ere you afraid to get on the scale this morning after all the eating and celebrating you've done over the last 6 weeks? You're not alone. Most people gain weight during the holidays (certainly nobody loses any) and then either spend the next year dieting to lose it or ignore it and let it build up year after year. If you've ever lost or gained weight, do you ever wonder what you're actually losing and gaining? Is it water? Is it muscle? Is it FAT???

Fear of fat in our food is waning, but our desire for lean bodies is not. Most people weigh themselves to judge their "fatness," since being overweight usually means "overfat." But your body weight is really the sum of your muscles, bones, fluid, and fat. It doesn't give you much indication of your true body composition. Body Mass Index (BMI), a person's weight in kilograms divided by their height in meters, is often used to assess health status and risk of disease based on weight. It does not however, take fat into account. Case in point: two men, both 5'9", 250 pounds, and BMI of 36.9. One's a body builder; the other's a couch potato. You get the idea…

Healthy body fat ranges differ for men and women, since women naturally carry more fat than men in order to synthesize reproductive hormones, prevent infertility and depression, and support fetal growth. Most women distribute their fat around their hips and thighs (pear-shaped), while most men carry fat around their middle (apple-shaped). Abdominal fat is a greater risk factor for weight-related diseases than lower body fat. Therefore, men have lower acceptable fat cut-off ranges than women. A pear-shaped woman would have to have a much higher body fat percentage than an apple-shaped man in order to have the same level of health risk (apple-shaped women have a similar level of risk as apple-shaped men). Athletes can also have lower acceptable ranges since they are more muscular and fat can hinder their performance. The following chart shows estimated healthy and unhealthy body fat ranges based on BMI cutoffs for healthy weight for height.

The relationship between food and mood can get pretty complex, so to keep things simple, I'm going to talk about 5 major food-mood situations that you might be able to identify with.

Females age | Underfat % | Healthy % | Overfat % | Obese % 20 - 39 > 21 21 - 32.9 33 - 38.9 < 39 40 - 59 > 23 23 - 34.9 35 - 40.9 < 41 60 - 79 > 25 25 - 37.9 38 - 42.9 < 43 Males age | 20 - 39 > 8 8 - 20.9 21 - 25.9 < 26 40 - 59 > 11 11 - 22.9 23 - 28.9 < 29 60 - 79 > 13 13 - 24.9 25 - 30.9 < 31

Knowing your body fat is not essential, but it is useful for several reasons:

1. Body fat percentage is a good indicator of disease risk. Having a high percentage of body fat greatly increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, certain cancers, hernias, varicose veins, and incontinence, to name a few. Losing body fat helps reduce the risk of these weight- related diseases and can control some of the symptoms if one of these diseases has already developed.
   

2. If you want to lose weight, knowing how much of your total weight is fat can be useful for setting realistic goals. When you begin a weight loss plan, you can't just pick a goal weight out of thin air. You need to base it on something and your body composition is a good place to start. Take for example an athletic 35-year- old woman who is 5'6", weighs 150 pounds, and has 22% body fat. Conventional weight-for-height charts would recommend that she weigh 130 pounds. However, only 33 of her 150 pounds are fat. If she were to reach her "recommended" weight of 130 pounds, she'd be only 10% body fat-too low to menstruate or conceive a child. This would be an unrealistic weight goal for this individual.
   

3. When you lose weight, you want to lose mostly fat and as little muscle as possible. Preserving muscle should be a top priority, since your metabolism depends on your muscle- to-fat ratio. The more muscle compared to fat you have, the higher your metabolism. Often when people lose weight too quickly or without exercising, they lose mostly muscle and water, and just a little fat, increasing their body fat percentage and effectively lowering their metabolism. This is where monitoring your weight loss with intermittent body fat measurements can be useful. If you find that you are losing pounds, but not fat, it might be time to reassess your weight loss plan and try a different approach.
   

4. Knowing your body fat might be discouraging at first, but monitoring it throughout the weight loss process can be inspirational. I strongly recommend taking a moderate approach to losing weight by reducing calories slightly for slow loss and by including weight lifting in your exercise routine. (See following article: Lose Fat, Boost Your Metabolism for specifics.) If you take this approach, you might not see a large weight loss in pounds, since you'll be gaining muscle weight as you lose fat. Seeing your body fat percentage drop is an encouraging sign that you're becoming leaner.