A Free Body Fat Percentage Calculator

There's a way you can test your body fat percentage online. All you need is a cloth tape to measure different parts of your body.

The test tells you how much fat you have and how much muscle you have. The test is supposed to be quite accurate (within a couple of percentage points either way) except for very fit people who can get up to 5% higher number for their body fat than what they actually have (because they have much more muscle than the typical person) and very skinny but unfit people may show 5% less body fat than they actually have because "though they look thin, unfit skinny people really have more than the usual amount of fat inside their muscles, which you can't see from the outside."

The most valuable aspect of taking this test is doing it over time. If you plan to start exercising, you will see noticeable changes in the measurements over time.

Try the body fat percent test here.

The average American man has 22% of body fat. The average American female has 32%. But these are not healthy percentages.

A healthy normal body fat differs for different people. According to the makers of this test, healthy percentage of body fat would be 15% for a Caucasian male and 22% for a Caucasian female. Whereas it would be only 12% for an African-American male and 19 percent for an African-American female. Asians have the highest 'healthy ratio' at 18 and 25 percent for males and females. The difference is due to the bone frames having significantly different weights on average. Asians are much more likely to have porous bones that don't weigh as much relative to other races.

I've never heard this type of distinction before. Someone please tell me if this is complete bunk.

A Vegan Diet for Alicia Silverstone

Alicia Silverstone, age 30, became a vegan recently. Her story is featured in next month's Shape magazine.

She says that at first she seemed to be eating all carbs; lots of pasta, bread and fruit smoothies. This caused her some energy crashes by midday. After she changed her diet and added a lot more vegetables and whole grains she started to feel good all day. She had much more energy and also noticed great improvements in her skin, hair and body.

For the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday she looks forward to a vegan feast of salads, green beans with almonds, stuffing, fall vegetables like brussels sprouts, tofu casserole and pumpkin pie.

Update January 2010: See the scoop on The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone

Nicole Richie deals with her Anorexia

The BBC reports that Nicole Richie has checked herself in to a treatment centre. It is probably to help deal with her anorexia.

The filming for The Simple Life, in which she stars with Paris Hilton, has been postponed. She has gotten extremely skinny and frail. But her publicist says she is not there because she is anorexic, but rather because she needs to focus on nutrition. He says this is not about treatment for an eating disorder.

Regardless of any public statments, for Nicole Richie to do this of her own volition, it seems like a very good sign for her future good health.

Getting From Obese to Overweight

PastaQueen has one of the best personal stories of weight loss progress online. She is 25 years old and used to weigh 372 pounds. This week she is down to 203 pounds. Her goal is to lose 43 more and get down to 160 pounds. (She is 5'9" tall.)

She tells us her new weight every Monday. (It doesn't always go down each week.) This Monday she could potentially get below 200 pounds and that would mean, that for the first time in her adult life, she will be crossing the threshold from obese to simply overweight.

That's a huge accomplishment, especially considering that when she first started losing weight she was not only morbidly obese, but super morbidly obese (according to BMI calculations). She had a couple of false starts at the beginning of her online diary but started losing weight in earnest two years ago.

See her inspiring weight loss progress photos here. (You can rotate them 360 degrees.)

Congrats to PastaQueen and wishing you a very happy 26th birthday!

Healthy Eating with the Food Mover

Greg Overholtzer made the decision to change his life and begin dieting and exercising about four years ago. At that time he weighed a dangerously obese 600 pounds. Today he is down to 242 pounds.

He started by working out to Richard Simmons tapes (which he had bought several years previously but which had been collecting dust up to then). He worked out in his bedroom consistently and though it exhausted him at first, he soon saw encouraging results. He then starting using the Richard Simmons Food Mover tool which is a program with windows that you shut after you've eaten a particular item for the day and when all the windows are shut you have to stop eating.

The main change he made to his diet was to drop all foods that contained sugar or wheat and to emphasize vegetables and proteins.

Today he has a new lease on life. See the full story in the Evening Sun.

Oprah Lost 30 Pounds?

In Touch Weekly has Oprah on their cover this week and the caption reads "WOW! Oprah lost 30 pounds!" In the meantime, Life & Style Weekly said last week that she's lost 15 pounds! So what is the truth here? At any rate Oprah does look slimmer these days. Though whether she's sticking to a sub 1,000 calorie diet and exercising daily are debatable. Here's what some people had to say about Oprah's weight loss at the Skinny Website;

Oprah goes up and down in her weight so often that you will never really know what it is that she is doing. Like the last time that she lost a ton of weight and it was this huge deal, and it was �for good�. I remember hearing on more than one occasion that she didn�t even have a piece of her own birthday cake at that huge 50th birthday pary that she threw for herself. What happened next? She went on vacation and ballooned again. I have a very hard time believing that even if she is eating that way, it will be for any lengthy period of time.

Her body looks very fit and glam, but her face is looking elder�Maybe becouse of the yo-yo dieting. I hope she�s not going too far! Skinny isn�t a synonyme for beautiful.

sadly, i am not convinced that this weightloss is going to last. with that diet, barely over 1000 calories, she�s setting herself up for an intense face-stuffing fest. i admire that she lost the weight, but there�s only so much time before your body cannot handle that sort of deprivation.

That can�t be heatlhy� I ate more than that even when I was severely anorexic. And def. not sustainable. I bet her body will force her back into over-eating to make up for starving herself.

she�s starving herself. a woman her size should not be eating less than 1400 cals a day. no way can she sustain it. f�cking up her metabolism even more than it already is from her past diet failures. i don�t understand why somebody with her kind of money doesnt have people cooking and weight training with her constantly. sheesh� if i could afford to have my meals prepared i�d be eating the finest seafood, fish and lean meats and i�d have a hot personal trainer working me out every day. poor Oprah. she must not have time to do anything but starve herself. her diet sounds nasty. i rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than the slop she�s eating. her face looks bad. SEND IN THE BOTOX!

See here for more on Oprah's weight loss experiments over the years.

Girdles are hot with Hollywood Celebrities

Is Nicole Kidman wearing a girdle beneath this beautiful dress? Or is it the all new 'bumbum'? It's very likely something. Most celebrities probably wear some kind of girdle or shapewear when on the red carpet.

Forbes magazine has a good article saying that the latest hot topic for bridesmaids chatter is a new type of girdle that firms up the butt, tucks in the tummy and doesn't have the unwanted side effect of creating "muffin top"; the inch (or more) of skin that pours over a tight waistband.

And they attribute all this talk to SPANX, a relatively new shapewear company. SPANX sells a lot shapewear but last year they created the high-waisted control-top girdle that goes right up to the bra line. It's their biggest seller, the Slim Cognito, (pic shown here) a seamless midthigh bodysuit. It appeals to both slim and overweight women.

Forbes also reveals that In Touch Weekly plans to feature SPANX as "Hollywood's Big Secret" in an upcoming issue and to highlight all the celebrities (including Oprah, Jessica Alba and Beyonce Knowles pictured here) who are into wearing girdles. I'll link to this feature here when it comes out. (P.S. Thanks much for the tip, Roger.)