Body Fat Not All There is to Health

The Santa Fe Community College’s new BOD POD S/T machine assesses a person’s total body fat based on six categories, which vary with men and women:

Risky Fat: more than

30 percent (men); more than 40 percent (women)

Excess Fat: 21 to 30 percent (men); 31 to 40 percent (women)

Moderately Lean: 13 to 20 percent (men); 23 to

30 percent (women)

Lean: 9 to 12 percent (men); 19 to 22 percent (women)

Ultra Lean: 5 to 8 percent (men); 15 to 18 percent (women)

Risky Lean: less than

5 percent (men); less than 15 percent (women)

These categories can help people make beneficial changes to their diets and exercise routines, said Joann Bishop, director of SFCC’s Fitness Education department. However, keeping one’s blood pressure, blood-sugar levels and cholesterol in mind can be just as important.

“That’s the thing we always try to emphasize to people — that body fat is just one factor in being a healthy person,” Bishop said.

The low body-fat levels that elite athletes carry — typically from 5 to 10 percent — are deceiving, she said. Bodybuilders and gymnasts, for example, have to be aware of how they look as well as how they perform, which isn’t the case for most people.

Women should be especially careful to hold enough fat, as being too lean can force the body to eat away at itself to gain muscle, she said. In some cases, the body will start robbing calcium from bones, leading to complications like osteoporosis.

People who prefer to sweat away ill health should start with 30 minutes of low-intensity exercise each day — enough to get the heart beating but still allowing for speech, she said. What someone chooses to do is purely up to them.

Regular exercise even gives some leeway in following a diet, she said. People don’t have to pay as much attention to what they eat if they have ways to burn off energy.

“We’re trying to consume the same amount of fat our ancestors did and we’re just sitting around,” she said.