Regular exercisers know all about repetitions, sets, super-sets and the intricacies of putting together routines that make for satisfying workouts. However, there are certain fundamental facts about the human body we should understand to contribute to better fitness and health.
Our body composition is determined by dividing our weight into lean body mass and fat weight. The first component comprises the weight of all the muscles in the body (40 to 50%), the weight of the skeletal bone (16 to 18%) and the weight of all the organs (29 to 34%).
The lean body mass represents the active, energy-producing tissues of the body.The second component, fat weight, represents both the essential fat, and the inactive, stored excess fat tissue that can be utilized for energy-production under suitable conditions.
In females, the essential fat that is required for the normal functions of the organs, is about 12% of the total body weight. In males, it is closer to 3%. The rest of the non-essential body fat accumulates in the subcutaneous tissue, between the muscle and skin, and this is the stored fat that can keep us warm, cushion the bones, muscles and organs, and under the right exercising conditions, can provide a major source of fuel for energy. We can all teach and train our bodies to become more effective fat-burning organisms. The average amount of this non-essential form of stored fat in the body of males is 12%, in females, 15%.
These gender differences are important, especially today, when advertising pressures encourage fat-obsessiveness in females, and eating-disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulemia have increased alarmingly.
Certain levels of body fat are crucial to survival and to a state of good health and fitness. Depending on the level of activity to which you are committed (the competitive athlete has very different goals to the average person seeking a condition of healthy fitness), your body fatness level will fluctuate and your aim should be to achieve and maintain the optimal range. Below, the body fat levels and percentages for which you should aim:
Percentage body fat for males:
Very low. Low. Optimal range. Moderately high. High. Very high.
5………….. 10…….. 15…………..20……………………….25……….30……. 35……… 40
Percentage body fat for women
Very low Low Optimal range Moderately high High Very high
5…. 10…… 15…. .20……….25………………………….30…… 35…………………40
Consider how overfat you may be. As you work to become more physically fit you have a target body mass for which to strive so that you feel at ease knowing that you have achieved a healthier body weight. Overfat is a more accurate concept than overweight because the latter refers only to a reading on the bathroom scale that is considered to be in excess of some unreliable standard. Our focus should lie always on the proportion between lean body mass and fat.
Someone who boasts that he hit the scales at 75kg at the age of 20, and 25 years later still weighs 75 kg, is ignorant of some vital facts. At the younger age he was active and athletic, exercising regularly, participating in both competitive and recreational games. His 75 kg was made up of 10% body fat and 90% lean body mass.Today, he is a successful business man , proudly watching his dietary habits but giving little time to physical training, playing a weekly round of golf and sometimes swimming in the summer months. His 75kg now consists of 25% body fat and 75% lean body mass. Because he experiences little muscle stimulation he has decreased the amount of muscle in his body while increasing his fat component.
The greater the percentage of lean body mass, the higher the number of kilojoules the body burns. Muscle growth from exercise transforms the body into a more efficient fat-burning instrument and it is this process that constitutes the most rewarding dividend for all who desire a truly reliable method of fat control.
The process of muscle atrophy, the disappearance of muscle tissue through disuse and inactivity, is nearly always accompanied by an increase in fat. The energy imbibed in the form of food that is not burnt is stored as fat.
Muscle can never turn into fat-these are totally diffent human tissues. However, the decrease in muscle through disuse is accompanied by the body’s decreased ability to burn fat , so that more energy is stored as fat.
Thus, there can be legions of thin people who can be overfat. They are inactive, possess a low proportion of lean muscle tissue, together with a high percentage of fat, even though it is less visible, and their apparent slimness is in no way an indication of physical health or fitness.
Our bodies burn energy 24/7 to stay alive. A major source of this energy is stored body fat. Aerobic and muscular exercise increase the body’s use of fat for energy, not only during activity but for many hours after you have worked out. The metabolic rate-the rate at which the body uses energy through a set of interlinked
chemical reactions by which it extracts energy from foodstuffs or fat stores and uses this for all the growth and maintenance processes-is elevated in exercising individuals.
Exercise is cumulative, so that when you are at rest, even asleep, your body has been conditioned to use more kilojoules, burn more fat, than the body of a person who has invested in passive, expensive methods that cannot affect the metabolic processes. Sadly, we often pursue the method of least resistance in our quest for easier ways to lose weight and look svelte. Only by increasing muscle mass and exercising to become functionally fit can we begin to utilise that excess stored fat for its intended purpose-energy.
Adipose tissue, or cellulite (both synonymous with fat) cannot be pummeled, squeezed, pounded, kneaded, displaced or persuaded to melt away. Only by stimulating your body’s biologically-inherited metabolic processes to become more active through exercise (the only authentic fat-burning procedure) will you begin to take fuller control of the proportion of body fat that contributes to your overall mass.
The more muscle tissue you develop through exercise, the more energy and fat-fuel will be metabolised so that your inner engine will transform from a fuel-saving V.W. to a fat-burning Porsche!