reports that studies on sarcopenia (loss of lean muscle mass with aging) unequivocally show that older muscle tissue has the same, if not an even greater capacity, to respond to a vigorous bout of resistance exercise than younger muscle does.
Age is not the issue; metabolic fitness is the issue—that is, how efficiently your metabolism burns fat, which is based on how much lean muscle you have, what and how often you eat, how much and at what intensity you exercise, and how balanced your body’s hormonal systems are, especially those hormones that regulate the burning of nutrients as fuel or cause their storage as fat.
Three Techniques for Measuring Body Fat
There are several popular methods for measuring body fat. Following are three of the most popular:
1. Hydrostatic weighing, in which a person’s mass is measured both in and out of a tank of water, is considered to be the gold standard for measuring body fat. This test is based on the assumption that lean tissue is denser than fat—that is, lean tissue will sink and fat tissue will float. This test costs between $100 and $150 and can be performed at your local health club, hospital, university, or wellness center. Some mobile units may even charge as little as $45 for this service.2. Skin fold measurement with a caliper involves measuring subcutaneous (under-the-skin) fat with a caliper at certain points on the body. Since this test has been around for quite some time, you can get it done at YMCAs, health clubs, dietitians’ offices, physical therapy centers, and universities.3. Anthropometric measurement is a test you can do at home. This test is based on the assumption that fat is distributed at certain sites on the body such as the neck, wrist, and waistline. Muscle tissue is usually found at sites such as the biceps, forearm, and calf.
The following two anthropometric tests—one for males and one for females—will help you ascertain your percentage of body fat. These formulas are from Philip L. Goglia’s book, Turn Up the Heat: Unlock the Fat-Burning Power of Your Metabolism, and have a plus or minus error rate of 5 percent. All you need is a cloth tape measure and a calculator.
AT-HOME BODY FAT TEST FOR MALES
Step 1: Taking Measurements
Height in inches ____Hips in inches ____Waist in inches ____Weight in pounds ____
Step 2: Determining Your Percentage of Body Fat
Multiply your hips (in.) ____ x 1.4 = ____ minus 2 = ____ (A)Multiply your waist (in.) ____ x 0.72 = ____ minus 4 = ____ (B)Add A plus B = ____ (C)Multiply your height (in.) ____ x 0.61 = ____ (D)Subtract D from C, then subtract 10 more: (C – D) – 10 = ____ % fat
Your answer will be your approximate body fat percentage if you are a male.
AT-HOME BODY FAT TEST FOR FEMALES
Step 1: Taking Measurements
Height in inches ____Hips in inches ____Waist in inches ____Weight in pounds ____
Step 2: Determining Your Percentage of Body Fat
Multiply your hips (in.) ____ x 1.4 = ____ minus 1 = ____ (A)Multiply your waist (in.) ____ x 0.72 = ____ minus 2 = ____ (B)Add A plus B = ____ (C)Multiply your height (in.) ____ x 0.61 = ____ (D)Subtract D from C, then subtract 10 more: (C – D) – 10 = ____ % fat
Your answer will be your approximate body fat percentage if you are a female.
You do not necessarily have to get your body fat tested to know that your body composition is improving. If you have been exercising and eating properly and your clothes begin to feel looser, if you find yourself taking in your belt a notch or two, or if you observe increased strength and muscularity, you will know that you are losing fat and gaining lean muscle.
Calculate Pounds of Body Fat and Lean Muscle
The final step is to take your total weight and calculate how many pounds of fat you carry and how many pounds of lean muscle. Use the following two formulas:
Total weight (lb.) × percent body fat = total pounds of fat
Total weight – total pounds of fat = total pounds of lean muscle
For example, if you are a woman weighing 200 pounds and you find that you have 35 percent body fat, calculate the number of pounds of fat you carry using the following formula:
200 lb. × .35 (% body fat) = 70 pounds of fat
To calculate your pounds of lean muscle, use the following formula: 200 lb. – 70 lb. of fat = 130 pounds of lean muscle
Health Criterion #3: All-over Body Measurements
As you work through this Fat-Burning tips, your all-over body measurements, which I will ask you to take every four weeks, will be another indication that you are losing fat and building lean muscle. You will become leaner and trimmer.
To take accurate all-over body measurements, follow these instructions. I have provided drawings for both men and women to help you to accurately measure each area of your body.
Arm: With your arm to the side of your body, measure the circumference midway between the shoulder and the elbow.
Forearm: With your arm hanging downward and slightly away from your trunk and your palm facing forward, measure at the maximum forearm circumference between the wrist and the elbow.
Chest: For a woman, measure across the widest part of the chest marked by the nipples. (For older women with very large hanging breasts, this might be slightly higher. See illustration for guidance.)
For a man, measure the widest area of the chest across the nipples.
Waist: Measure at the narrowest part of the torso, above the belly button and below the rib cage.
Abdomen: Measure at the level of the belly button.
Hips: Measure at the maximum circumference of the hips or buttocks region, whichever is larger.
Thigh: With your legs slightly apart, measure at the maximum circumference of the thigh.
Calf: Measure at the maximum circumference between the knee and the ankle.
Health Criterion #4: Why Waist Circumference Is So Important
In both men and women, one of the most important and accurate indicators of obesity, the potential for cardiac disease, and other health risks is the circumference of the waist. This is because an increased measurement in the waist always indicates an increase in abdominal fat (and the ratio of body fat–to– lean muscle in general). For a woman, who naturally carries her fat in her hips and thighs, an increased waist measurement indicates a reverse fat pattern.
Since fat is three times the size of lean muscle tissue, it is possible for scale weight and BMI to remain the same with aging yet for the waist to increase as lean muscle is lost and fat storage is increased through inactivity and poor nutritional habits. One doctor I know had a 7-inch increase in his waistline after retirement even though his scale weight did not change.
In the book It Can Break Your Heart, Dr. J. Pervis Milnor III and coauthors write that a waistline greater than 35 inches in a woman and 40 inches in a man increases the risk for developing higher cholesterol levels, which lead to coronary disease, and type 2 diabetes. According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a man whose waistline is 42 inches or greater is more likely to have erectile dysfunction than his leaner counterparts.
Of course, a waist measurement of 35 inches in women or 40 inches in men is not always an absolute indicator of health risks. You should take into consideration factors such as height, body type, and bone structure. A 35-inch waistline on a woman who is 5 feet 11 inches tall with a large frame would represent less of a health risk than the same waist circumference on a woman who is 5 feet 2 inches tall with a small frame.
Health Criterion #5: Calculate Your Waist-to-Hip Ratio
The value of the waist-to-hip ratio is that it helps to give you a more accurate idea of where you carry your fat. When fat is stored around and above the waist, it results in a higher risk for diabetes, heart disease, and some types of cancers. The person with upper body fat distribution (the apple shape) loses fat more quickly than the person with lower body fat distribution (the pear shape), but a smaller amount of fat stored above the waist is more dangerous than a larger amount of fat stored below the waist.
To get this ratio, measure your waist at its narrowest circumference and your hips at their widest. Then divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. For example, if you have a waist of 30 inches and a hip measurement of 42 inches, your hip-to-waist ratio is 0.71.
My waist measurement is ____. My hip measurement is ____. My waist-to-hip ratio is ____.
RANGE OF WAIST-TO-HIP RATIOS
Excellent Good Average High Extreme
Male<0 data-blogger-escaped-.85="" data-blogger-escaped-p="">0.85–0.90.91–0.950.96–1.0>1.0Female<0 data-blogger-escaped-.75="" data-blogger-escaped-p="">0.75–0.80.81–0.850.86–0.9>0.9
Keep in mind that this measurement does not tell you anything about your total body weight or body composition. It just gives you an indication of where your excess fat is located and therefore your health risk relative to fat deposition.
Women must especially watch this ratio during and following menopause when hormonal fluctuations, poor nutrition, and lack of activity can result in abdominal weight gain, leading to a reverse fat pattern. The National Cancer Institute has shown that a woman with a lower than normal waist-to-hip ratio is eight times more likely to get cervical cancer than a woman with a normal ratio.
Used alone, this ratio can be deceiving in some people. As we have seen, once abdominal obesity sets in, especially as a reverse fat pattern, the waist-to-hip ratio can become skewed because at this point both genders are gaining weight above and below the waist. So as the waistline goes up, the hips go up, often in tandem. This is just another reason why no single method of measuring fat storage is infallible. It is important to look at the bigger picture when evaluating your health and fat patterns.
Health Criterion #6: Body Mass Index
The Body Mass Index or BMI is another important tool to help ascertain how overfat you are. Sometimes the BMI can be misleading. For example, a 240-pound bodybuilder who is 5 feet 11 inches would have a BMI of 34, which would appear to put him in the very highest risk category. But if that same person has only 8 percent body fat, this changes the entire story.
However, for most readers of this website, a high BMI will be a red flag predicting many health risks. For example, a recent study published by the American College of Sports Medicine has shown a direct correlation between a high BMI and increased levels of C-reactive protein. High CRP is an accurate indicator of inflammation in the body, which increases the risk of a first cardiac event (heart attack), even after adjustments have been made for risk factors such as age, smoking, and body weight. Exercise and increased levels of physical activity, which result in weight loss and lowered BMI, have been shown to reduce a person’s level of CRP. So while the BMI is not an infallible standard by which to measure how fat you are, taken together with other factors it is a useful tool for helping to create an accurate health profile and can serve as an early warning system for heart disease.
BMI is defined as your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared. To save you the trouble of converting pounds to kilograms and inches to meters, I have done the math for you. Simply look up your BMI in the chart provided. Your height can be found in the left-hand column and your weight (in pounds) runs along the top of the chart. Your BMI is where both points intersect. Because people between 5 feet and 5 feet 2 inches tall generally have a lighter frame, we have included a different chart for them.
Interpret Your BMI
If your BMI is below 20. Unless you are an athlete with a very high ratio of lean muscle–to–body fat, a BMI this low might mean that you are too thin and are possibly compromising your immune system.If your BMI is between 20 and 22. This range is associated with living the longest and having the lowest incidence of serious illness.If your BMI is between 23 and 25. These numbers are still within the acceptable range and are associated with good health.If your BMI is between 26 and 30. Now you are entering the zone where there are serious health risks. A BMI this high puts you at risk for developing heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some kinds of cancers. You should definitely lower your weight through diet and exercise.If your BMI is over 30. This is the worst-case scenario where you are definitely putting yourself at risk for all of the diseases mentioned above. It is imperative that you begin to lose weight and exercise.BODY MASS INDEX1001101201301401501601701801902002102202302402502602702805’0?202224262729313335373941434547495153555’1?192123252728303234373941434547495153555’2?192022242628293133353637394143444648501201301401501601701801902002102202302402502602702802903005’3?212325272830323436373941434446485051535’4?212224262829313334363840414345464850525’5?202223252728303233353738404243454748505’6?192123242627293132343637394042444547495’7?192022242527283031333536383941424446475’8?182021232426272930323435373840414344465’9?181921222425272830313334363738404143445’10?171920222324262729303233353637394042435’11?171820212224252728293132343536383941426’0?161819202223242627293031333435373839416’1?161719202122242526282930323334363738406’2?151718192122232426272830313233353637396’3?151618192021232425262829303133343536386’4?151617182021222324262728293032333435376’5?141517181920212324252627293031323334366’6?14151617192021222324252728293031323435
According to a study done in the New England Journal of Medicine, having a BMI over 25 may cause your life span to decrease significantly. If your BMI is higher than 30, your life span may decrease even more sharply. Studies show that 59 percent of American men have a BMI over 25 and almost as many women. For those who have a BMI over 35, health care costs are likely to be more than twice those of individuals with a BMI between 20 and 25. Treatment of diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease count for much of this spending.
Compare Your BMI and Waist Measurement
As we have seen, BMI can be skewed by factors such as frame size and the percentage of lean muscle that you carry on your frame. One tool that I have found useful in deciding whether your BMI is in the healthy range is the comparison between BMI and waist measurement. Here is a chart that compares ranges of BMI with waist measurements in men and women.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BMI AND WAIST MEASUREMENTSHealth CategoryBMIMen’s Waist (in.)Women’s Waist (in.)Normal18.5–24.934.3–38.531.1–36.1Overweight25–29.938.6–42.836.2–40.4Obese I30–34.942.9–48.740.5–45.2Obese II>-35>-48.8>-45.3
If both your BMI and your waistline fall into the same category, you can be fairly certain of the health classification.
Bo Walker: The Inches Melted Off and the Numbers Went Down
Let’s take a look at a client of mine who completed the Fat-Burning tips as part of a makeover I did for Let’s Live magazine: a forty-year-old radio personality named Bo Walker. When Bo first came into my program, he carried 250 pounds on his 5-foot 10-inch frame, had a body fat percentage of 34.5, a BMI of 35.85, a waist measurement of 48, and a waist-to-hip ratio of 1.0. As you can see, all of these figures put him into the very highest risk category.
Bo was concerned about his health because he and his wife had a young child. “I knew I was headed in the wrong direction. My father had died at a very early age, fifty-nine years old, from a heart attack and complications with diabetes. I knew that if I continued on this path and stayed in the 250 weight range—or worse—I was probably headed for the same fate. I wanted my kid to know who I am and I wanted to live long enough to enjoy my life with my wife.” Bo was also facing the stress of having just lost his job.
Over the course of twelve weeks, Bo saw dramatic changes in his overall body measurements. I have included some of his statistics to demonstrate his total transformation.
BO WALKER’S MEASUREMENTSDate5/1/20035/17/20035/31/20036/26/20037/12/20038/1/2003% Body Fat34.5027.8024.8023.2023.2020.80BMI35.8534.733.9133.4133.4132.4Weight250242236.5233233226Girths: Left/RightBicep–Left151413.751413.7513.5Bicep–Right141413.7513.7513.7513.75Forearm–Left11.7511.75121211.75Forearm–Right1212121212Thigh–Left27272525.525.523.5Thigh–Right27262525.252523.75Calf–Left1615.515.2515.2515Calf–Right16.516.516.2516.2516Hips46.547.545.754544.7542.75Waist4847.546.545.754543.75Shoulders5452.7552.55352Chest494947.7546.546.545.25
As you can see, Bo lost 24 pounds and his body fat dropped 13.7 points, from 34.5 percent to 20.8 percent. If we plug this into the formula I gave you, he started out carrying 86.5 pounds of fat and 163.5 pounds of lean muscle. At the end of 12 weeks, he was carrying only 47 pounds of fat and 179 pounds of lean muscle—a dramatic change. If you interpret these figures from a slightly different perspective, in terms of conversion from fat to muscle, Bo lost 39.5 pounds of fat and gained 15.5 pounds of lean muscle. Quite impressive!
All of Bo’s other measurements decreased as well. His BMI dropped from 35.85 to 32.4 and his waistline shrunk from 48 to 43.75, a loss of 4.25 inches. His hip measurement dropped from 46.5 to 42.75, a loss of 3.75 inches, resulting in a waist-to-hip ratio of 1.0, which is identical to his former ratio. This is a perfect example of the shortcomings of looking only at this measurement, as discussed earlier in this post. As I explained, when taken alone, the waist-to-hip ratio is not a reliable indicator of health risk. When a man has developed a reverse fat pattern, as Bo did, at first the waist and hips will shrink in tandem with one another as the body is normalizing.
In extreme cases of the reverse fat pattern, such as Douglas Daniels, the waist-to-hip ratio will actually increase before it goes down. The reason is that the hips are not a normal place for a man to store fat. The rule is that the last fat gained is the first to be lost.
Bo still has a distance to go, but he looks and feels better than he has in years, which is a strong motivator for him to continue with the plan. Your body could also look great after only four weeks on the Fat-Burning tips.
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rel=author">Jean-Paul Marat
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