How Much Body Fat is Healthy - Take the Mirror Test 

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lol, the shot of christian bale in the machinist at 96 lbs. I remember when that came out you had to see it just to see how emaciated bale looked. He said he got that low eating one can of tuna and an apple a day for like 6 weeks. The director forced him stop the diet before principal filming finished.

Great video. I agree that the most important factor for health and longevity is staying lean. For men, it’s good to be 15% or less and for women, 25% or less. The mirror test is great. Another easy way to calculate the body fat percentage is to use the US Navy method. Unfortunately, RU-vid doesn’t allow me to post links, but you can easily find the calculator on the web. It just needs a few body measurements and it’s pretty accurate.

GREAT video. Very informative. Thank you!

Looking good Siim ! 👍

Why did we not learn stuff like this in school Bio class?

Menno Henselmans in the thumbnail? Instant click. Instant Like.

Suggestion for video on air quality health in what to avoid. 4th of July fireworks day and after how air quality is toxic which most dont know about.

Honestly I am surprised the life expectancy gap between men and women is not larger, being male seems pretty bad for general survival: - Majority of suicides are men - Majority of homicide victims are men - Majority of war casualties are men - Men visit the hospital less often - Men are more likely to drink alcohol and smoke - Men are more likely to overdose on drugs - Men tend to be taller and being taller has been shown to lower life span - Men are less likely to care about loosing weight - Etc And most of these are skewed by a very large margin. Although there are some contradictions such as grip strength being associated with longevity, bone density, etc. So who knows.

Still a size 4 as a post meno woman. My BMI is about 16% but I still dry fast as long as possible daily & eat one, sometimes two meals a day, keto-biotic. Pls do one of post mento women, do we need extra protein or not to avoid osteopenia & osteoporosis? Thx Siim.

Based on mirror test I'm at 15%, a good position to be at. Thanks for the video.

I'm glad he covered the differences between men and women. I'd add, though, that when women have low body fat and also low weight, they risk osteoporosis at some level.

I had some health issues that resulted in me being underweight and I feel much better now, and look better overall, but I do miss that perfect muscle tone (as a woman)

Is VO2max not correlated to all cause mortality in women then? I mean, if VO2max is calculated based on your body wheight and you have higher % body fat you should likely have less muscles at the same wheight. Should that not impact your cardiovascular fitness? Or can you be 35% fat and still have a really high VO2max?

Most men that reach age 100 are 5 feet or even smaller. Everyone will shrink somewhat after age 75-80 or so. How tall you are matters more then what most people want to believe. Everyone want to be tall these days. Not understanding it actually accelerates ageing big time. It's probably also a big factor why women generally live longer.

so guys stay lean

My excess skin makes it very hard to tell what the deal is

4:45 "The lowest risk for men is below 85 cm or 33 inches" Actually, according to the graph the lowest risk for healthy non-smoking males is a waist circumference of 92-97 cm (36-38 inches).

I’m a girl with a gym-body, our bodies retain a degree of fat regardless of how much we diet or exercise. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Has the common use of genetically modifying products had an effect on body fat percentage? Are there any respectable scientific studies on this subject yet?

"Great visual guide"... How it is "great", when at 23.4% and 30% you cant see any difference, like I would say even that 23.4% man have bigger love handles.

I'm 21%bf n still got abs when I wake up n biceps viens lol

Isn't it waist circumstances to heighth? As in the waist should be half the height. I'm 5'10" that's 70", half of that is 35". I would look positively emaciated if my waist was only 25".

What's your current body fat % Siim? I'm guessing you've lost more since you starting focusing on improving Vo2 max. Makes me wonder what body fat percentage is associated with peak performance of Vo2 max.

That male graph only goes down to 14%. You can't say anything about body fat lower than that. And the error bar is also very large, below say 26%. It makes sense that lower is better to some point. Assuming that point is ~8% I don't see justified with science. Only logic, which often fails. The conservative method of reading these, is going by that top error line. If you do, the lowest point is 28 or 29%. This is why you need a lot of people in the studies, so those error ranges can be reduced. What would be interesting is mathematically including body muscle and fat. Perhaps simply muscle mass in kg minus fat mass in kg (pounds...whatever...I just mean other than %), and evaluating that for all cause mortality. I suspect low body fat is less bad if you have a lot of muscle, otherwise you are not likely getting the nutrition you need. Just searched for the study. Not a great study. They did not correct for physical activity or smoking. And it was less than 10% men. If you don't control for activity level, this is pretty much useless in my opinion. These are also people referred for body comp DEXA. That also is odd. How does one get referred for that? I have mentioned it to my doc, and he says they only do DEXA for bone density, not body comp, and only for older people or people they are concerned about bone density for. DEXA for body comp is not even approved. Should be, but it isn't. My grandfather was a healthy guy and 90 or so, when he decided to get really lean for his 75th high school reunion (he was a wiz and graduated early. Engineering degree before 20). He did some lifting, some climbing up and down some steps, walking to and from the grocery (about 5 blocks away) every day...and he lived on a steep hill that went all the way down to the grocery. He looked great, and likely was 10% fat or less, washboard abs. Had a great time at the reunion. A week, maybe two, later, he stumbled on the sidewalk curb and broke his hip. I don't think his bones were weak, he just had no padding to absorb the impact of the fall. His health spiraled down from there, and died. Breaking a hip or a femur in old age and dying is not rare at all. There are over 300,000 hip fractures each year. Don't know how many femurs. And 28% lead to death within a year. But there is an increased risk of death well beyond that, up to 10 years out. That has to easily be 100,000 deaths a year. That is about the same as Alzheimer's or Diabetes. And indeed, "unintentional injuries" is the third leading cause of death in the US. Those hip/femur fractures would be at least half of those deaths. The death rate is much higher if you don't get surgery. 70% dead within one year. And that is people 50 and older. This is not some rare thing. This is a huge killer. If you have prevented heart disease and cancer, next on the list is accidents.

Looking gaunt, Siim.

people over 100 yrs in Sardinia, Ikaria, and Okinawa are not lean at all, they live a stress free life, have lots of social life, perform a lot of easy exercising (walking, gardening, etc...), and eat natural foods of their region in moderation.

This guy is good, but makes some key errors. First, he assumes estrogen directly allows women to live longer with higher fat; men with significant fat have higher estrogen levels generally. Second, your waistline is not specifically visceral fat as he says; it simply implies more visceral fat. I can diet and lose some visceral fat but have stubborn low belly fat. Third the images he shows are not necessarily accurate, as people store fat different. I have muscular arms and legs, but more belly fat outside my abs (subcutaneous.) If I got liposuction, I'd more closely resemble the fat percentage they show. Dexascan won't calculate the fat covering your abs, it will find every microgram of fat on your body including lipids lining muscle cells; caliper tests are better for most purposes except visceral fat which is under the muscle in the abdomen. A simple rule of thumb for visceral fat is if you can do a stomach vacuum, you probably don't have much visceral fat; if not then diet strict until you can do a vacuum to get that visceral fat out of the way fast. Also, a small waist is good if you're small; Arnold Schwarzennegger has a 34" waist when he was in competition as a bodybuilder. For waist measurement, it's best to say 'less than 1" thick or less than 5" excess around the waist which could be a waist below 34" on a slim guy and under 39" for a large man (under 40 inches is key according to some studies) if one carries fat evenly but that could be an extra 2" thick belly on someone who carries it all in front and they'd want to diet. Having abs year round is less healthy if it doesn't come natural, Larry Scott said the optimal level was to just let your abs fill in to cover the ridges when building muscle (he was naturally lean but a hard gainer, he gained it through knowledge and some moderate steroid use, though once it was illegal he claimed he never took them.)

Higher body fat matters more for men's longevity Higher body fat matters more for women's attractiveness _Just sayin'_

If a person is too lean (not enough adipose tissue) as in Siim’s selfie, the body will not produce enough adiponectin which is a critical hormone that helps control insulin. A person should be lean enough to see the centerline down from the chest to the belly but six pack should NOT be visible. Siim should know this.

As usual, women get to play life on easy mode lol

I'm slightly overweight and have terrific stamina and aerobic capacity. I'm also strong and work out 5 or 6 times per week. My blood work is also perfectly normal.

men die younger mostly due to the fact we hold more visceral fat. (why we mainly die earlier)

You're throwing out incredibly misleading numbers and wrong images. You don't know the difference between subcutaneous fat and total fat. Women look the same as men with the same subcutaneous fat - they just have varying amounts of breast tissue etc. But then there is visceral fat which is dependent on total hormone health. Also variations in diet and exercies variety/ lifestyle (like skiing in mountains vs running on low ground) and associated local foods will shift where body prefers to store fat a bit.