What is the Ideal Body Fat to See Your Abs?
-Measuring your body fat
percentage is a valuable tool to chart your progress on your quest to get six
pack abs. Hopefully most people realize by now that abdominal exercises don’t
burn fat off your stomach.
Abs are made in the kitchen,
not just in the gym. No matter how much you work out, if you don’t eat right
and achieve a calorie deficit, your abs will remain covered in a layer of
adipose.
-When the realization hits you
that you must reduce your body fat percentage to see your abs, one of the
biggest questions that pops into your mind is, “how low do I have to get my
body fat percentage to see my abs?” It’s a tough question and the answer may be
different for men than women.
-Here's what I'd recommend:
-First, get familiar with some
benchmarks for body fat levels.
-My Burn The Fat System has a body fat rating scale, which includes averages
and my suggested optimal body fat percentages. This is my own chart, which I
created with a combination of research literature and my own personal
experience.
Burn The Fat Body fat rating
scale:
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WOMEN:
Competition
Shape ("ripped"): 8-12%
Very Lean (excellent): < 15% Lean (good): 16-20% Satisfactory (fair): 21-25% Improvement needed (poor): 26-30% Major improvement needed
(Very
poor): 31-40%+
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MEN:
Competition
Shape ("ripped"): 3-6%
Very Lean (excellent): < 9% Lean (good): 10-14% Satisfactory (fair): 15-19% Improvement needed (poor): 20-25% Major improvement needed
(Very
poor): 26-30%+
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-Just a quick note: You're not
destined to get fatter as you get older, but in the general population (not
fitness and bodybuilding folks), the average older person has more body fat.
-What I did to accommodate
this was to include a body fat range instead of one number, so younger people
can use the low end of the range and older people can use the higher number.
-Also, just so the average
reader can keep things in perspective, single digit body fat for women and low
single digits for men is far beyond lean - it's RIPPED - and that's usually
solely the domain of competitive physique athletes.
-Competition body fat levels
were not meant to be maintained all year round. It's not realistic and it may
not be healthy, particularly for women.
-For most women, 12% body fat
or thereabouts is ripped, and for many, that's contest ready (figure or fitness
competition).
-Just for comparison, I've
done over 7,000 body fat tests during my career, and the lowest I have ever
measured on a female was 8.9% (4-site skinfold method). She was a
national-level figure competitor and she was shredded - full six pack of abs...
"onion skin!"
-However, I do know some women
who get down to 11-13% body fat - by all standards extremely lean, complete
with six pack abs - but oddly, they still had a few stubborn fat spots - usually
the hips and lower body.
-What about guys? Well, I know
a guy who looks absolutely chiseled in his abs at 11% body fat, but other guys
don't look really cut in the abs until they get down to 6-8% body fat.
Bodybuilders usually aren’t ready for competition until they get below 6%.
-That's the trouble with
trying to pin down one specific body fat number as THE body fat level for
seeing 6-pack abs (or being ripped and contest-ready): Everyone distributes
their body fat differently and two people may look different at the same
percentage.
-The average guy or gal should
probably aim for the "lean" category as a realistic year round goal,
or if you're really ambitious and dedicated, the "very lean
category."
-You'll probably have to hit
the "very lean" category for six pack abs. However, the bottom line
is that there's no "perfect" body fat percentage where you're assured
of seeing your abs.
-Besides, body fat is one of
those numbers that gets fudged and exaggerated all the time. I hear reports of
women with body fat between 4% and 8% and I usually dismiss it as error in
measurement (or there's some "assistance" involved).
-Body fat testing, especially
with skinfolds, is not an exact science. All body fat tests are estimations and
there is always room for human error.
-The low numbers are nice for
bragging rights, but the judges don't measure your body fat on stage. What
counts is how you look and whether you're happy with that (or whether the
judges are happy with it, if you're competing).
-You can use my chart to help
you set some initial goals, but for the most part, I recommend using body fat
testing as a way of charting your progress over time to see if you're improving
rather than pursuing some holy grail number.
-In my BurnThe fat, Feed The Muscle program, you can learn more about how to measure your body fat - professionally
or even by yourself in the privacy of your own home.
-Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle explains why body mass index and height and weight
charts are virtually worthless, and shows you how to track your body
composition over time and "tweak" your nutrition and training
according to your weekly results.
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MEN CLICK HERE to discover how to burn belly fat and
transform your body from fat to muscle in 49 days or less!
|
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