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.)

Do you have metabolic syndrome?

Weight loss is not a typical topic for Wired magazine, but this month they have a cover feature story on The Thin Pill.

The article is all about what's called the metabolic syndrome, "a condition that though only concretely defined five years ago, is now said to afflict as many as 75 million Americans – whether they know it or not. We sit, indeed, amid an epidemic of metabolic syndrome, a fact all the more remarkable because so few people are familiar with it. For this is no virus on the loose, no plague that has spread unchecked. Rather, metabolic syndrome is just a new way to think about a cluster of well-known and increasingly prevalent conditions. Metabolic syndrome is characterized by five risk factors: high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides (fatty acids in the bloodstream), low HDL ("good") cholesterol, and obesity. Of the five, obesity – which is itself often referred to as an epidemic – is the most important, because the rise of the morbidly overweight is directly driving the rise in the syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is, in fact, almost indistinguishable from obesity – at least 85 percent of those who have the syndrome are obese or overweight."

The article debates whether 'metabolic syndrome' is a disease that was invented by the pharmaceutical industry in order to push diet pills at us in the guise of medical authority.

Update: Where is Star Jones Now?

Star Jones lost a lot of weight a couple of years ago (about 150 pounds) and has kept it off.

In June, she says she was kind of fired from The View, a very popular show she had been cohosting for nine years.

So the question is, what is Star Jones up to now?

She has not updated her website as to her current activities since July. In July she hosted a week of a program called "House Hunters in New York City". Here she helped New York house hunters find their dream home. This program got the highest ratings in HGTV's cable channel's history while she was hosting.

But since then there has been no update posted on her site. So it seems she is taking a well deserved break to relax and regroup from her nine years of TV.

Star Jones is hugely ambitious; she grew up with a single parent, in a housing project, became a lawyer and then became famous on TV. I have no doubt she will be in the public eye again sometime soon.

Update November 17th: Here's a very recent photo of Star Jones at the after party for Dancing with the Stars taken in November 2006.

From ET Online: "ET breaks the news that STAR JONES REYNOLDS will be executive producing and appearing on a new TV program. "We are executive producing the first year ender on Black America," Star told us Wednesday night in Los Angeles. "We are doing a full look at the issues, the people, the conversations that were held in Black America, something that... has been a project that I've always wanted to do." Star told us that her show will air on TV One, a cable/satellite network geared towards African American adults."

Coca Cola and their "Negative Calorie" Green Tea

Enviga is a new soda that we'll soon be hearing about everywhere. This is because it's a new product from Coca Cola and likely to get massive advertising dollars.

Enviga is being promoted as a negative calorie green tea. It can be considered negative calorie because it speeds up your metabolism. Ingredients include caffeine and EGCG (a naturally occurring antioxidant that increases metabolism).

Coca-Cola says that if you drink three servings of Enviga you will burn between 60 to 100 calories more than normal that day.

Nestle partnered with Coca-Cola to develop this tea, which is sparkly and served as a cold drink.

Enviga first launches in New York and Philadelphia next month.

Found via The Guardian

P.S. To me it looks like the logo branding of this 'negative calorie' soda, with that little flame above the 'i', along with some of their marketing materials, looks and sounds a lot like their competition; the Celsius drink.

Gwyneth Paltrow Diets Strictly

Gwyneth Paltrow, 34, is reportedly on a very strict diet now. She's fed up with not being able to lose the last of the post-baby weight. Her second baby, Moses, was born in April this year. She also has a two year old daughter, Apple.

Above is a photo of her from last month and a before pic (right) taken a few years ago.

Paltrow is known to practise yoga regularly. She has followed a macrobiotic diet for a very long time. But in 2005 she told People Magazine that she's not as stringent as she once was and that "Now I'll have cheese once in a while or white flour, but I still believe in whole grains and no sugar."

But now Life Style Extra is reporting that she is going on a special diet designed by health guru Dr Joshi where she will only be eating the following foods for the next few weeks;

* turkey

* chicken

* white fish

* vegetables

* bananas (the only fruit allowed)


She is not to eat any;

* dairy products

* wheat

* tomatoes

* peppers

* fruit

* sugar

* gluten

* red meat

The diet regime she's on also requires taking herbal supplements to flush out toxins, regular colonic irrigation, reflexology and cupping treatments. (Cupping treatments? What the heck is that?)

The British newspaper also says Gwyneth has taken to wearing corsets to make her appear slightly thinner but she hopes to ditch these when she's finished with this temporary diet.

Tara Reid regrets her Liposuction

Tara Reid has never been overweight. She says she weighs 110 now and has fluctuated about 10 pounds over this point at times. (Her height is 5'4".) But despite being very slim, Reid decided a couple of years ago that she would like a flatter stomach. She wanted her stomach to be taut, like a six-pack.

She went ahead with a liposuction operation (at the same time as she was having her breasts enlarged). But this week she told Us Magazine that the lipo work was a disaster. Her stomach became "the most ripply, bulgy thing".

Last month she went in for reconstructive surgery to try to get this fixed. It's one more case of warning about the risks of liposuction surgery for people who are seeking an easy way to quickly lose belly fat.

Has Suzy Preston kept the weight off?

It's been a while since Suzy Preston was on the Biggest Loser show and lost 95 pounds. (She went from 227 to 132). Has she managed to keep the weight off since then?

Suzy Preston and Matt Hoover got married last month. It's the most recent photo I've been able to find of them. They both look like they've put on a few pounds but they look fabulous and very much in love. Their wedding photographer had this to say about whether they've managed to keep the weight off;

"They both look great. They may have added a few pounds since the finale of the show but they still exercise and eat right."

Update November 6th: Us Magazine reports that Suzy Preston is pregnant and they are expecting their first baby in April. Congrats to them both.

See more background on Suzy Preston here.

A Healthy Lunch for Daycare?

My baby recently started daycare three days a week. (I keep calling him 'baby' all the time even though he will be three years old in four months.)

So I've been making daycare lunches for him for the first time.

I'd like to make healthy lunches but I find it hard to think of good ideas for his lunch container. He's not a 'sandwich' eater yet. When we're at home for lunch I usually reheat leftovers from the previous dinner, or make him some scrambled egg and toast, or open a can of tuna or sardines or salmon and give it to him with healthy crackers. Then there is fruit, yoghurt and basically the entire contents of the fridge and cupboards are open for me to offer him, as he can often be a finicky eater.

But at the daycare they ask that the food does not require refrigeration or heating-up. So that limits it a bit. They also don't allow any kind of nuts which is hard because nuts are so good for him and he can eat a lot of them. I once included a flax granola bar in his lunch but was quickly educated that this is not allowed as it may contain traces of peanut products.

I would love to get some ideas from people as to what they put in their toddler's lunch box. Here's what I've been doing so far;

Yoghurt
I often include a yoghurt in his lunch. I prefer to buy the large (non-premixed) containers and give him an individual serving in a small re-washable plastic container rather than buying the individually portioned cups. It's usually a lot cheaper and much better for the environment.

Fruit
I usually include a piece of fruit, most often a banana, but sometimes grapes or berries (rasberries, strawberries or blueberries as they have been in season). I put the berries in a small plastic container as above.

Sandwich
I often make a cheese sandwich (with a bit of ketchup, as this multiplies the odds of him eating it), cut the rinds off, and cut it into little squares. He often doesn't eat it.

Crackers and Cheese
This is a current food fad with him. A little cracker with a slice of cheese on it.

Leftover Chicken
I often include little pieces of chicken in another plastic container if we happen to have some leftover.

Carrot Sticks
He seems to like finely cut carrot sticks right now.

Heavily Diluted Juice
I give him a sippy cup filled with about 1/4 cranberry juice and 3/4 water.

So, other than the carrot sticks, the vegetable quota in the lunches is almost zero. And it seems I must be missing on some good stuff. I'm thinking there must be more good ideas for what to make. Would love to hear from people about this!

Kelly Clarkson in Vitamin Water Ad

Kelly Clarkson had a contract to promote Vitamin Water but she was supposed to lose weight before they got the campaign going. Gazelle of the Celebrity Condition wonders if they ended up doing some photoshopping for the campaign as it gets underway now.

Fasting for Four Weeks

Ramadan is the holy month each year when many Muslims are fasting from dawn to sunset. It always occurs on the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar.

The Washington Post has a good article about it here. One man they interview says,

"It's about abstaining from the feeding of one's passions. The whole personality is fasting. The mouth is fasting from improper speech. The ears are fasting from hearing speech that is not appropriate. Our eyes are fasting from looking at things that might arouse us even if those things are permissible under normal circumstances."

It's not meant to be a time of hardship or torture, but rather a time of spiritual awakening. People do eat before dawn and after sunset each day. And people who are feeble, sick, pregnant, nursing or traveling are exempt from the fasting.

____________
Photo above is by Naser

Latifah in a sexy plus size dress

Plus size Queen Latifah is gracing the cover of Essence magazine this month. She's wearing a beautiful and sexy plus size dress. Someone pointed me to this and asked if I could find out if it was custom made for her or if it's off the rack somewhere. If anyone has any word on this, or on what her current weight might be (her height is 5'9"), please let me know.

Update: Ona Diet says in the comment below;

I'm not sure what she is wearing exactly but I did find a similar dress in a plus-size from nordstrom.com. It's a Bari Jay Lace A-Line Halter Dress in Black/Bronze. It's a great fit.

Thanks much for this. I've copied a photo of it here. It costs $178 and is described as 'Deep V-neck and shirred charmeuse waistband shape a lace A-line with a metallic satin lining.'


If anyone else recommends a sexy dress in plus sizes, please send me a photo or link.

An Innovative Food Scale

Here's a cutting board that lets you slide the food into the middle and weighs it for you. This neat idea is still just in the design stages. Here's what the designer has to say about it;

"This concept is a cutting board that has an integrated scale within a defined area on it's surface. This allows a person to both cut and measure ingredients on the same surface with very little extra effort. Simply put, it precisely reduces the steps of preparation, dishes to clean, and time wasted. There has been a transformative trend in cooking based around the science of food. Central to this is the idea that precise measurement leads to more possibilities for new flavors. Recipes will become more demanding, requiring simple ways to be precise in the kitchen. Technology feasibility: (estimated timeline for research and development) Now: Manufacturing methods to embed the following electronics into cutting board material. 1-3 years: Strain gauge sensor grid technology that enables precise measurements to be embedded in a substrate. 1-3 years: Low-voltage PV (Photovoltaics) that would provide sufficient power. 1-5 years: "Electronic ink" display technology that does not use light and can be embedded into substrates."

Found via Aging Fabulous

Alcohol and Weight Loss

I came across this discussion about drinking alcohol and trying to lose weight at the Clubplanet forum;

I have come to the conclusion that my frequent drinking is the reason for the extra weight that I have. I eat very well for the most part and I try to do half an hour of light jogging a day, 5 days a week, but I feel like I'm not seeing any results. I know jogging isn't the most intense workout, but that in combination with my healthy eating habits should make a difference. So here's my question - if I completely stopped drinking for a month (which would mean eating a little better on the weekends too b/c when you're hungover all you want to eat is grease), could I see a major difference, say a loss of 10 to 20 pounds? I drink to get wasted 2-3 nights a week and just to have a few beers 1-2 nights a week, so I'm hoping it will get me somewhere. If and when I want to have a drink again - what's best as far as low calorie, maybe vodka and diet coke? Suggestions needed, so feel free to comment....

Thanks!

One person answered...

i think most ppl go through this...i was positive that my wieght gain was due to alcohol...and i was right.. i gave it up for 5 months but it worked amazingly ...i lost just about 50lbs and completely cut up ...got in the best shape of my life...the pics are floating around here somewhere...so i definitely suggest it. i don't know if ull lose 20lbs but I'm sure ull feel much healthier and definitely definitely be happy with the results....

good luck

Initial questioner wrote again;

I really do think that I will benefit from giving it up for awhile and then incorporating it back in slowly and much more healthy (i.e. 2-3 vodka or rums with diet soda vs. 6-10 beers per night.) Plus, it's time to stop putting my body (and my bank account) through so much in one weekend. I estimate that I drink anywhere from 2-30 beers a week and that is a lot of calories that my body will not be getting from now on, so I can't see it not making a difference. Plus, the only time I eat fast food or unhealthy stuff is when I'm drinking and/or hungover, so that should help too. I'm not looking at this as a diet per say, but as a healthy lifestyle change in the long run.

Another reader answered;

I hear ya, when you are hung over & starving, I just run to Mcdonalds & down #1 sup-A Sized w/ Hi c, 6 piece Mcnuggetts, extra big mac, extra fries...

THE last thing i want is chicken breast w/ vegetables in this condition.

________
Photo above is by Tobes501 on Flickr.

The Fat Smash Diet

The Fat Smash Diet is a getting a lot of buzz these days. It came out this spring and was written by the doctor who provides the diet plan for the Celebrity Fit Club television series.

The basics of the plan is to eat nothing that contains flour or white rice for the first month and to try to ultimately exercise for an hour five days of the week.

This first 'detox phase' is meant to wean you off a dependency on processed foods and wheat products. But you can still eat four or five meals a day by focusing on beans, lentils tofu, vegetables and yogurt.

It would be hard to not lose at least eight pounds (and much more if you are morbidly obese) if you can stick to the plan in the first month.

Many of the people who've followed the diet write about a similar experience as this person;

"I had a month with no pasta, no bread and no rice and at the end, ten pounds came off effortlessly and I no longer felt I had to eat these foods to be satisfied.

It happens that two weeks to a month is the time needed to break habits (call it detox if you like.) This is true of many things, whether cigarettes and nicotine or starchy foods. If you follow the precepts here, you will find that weight starts to come off, even if you are very resistant to weight loss as I am. I give this diet a big thumbs-up because it gets right to the source of problems and trains you immediately for success. Of course you have to walk, run, jump or otherwise exercise, as the book mentions, but the 90 days will be 90 well spent."

The Fat Smash Diet is now the best-selling diet book of the hundreds of diet books out there. The sub-title is "The last diet you'll ever need". The eating plan seems very healthy (not faddish) and doesn't require any counting of calories. I guess if (the big if....) we could keep to the rules as outlined in the book, the subtitle could probably prove true for almost everyone.

Getting Started is the Hardest Part

Here is a young woman whose personal story of weight loss is just beginning. She wants to lose over 100 pounds. It's a little daunting when you're just starting the process.

Her nickname is 'Ona Diet'. She is 24 years old and weighs 245 pounds. She'd like to weigh 140 pounds. She says;

I think maybe if I constantly had mirrors around me all the time I never would have gotten as fat as I am. Almost 250 pounds? Never! I really believe that as I walk around in this body of mine I never really think about my weight. When I am working or eating or watching TV or anything, I never really give a thought to my body or my weight or my size. I pretty much feel like I did 5-6 years ago when I was a much thinner 160 pounds. I guess, in my mind I'm still that size 12 girl from high school who wore 'normal' clothes yet felt fat and out of place anyway. Looking back at old pictures I realize I was pretty thin. Compared to what I look like now, I was very thin! Not anorexic, but healthy, 'normal', looking good. I am seriously confounded as to why I felt fat back then when I looked fine, great. Now I find myself at 246 pounds hardly fitting into a size 18. It hurts. As I look through recent pictures of myself I see a girl almost bursting out of her body. My face is huge. My body is huge. It is quite obviously the embodiment of the statement "you would be so pretty if only you were thinner." I see that now, I do. So, as I said, enough is enough. I am done being fat. That's it. I have had enough of constantly feeling uncomfortable, being huge, not fitting into clothes, being unhappy with myself. I start changing things right now. Today. I can't wait to see the numbers on the scale get progressively smaller.

Visit her site and help cheer her on!

_____________
Photo is by Very Good With Computers

Ciara Works Out

Ciara Harris looks very toned and fit. She must have a strict and regular workout regiment. I've read somewhere that she tries to stick to a low-carb diet but doesn't fuss too much about what she eats. Rather it's the exercise she focuses on.

Ciara Princess Harris, who will turn 21 this month, will be releasing her second album Ciara: The Evolution on December 5th. The bottom photo was a promotional shot for her debut album "Goodies" from a couple of years ago. The pic on the top is a candid one where someone snapped a photo of her on the streets of New York City a couple of months ago. Here are two comments from a popular forum about this photo;

"Ciara looks beautiful! Her body looks that way cuz she'’s in shape and hits the gym, that is something Black women don'’t know too much about. Every time i go to the gym i see white, etc, but hardly never my sisters are there. Some Black women consider themselves fit w/ a fucking bulge popping from their stomach and/or have a little meat poking out when they wear tight ass jeans. Ciara looks toned and slim the way she supposed to look and she is very pretty. Also, she'’s just shopping so she don'’t need to look all special. I wear sweats out sometimes when i go shopping. Soooooooo whaaaaaaat!"

********

"Boogiegirl cut the bullshit, I hate when blacks group all together and try to separate themselves just to try to look different. Black females DO go to the gym, where the hell do you live? And the nerve of you to call us your sisters while at the same time talking shit about us. And I also don'’t know what kind of women you know who thinks that that shit you described is fit.

And Ciara'’s look is not all from her '‘hitting the gym'’ she really has a boyish frame which I think is ugly. I could care less about her weight, I just really hate the way she'’s built. Soooooo STFU. :0)"

Here's the promotional photo for her new album: Ciara: The Evolution.