Mocktail Minutes

Ideal Body Fat Percentage

• Mocktail Minutes • Episode 130

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Last week we talked about the most accurate ways to assess your body composition. This week we are talking about the ideal body fat percentage to aim for and why. 


If you have questions, or topics that you want to hear about, head over to our Instagrams https://www.instagram.com/bayleethedietitian/ or https://www.instagram.com/brianna.dietitian/ and send us a DM! You can also follow the podcast https://www.instagram.com/mocktailminutes/


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Swoon 

Click play, sip back, and be empowered.

Baylee:

Hello everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of Mocktail. This is Bailey

Brianna:

And this is Brianna.

Baylee:

and oh, is this week our first week with the new intro, outro, or

Brianna:

I think it was last

Baylee:

changed last week? Well, if you didn't notice, our intro and outro are different. We finally updated it.

Brianna:

Yeah. It has our, it doesn't have our old Instagrams anymore. We don't sound like newbie podcasters. think it sounds good. Yeah. Yeah.

Baylee:

This week I am drinking another spoon. Half lemonade, half tea.

Brianna:

I am doing. I don't have anything. I have, I'm have a tobo tree go, which is not,

Baylee:

Oh, so good.

Brianna:

it's mineralized.

Baylee:

There you go. Is it a flavored one?

Brianna:

no, it's just the regular, but I think they changed their label. That looks,

Baylee:

looks different.

Brianna:

it doesn't look

Baylee:

I've never seen that bottle before.

Brianna:

Yeah, me neither. It's in plastic'cause they ran outta glass, which I think the glass ones taste better. They're way more carbonated probably better for you. But yeah, it'll do, but I'm not happy about it.

Baylee:

Today we are talking about body fat percent to reduce metabolic disease. Last week, it was last week, right? We talked about the d and.

Brianna:

Yeah.

Baylee:

So if you miss that episode, be sure to go back. Using those measurements is how you can kind of look at your body fat percentage. And then we also give you tips as to like, how can you make it the most reliable? But first I want you guys to understand body fat. So there are two types of fat. We have subcutaneous and we have visceral. Subcutaneous is under your skin. It's mostly harmless. Visceral fat is around your organs, and this is what's more inflammatory. It increases your risk for insulin resistance, fatty liver hormone imbalances, especially in women and like heart disease and brain fog. So. You can be a normal weight too, but still metabolically unhealthy if visceral fat is high. This is like when people kind of refer to as like skinny fat.

Brianna:

Yeah. Skinny fat. Yeah. Which is why it's super important to know what your actual body composition is like. You can't just look at, oh, I am my ideal body weight, or I'm a good BMI, or I am, you know. I, I'm a good body fat percentage. Like you don't actually know your body fat percentage unless you know your body composition and when you get that body fat. Yes, it's two different types of fat and we're gonna kind of talk about today like an optimal or kind of like a range to focus on. In theory, visceral fat should be very, very low no matter what, but kind of focusing on the ranges we give you will kind of ensure that likely visceral fat. Is within a decent range. Of course, your dile will tell you, or your InBody will tell you more, but for women, the ideal body fat, like what is healthy, is typically considered women 20 to 25% men, 12 to 18%. But working with women and men like throughout the lifespan, I think 30%. Or maybe a little bit less, like 25 to 30 for women is probably the best and like 20 to 25 for men. It's a sweet spot for both like long-term health, but also aesthetics. So. When your body fat composition rises above 30 and it's like at 30 to 35 for women, this is when we start to see like changes in like those metabolic markers. So like fast and glucose and insulin start to rise, triglycerides increase. HDL, your like good cholesterol drops, inflammation like CCRP and IL six go up, and then the liver begins to accumulate fat. Or also known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. I think it's also now called like something else. We just like love to change that. But basically you're getting fatty liver because of the fat buildup that you're having around your organ, so

Baylee:

Not because you drink too

Brianna:

Yeah, exactly. Not because you get, yes, if you drink excessive, all that alcohol, you can get liver disease that's associated with alcohol, but we're talking about just. Because of your nutrition and lifestyle. So at or below 30, most people are decently insulin sensitive, which is a good thing, meaning their body can use carbs and fats and protein more efficiently for energy instead of storing them. So if you think about it, at 30% or below, your metabolism is flexible. You can burn fat between meals, you sleep better, but sugars more stable, et cetera.

Baylee:

And I would say do like that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Like you talked about, we want it to be kind of lower, but we don't want women, especially to be under like 20% like men. The 12 to 18% is your ideal, but women, it's a little bit higher and. One thing I think about is hormones. So fat tissue isn't just like storage. It's an endocrine organ that produces hormones like estrogen, leptin so like too much fat can lead to actually increase estrogen, leptin resistance, and chronic inflammation. So this is something that kind of confuses some people is the leptin side of things, because leptin is your satiety hormone. So fat secretes this as you. Obtain more fat, you're going to have more leptins. So in theory, you'd be like, oh, so I'm gonna be like Fuller, I'm not gonna eat as much. But it's kind of the same thing with like insulin resistance. I would say. Like eventually you just pump out so much your body's not really paying attention to anymore. Now you're leptin resistant. You don't get that shut down piece.

Brianna:

Mm-hmm.

Baylee:

And then this can also lead to chronic inflammation when you have too much fat. And then on the flip side, when you have too little, not enough estrogen, low leptin, thyroid slows down. So around that 25 to 30% for women gives a healthy hormone balance as well to produce stable cycles. A good thyroid output, normal cortisol rhythm, and just good energy I think is so

Brianna:

Yeah.

Baylee:

And not even thinking about like just body fat, but a lot of times just fat at your meal. This is so often I see where. Women are struggling who have been chronically dieting, undereating fat. This is why you're like maybe meeting your calorie range, but you're really undereating fat so you're not staying satisfied at meals because fat is going to kind of elongate your blood sugar curve. It's gonna keep you a little bit more steadier. So fat can be something that's like, oh, okay, I'm actually gonna stay full rather than just like me, my protein in carbs or staying calories. You need fat. You're gonna feel a lot better. And then that's what's gonna help kind of stabilize your energy.

Brianna:

Yeah. And I think too,'cause sometimes people are like, oh, eating fat makes you fat. Or if I eat fat it's stored as fat. That's not, that's a whole different, it's actually excess

Baylee:

X is anything.

Brianna:

Ex, yeah, excess anything but. More like when we're looking at like, oh, that visceral fat, it's excess like sugar and ultra processed carbohydrates before, I mean, you know, it is easy to overdo fat'cause it's more calories per gram and, and all that. But we've, we've, we've gone over that. A little kind of caveat too is this is why we see women when they start to go through menopause and we have that drop in estrogen, this is why a lot of women will start to. Kind of pack on fat. Or they'll notice like, okay, I feel like I have much more body fat because your body can make estrogen from fat and your body's going, oh no, we're having this drop in estrogen. So if we have excess fat, we can make more estrogen, which is like great for survival. Not really great if you're like done having kids and you don't really want the excess body fat, but that's just a side note. But visceral fat, we usually. I mean, there's no, you don't have to have any visceral fat to be healthy. You could be at zero and like less is better type thing. So we want it to be low at around 30% of body fat. It's more, you're likely to have mostly subcutaneous fat rather than visceral fat around the organs. So again, visceral fat is the one that's linked to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. So 70% fat loss at 70% fat loss happens. More on its own with like nutrition movement. It makes weight loss easier. When you start to have that bigger percent of body fat, then we're starting to really shift into like more of that metabolic disease. It's harder to lose weight from those things because we're dealing with all of those like underlying metabolic issues. So again, you don't know unless you have a dexa, but it's kind of safe to say that women are on 25 to 30. Likely their visceral fat is low, but it's really,

Baylee:

really like, you don't want to aim for like a zero person visceral fat. Like I would, I would say like a healthy amount is generally about 10% of your total fat is gonna be visceral fat. Because you do need some to like protect your organs

Brianna:

Yeah. Like very little.

Baylee:

yeah, you don't need a ton, but it's like. Or maybe around like 10% of your total fat.

Brianna:

And again, that's gonna be really dependent on like, just kind of like your overall.

Baylee:

Yes.

Brianna:

I mean, there's only so much that makes up our bo our body, but in theory you want it really low because

Baylee:

like two pounds maybe.

Brianna:

Yeah, yeah, because your subcutaneous fat. Yeah, because your subcutaneous fat. Really, and I think this is where I think more people re really need to do a dexa because if you just, like, you could have. 30% body fat and be very low visceral and actually be very healthy, but think, oh my gosh, 30 is bad. Or you could be at 30% body fat and still have really high visceral and think, oh, maybe I'm okay, but you're not. I also find too, looking at that visceral fat is also like a underlying reason why I see a lot of people having like weight loss resistant. It's like even if you have high muscle, if you do have high visceral fat, you are gonna like struggle with weight loss a little bit more. So then you start doing things that target that visceral fat. And then you have weight loss.'cause it's not always a calorie deficit, especially for women that lowers visceral fat.

Baylee:

So a question I've had before is, okay if I want to lose fat, but we are talking about building muscle. What do you focus on? Do you focus on losing the fat or do you focus on building the muscle? And you know, there's a, I've seen this pop up on social media a couple times where like you can't do both,

Brianna:

I see that all the time.

Baylee:

but I mean, you can

Brianna:

Yeah, you

Baylee:

if you support. So if you just wanna lose weight, calorie deficit, that's a lot of these people are hurting. If you want to bulk up and put on muscle, well yeah, you gotta have more calories in You can't just like build muscle outta nowhere.

Brianna:

Yeah.

Baylee:

But the thing is, when you support your metabolism and you're eating enough and you're really building up to, Hey, I'm fueling my body now, rather than just like tiring it out and you start strength training, you're gonna build muscle. And as you build muscle, you will burn fat. So not like you can only get one or the other You know, like when we talk about like reverse dieting for example, as we increase you to maintenance, this is a really good time to focus on muscle building'cause you're getting an surplus and what you were getting. And then we have like what we call like a little fat loss phase. But if you do it correctly, you shouldn't really be losing muscle.

Brianna:

Yeah. Well, and that's, I hate when I see that on the internet'cause I'm like, the body is so complicated, it's, I know it's easier for our brains to be like, either I'm building muscle or I'm losing fat, but.

Baylee:

It,

Brianna:

Everything is happening at once. Like nothing is just happening lonesome by itself. You can absolutely build muscle and lose fat, and I think it's more strategic to try to do that. I think it's strategic to eat, to build muscle, because the more muscle you have, the more fat you're going to burn If you just wanna lose a bunch of weight. Right away. Yes, calorie deficit, but it doesn't work long term. And then you're at risk of losing your muscle.'cause when you're in a calorie deficit, especially if it's an extreme deficit, you're gonna lose muscle. But yeah, if you do the, like I'm at maintenance, I'm building muscle, and then you go through a little tiny like cut phase, yeah, you're gonna lose a little bit, but it should not be a ton of muscle. Like if it's a ton of muscle, you're not doing it right. You're in way too much of a deficit. And again, it's hard to tell if you don't have a deficit to compare. But. I hate when that, when people are like, should I just focus on weight loss and fat loss first, and then I'll build muscle? I'm like, well, that's spinning your

Baylee:

It's a really good question.

Brianna:

a great question, especially because everybody on the internet is like, you can't do both. I'm like, yes, you can. I think it comes from the age old, like bodybuilding community of like, we're gonna be in a surplus. Like this is why they do that. They go and they eat in a huge surplus to build a crap ton of muscle, and then they go into a really intense cut because they know they're gonna lose muscle. That's why they surplused it so much and then they're gonna lose fat and then they look a certain way for like competitions and stuff. not really how everyone's living.

Baylee:

And I feel like a lot of things come from the bodybuilding world of like, this is what you need to do. We're not all bodybuilders, we're all not marathon

Brianna:

the majority of us are not.

Baylee:

different. No. Like if you're an adult trying to get to the gym like you're, I mean, I don't wanna say you're not an athlete, you're an athlete, but you're not like a collegiate athlete

Brianna:

We're not like a bodybuilder, we're not competing. We're not.

Baylee:

Mm-hmm.

Brianna:

So don't eat like one or train like one, like And I think

Baylee:

really you have to.

Brianna:

yeah, and I think again, that's a hard thing, right? It's'cause it's like, okay, I wanna make changes. This person knows what the heck they're talking about because

Baylee:

They look fabulous and,

Brianna:

I'm like, so that's it. I have to listen to them like, well, no.

Baylee:

their whole job is bad.

Brianna:

Literally, that's literally their job. They eat, breathe, sleep, train it. If you're just working nine to five, that's not you, which is totally fine. It's not the majority of people, but I think that it's just such a common misconception and again, it makes sense'cause it's such an easy way to look at it, but it's not really

Baylee:

And I think that's where it also comes, like with picking your provider, is if you're gonna be working with a bodybuilder like that, like you have to kind of expect that level of commitment,

Brianna:

Yeah,

Baylee:

like. I don't, I don't wanna call us average, but like, I feel like, you know, we're, we're both moms. We have full-time jobs. Like we're very relatable to people. We, neither of us are out here strength training four times a week to hit sessions running three miles every day.

Brianna:

No. That sounds

Baylee:

So we

Brianna:

but yeah, it's like, yeah. Yeah. And I, I have to have this conversation with clients a lot, and I think it's sort of died down with my female ones. I have it more with my male, but it's like, unless you are living like that, don't train and eat like that. You know what I mean? Or if you can't train like that, you should not be eating like that. Or if you, you know what I mean? Like Yeah. So it's, I I think when I, the other thing too, and we've talked about it, is it's not just about weight loss or how someone looks like, you really need to truly understand body composition because long term, that's what's gonna keep you burning fat. More steadily keep your fat within range, and it's just gonna be that like sustainable and functional sweet spot for you where you're not really having to really work for it. You're also not restricting, you're just kind of hanging out. You're metabolically flexible, you're in your maintenance zone, you're sleeping good, you're feeling good, you have energy. You're hormones are good. You're feeling like a normal person.

Baylee:

yes. I mean, 30% fat, you're probably not gonna have a six pack here. But you're gonna be a lot better health. And when we think of fat loss only as just like shrinking our body, we miss the big picture. But when we think about it as healing our body, it becomes so much more sustainable and honestly more enjoyable. So at this 30%, your body isn't fighting you anymore. You're not starving, you're not exhausted, you're not chasing caffeine all day. You actually feel.

Brianna:

Good.

Baylee:

Because your hormones are balanced. Your blood sugar is stable, your metabolism is flexible. That's the goal. And I was just having this conversation with a client and she's like, I ate pizza. And she's the one she is tracking right now. She's like, if fit, I made it fit with my macros. That's so cringe. It fit my macros.

Brianna:

My macros.

Baylee:

But it did. It worked out. And she was like, I didn't feel gross after it. I didn't feel like I needed to. Eat three pieces. Eat. I didn't gain a pound the next day. She said previously I would eat a piece of pizza and I would gain like five pounds in a day. That's metabolic flexibility. Your body is more adaptable, I would say. It has more flexibility to changes, but you're also, your body doesn't wanna be in fat loss mode. Forever. It wants to find stability in a place where it can kind of trust that it's getting enough fuel, enough rest, and enough movement to thrive. So if you've been stuck in this cycle of eat less, move more repeat, and it's not working, it's not that you fail, it's that your body doesn't feel safe. And this is what I am seeing more and more and more. I don't have a lot of people overeating. A lot of people, your bodies are scared.

Brianna:

Yes, and this is what I wish. Because there's one thing to regurgitate research, and there's one thing to regurgitate what should work in theory. And then there's people that work with people. And I'm telling you, I have people meticulously, I've had them track. I know they're doing the correct workouts. I know they're not overeating and they're not losing weight.

Baylee:

Mm-hmm.

Brianna:

And this is why there's a bigger picture. There's a bigger picture. I know we don't wanna focus on it because it seems complicated and it's just easier to tell someone they're doing something wrong. But this is

Baylee:

seems like it doesn't make sense.

Brianna:

Yes. Yeah. It's harder to explain,

Baylee:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Where like, oh yeah, if you, if you eat less food, you're going to not gain weight. Like, yeah, that sounds great and easy and that's why we clinging to that. But there's more to it, and I think. Maybe in the past that probably that was the approach because we were very different. We, maybe we just got too extreme with it. I don't know. And it's not to say it's wrong. I think that's where the misconception here is that we're just saying, oh, everyone needs more calories. That's not where we're saying, we're saying everyone needs to focus on. How to support your metabolism, and then you kind of look at the calories. But I mean, I have so many people that are eating under their basal metabolic rate, your basic needs. It's going to be very hard to not add stress. And there's a lot of, even some other dieticians that are like, you are not losing weight because you're not in a deficit. Which is true. I mean, if your metabolism has adapted to running off 1300 calories, yeah, you would have to decrease to just.

Brianna:

Yeah. Yes.

Baylee:

not gonna feel good.

Brianna:

No, and and that's what I tell people. It's not that calories and calories and doesn't calories and calories out doesn't work. It's that we don't actually know what that should be. We have, you know, like you were people Yeah, estimation. But if someone is eating below their basal metabolic rate, well then clearly we don't know what their calorie intake should be versus their outtake to see that weight loss. And again, that's not an optimal way to keep going.'cause I'd never say to someone, well, guess we should lower it to 500 calories. I can't say that. then I'm like, how do I help this person become more metabolically flexible? And that's when you start focusing on this and realizing we have to get them eating enough to build muscle so that they can build muscle, lose visceral fat, have a better body fat percentage, and be more metabolically healthy.

Baylee:

Yeah, and if you're like, I don't even care about my metabolism. I just wanna lose the weight. You cannot lose this weight if your metabolism is stressed out. But okay, let's say like, I can do 500 calories. I'm eating a thousand. I don't feel bad. I'm not even hungry. You draw. It down to 500. You cannot get enough nutrients like micronutrients.

Brianna:

Yeah.

Baylee:

not gonna get enough carbs, fat, and protein to support your body, but especially the micronutrients, those are super important as well. I mean, magnesium powers of thousands of reactions and the body, you need all these little spark plugs throughout your body to get things to work. So if you're not eating enough, your body is going to just downgrade every day.

Brianna:

Yep.

Baylee:

And

Brianna:

That's where we see people losing, like their hair, their skin doesn't great. They cannot move. They have brain fog. They have like debilitating fatigue, like

Baylee:

very low motivation, low libido. That's another one that doesn't get talked about. But I mean, I would say we kind of going back to the visceral fat, we got a little off there, but just like,

Brianna:

do not.

Baylee:

yeah, going back to the visceral fat. What I commonly see mistakes being made here is we're doing too much cardio, not enough muscle building. We are chronically undereating, we're ignoring sleep and stress are huge, and we're just obsessing over the scale. And I would say alcohol, which I think I've seen this kind of trend down lately. I feel like alcohol used to be more of a thing like two years ago, but I feel like more recently, more and more people are decreasing alcohol.

Brianna:

Yeah, I, I find that too. Yeah. Which, that's great.

Baylee:

Yeah.

Brianna:

But yeah, I think next week we're gonna talk about how you can actually reduce visceral fat. But the main things we want you guys to take away is that women should kind of aim for around 30% body fat. Men 20 to 25. This is kind of your sweet spot. In theory. You have good insulin sensitivity, hormones are stabilized, low inflammation, good energy, and your fat loss or your weight maintenance is sustainable. So again, next week we'll kind of go into like how to reduce visceral fat, because that is like a key player in it. But for now, if you're focusing on, okay, I'm gonna aim for that 30 ish. Likely your visceral fat is within a healthy range. Again, that is a such a blanket statement, but that's typically what we see. It's always, it depends, but typically,

Baylee:

It depends.

Brianna:

yeah.

Baylee:

that's a good rule of thumb. But yes, we'll be back next week to go over the visceral fat. We'll dive more into that. If you have any other topic requests, as always, send us DM we'll talk to you next week. Bye.

Brianna:

Bye.

Contributor

Baylee

Host
Contributor

Brianna

Host