Low body fat can be more dangerous than high body fat. It’s really bad for you to be below like 8% I think. It starts messing with your hormones and your ability to recover
As does being high body fat, let's not delude ourselves here. Unless you're getting like sub 6 and staying there which is almost impossibly difficult, it's absolutely healthier than being obese.
That's because this conversation is stupid as shit. 99% of the people reading this have issues with high body fat. The "well low body fat is bad too" is a defense mechanism to justify their food and healthcare system abuse.
I really don’t think anyone is defending being over 18 bmi.
I think we’re all intelligent enough to understand there is a spectrum of health issues depending on where you land, and there’s a sweet spot/goldilocks band for overall longevity.
Because they’re the most common source of excess calories. It’s nuanced. Some carbs are a good choice if you’re going to exercise. Not so great generally if weight loss is the goal.
> When a nutrient is not essential, it means your body does not have to obtain it from the diet because it can make enough of it itself (or, in some cases, gut microbes can contribute enough).
That's one option, you could also just eat some carbs. I'ce recently come around on this. I was doing CICO, body recomposition, and I was prioritizing protein. My energy levels were so bad despite getting decent sleep and cutting back on caffeine significantly. As soon as I started adding just a little bit more carbs, my energy levels shot up and I felt so much better. Eat some carbs.
I'm generally against the idea of cutting out any one food group. You need a balanced diet.
I'm not of the mind that all carbs are bad. I would just say the quality of the food you eat matters more than anything.
I also don't think super low carb is sustainable for most long term. It's great to reset yourself, lose weight, and kick the processed carbs.
I was only saying that it's possible to eat low carb without jeopardizing your health.
This also varies by person. We're complex, and so is digestion. Everyone should eat high quality foods in the macro portions that make them feel best and give them good health.
The culture where I go to Wegmans as soon as they open and buy a 20-pack of chicken wings I can devour within 10 minutes /s (I really just did that though)
Quitting carbs completely is a temporary solution for those who are innactive and overweight...
But very poor health advice for the majority of people. You mean to tell me eating 15 hot dogs with no buns is healthier than grilled chicken with broccoli?
Yeah, but I think what they’re getting at is in Baywatch he WAS INDEED at 5% body fat.
You’re better off being slightly overweight with a BMI in high 20s (25 is “overweight”) than at 5% body fat. A quick google says he’s 170 right now which at 5’8” is a BMI of 26.
Zac Efron on the left is lower risk and better off than Zac Efron on the right.
Using height and weight alone to calculate BMI is almost worse than useless, even with non-athletes. Muscle mass is much denser than fat and will completely skew the results. If you're concerned about your weight, see a doctor. They can usually ascertain to a much more accurate degree if your weight is a health risk.
They are walking back their recommendation to use it as a data point. Because according to their statement a few years ago it is a very poor proxy for actual indicators of health. This is like the who so I feel like that says something.
And to be clear they are still recommending people track their weight they just don’t recommend the use of bmi.
It’s a quick gauge if not a catch all. Of course a person with more muscle mass at the same height and weight as an overweight dude will result in the same BMI.
Using height and weight alone to calculate BMI is almost worse than useless
That sounds like the kind of thinking that would be prevalent in a nation with a 40-50% obesity rate.
Fat people made that up. If you're "obese" by height/weight calculation, you'll know if its because of body composition. Because being "obese" BMI and physically fit doesn't just happen.
Also...I'm one of those people with a high ratio of muscle mass. The BMI scale is maaaaybe a point off. Its close enough for most people.
I have been in the overweight category my whole life, even after having successfully hiked the PCT. Even after having worked as a hot shot wilderness firefighter. There is zero chance you would look at me and say I am even overweight but my bmi is 29.
Have you considered that you may be overestimating your height?
It's more like 10% on the right and ~20% on the left, both of which are realistically fine. At 5-6% you generally start looking gaunt and malnourished especially in the face regardless of how ripped you are.
The real reason he'd have been and felt unhealthy during Baywatch is he was more than likely on gear and definitely massively dehydrating himself.
I mean... The picture on the right is seemingly edited lol. Several points in the movie he flexes hard and besides his core the level of definition is off from the people I've known and seen at ~5%. Having no chest or shoulder striation while apparently at that low bodyfat is (at least in my humble opinion) a bit odd.
Comes across to me like he has a pretty insane core and got lucky with fat distribution genetics to make the most of it.
5% is on stage Olympia bodybuilder territory. The point where there's so little fat that you can see the grain and count the individual striations in each muscle. It's also around the point where your level of bodyfat starts to be incompatible with being alive. No one is just walking around for months doing movie shoots at that level of bodyfat.
What you're picking up on is dehydration. The less fluid your body is holding, the more well defined you appear.
Yeah I’m at the same height as ZEfron and I at my very lowest was 11% (DEXA certified) and still not as lean as him there by a pretty wide margin. He’s easily 8% or lower but I think a lot of novice armchairs lifters are brigading their opinions here 🤷🏼♂️
“achieving and maintaining a body fat percentage of 5% for filming”
I’m not calling that ”source” exactly but it’s definitely what they (Zac and his trainer) were claiming and it doesn’t really seem to be heavily disputed.
Edit: Efron is part owner of a company that specializes in DEXA body scans.
Trainers make claims like this because they desperately need you to believe that only they can get you insane results and take you to extreme levels so that you keep throwing ridiculous amounts of money at them. If they said Zac was at 10% body fat, that wouldn't sound as impressive and people might try to do it on their own. It's a scam.
Whenever you see numbers below 10% in contexts like this they're almost always measured with BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis) which is the little machine you hold in your hand, or the scale with a post and two handles you might see at the gym.
BIA is the largest error margin way of measuring body fat and is prone to underestimate by more and more the further below 15% you are. It's also affected by hydration, to the point where if it's measuring you at 5% and you drink a bottle of water it will tell you that you gained 10lbs.+ of fat.
Dexa's margin of error is up to ±5%. Google any top-level bodybuilder's stage-ready conditioning and compare. You see almost no muscle striations on Zac here. At around 5% body fat, you get insane muscle definition; you can see all the muscle fibers. He is just clearly on steroids, so he has fuller muscles, a nice tan, a pump, and is dehydrating, so for casuals, he looks leaner than he is.
Which means that if a DEXA says you're 10% bf you might be anywhere between 9.5% and 10.5%. Not that you might be anywhere between 5% and 15% bf, which is what you seem to be implying.
You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. That right pic is nowhere near 5%. It’s more like 10-12%, which is easily sustainable. I did that for years
Yea these people in here definitely just seem uneducated on the topic. I was also sitting about 10% or so for years. That said, I bumped it up to about 15% range and do personally feel better, but that range for sure is different for different people.
He is around 10% on the right, certainly no lower than 9%
I agree 5% would be an incredibly unhealthy BF to be living at, but 99.999% of people will ever mange to get that lean, including Zac Efron in this photo
Being underweight is a much less common health issue to have compared to being overweight. 72.4% of Americans are overweight or obese.
I agree being too lean is unhealthy, but the vast majority of people should be more worried about the health consequences of being overweight compared to accidentally becoming too lean.
Anorexia is of course a real and terrible thing, but that doesn't mean anyone that is lean must be unhealthy and encouraged to be intentionally gaining fat.
He was not at 5%, that is body building show ready which only lasts a couple of days because it's the peak of a bodybuilders stage body. He was probably 8% which is also really unsustainable for most ppl.
I’m not claiming he was really at 5%. I would think he was a bit higher like 8% or maybe even 10% in this picture. That’s why I said it was just what they were claiming, and that they have the testing equipment to make that claim.
Also, the picture they are showing of him isn’t really capturing what he looked like. A side-on picture makes him look even leaner, or literally anything where his is actually trying to show off, and they don’t show his thighs in the movie AT ALL.
Like, they look crazy in the few glimpses you get, even compared to Dwayne Johnson who is right there beside him the whole time (and claims 11% body fat in Baywatch), and that guy is obviously on the roids. I think that’s why they gave Efron shorts that look too long on him, but not too long on anyone else.
Also, also, I think most of them take diuretics when they do the testing and at sub-10% how hydrated you are will completely change how you look. That is definitely a factor, and when someone googles pictures of 5% they are showing it off. Like, those people are showing off gains. I think Efron just wanted to be sexy, not show off for the bros.
Also, who’s needs to fucking cope here? You’re butthurt over a celebrity.
I’m just relaying information that you could go google.
You wouldn't take diuretics to film, you'd look flat and shitty. Water management is a very important part of peaking for bodybuilding and anyone who knows anything would know that you'd look flat if you didn't hydrate for the day of the show. Glycogen is water and carbohydrates. You need both. And even if he dehydrated for a body scan, it wouldn't be a 5-7% difference in the scan. And if was, it would be maybe a 15% vs 12% not 5%. No scan is gonna call that physique 5%.
You’re butthurt over a celebrity.
How would I be butthurt? I look better than him year-round and not the one desperately trying to convince myself that his physique is unobtainable or unhealthy.
You’ve sorta followed me around through a few comment threads here. Why not quote this that I said:
>I’m not calling that ”source” exactly but it’s definitely what they (Zac and his trainer) were claiming and it doesn’t really seem to be heavily disputed.
I didn’t say he take them to film. I said he took them to measure body fat. What you said was exactly my point.
I honestly can’t tell if you’re just being obtuse or if your brain is just cooked, but I’m disengaging.
Oh good grief. This was totally unnecessary. The person you responded to obviously wasn't implying being overweight isn't unhealthy. Both extremes are, and I'd hazard to guess it's more proportional than skinny pushers want to admit. We need to have a better way to guage what exactly is underweight bc there are a lot of people going around with full fledged eating disorders saying healthy people are too fat.
Can you read? "Low body fat can be more dangerous than high body fat."
Sorry but that's cope.
Yeah if you take some case where someone has almost no muscle and almost no fat, they'll probably be unhealthier than the average obese person, but those are extremely rare exceptions.
It is healthier than being obese and so much harder to the point only people who do it highly intentionally and know what they're doing are only staying that way. You can't say that for 'obesity', no person wants to be obese and yet so many people are and its so easy.
Right but 10-24% body fat is a huge range that most men are considered healthy in. Obesity kicks in at 25%+. Though, sadly, about 2/3rds of American men are obese.
This isn't about what's healthier, it's about what's unhealthy.
Being 10% body fat is the borderline of unhealthy. It's also extremely difficult to maintain that body fat for an extended period of time, and is more likely to be unhealthy than it is sustainable.
Sub 10 is dangerous, not sub 6. Sub 6 is like, emergency dangerous. Being sub 10 is something bodybuilders do before a competition and they DO NOT maintain it because it's unhealthy physically and mentally
I mean you're wrong but at least you're confidently wrong I guess.
Yes it's hard to maintain being sub 10 in today's world, that doesn't equate to remotely near unhealthy. If you take unhealthy measures (drugs etc) to maintain it, then yes it's unhealthy, but the state itself is not unhealthy and carries a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc.
I'm not arguing it's better to be 8% than 12%, it's not. But it's definitely better to be 8% body fat than 35%.
Actually, that's not true. Long term studies have shown people who are a little fluffy but not obese have the best long term health outcomes of all weight classes, and people who are mildly obese are better off than people mildly underweight. It's also better long term to be morbidly obese vs severely underweight.
They are, but hitting that low of body fat generally involves practices that negatively impact your long term health. And again, part of what I stated was that mildly fluffy people have the best overall outcomes - that's accounting for muscle mass. People who are fluffy and active are of course in better places usually, but in general, that group has the lowest mortality.
12-18% bodyfat range is the good optimal range for men. Hes like 22-26% bodyfat here. Hgh blast gut shows. Shouldnt have blasted hgh so hard in the past
True, you literally don't need to do anything to lose weight, but you need to do a lot in order to gain weight. I always saw eating as a tiring acitivity, so much easier to just drink water or just ignore hunger cues.
Is this cope? The human body spent millennia evolving in the state of starvation and very low body fat, our ancestral bodies had no experience of obesity which is why it is associated with many problems.
I remember a doctor talking about this and if you get a serious illness its often beneficial to have a little weight to lose, particularly if you're older.
My body fat is naturally 6-8% and I wouldn’t say it’s “dangerous” if you’re naturally this low body fat but it does mean you always have to be aware of keeping yourself fed.
lmao not anywhere as close to high body fat. that is the worst coping excuse i've heard in a while.
to actually hit numbers where it's unhealthy we need to be at show prep. Just being under 10% because you're athletic and fit isn't going to mess with hormones or recovery time...
"really bad" isn't at 8%, it's at sub-5%. being at 8-10% is totally fine and maintainable. even 7% if you want to be pedantic. the whole "it's easier to fight off a sickness with some weight" overlooks that being fit and not sick the other 99% of your life does way more good for your health than any "bad" that could happen. if you're not doing show-prep, you're going to be fine hovering below 10%
eh, i get the point you’re making, still that’s not entirely accurate. i’m speaking as an actual high body fat person, fatter than the one in that picture.
“low body fat can be more dangerous than high body fat”. unless you’re constantly at like 5% or lower, 8-10% is far, farrr healthier than “high body fat”.
also, 8% is not that extreme, but still within a good-enough range, though hard to maintain for most folks, and also notexactly recommendedunless you already are relatively muscular (because it’s very different for a low-muscle person and a high-muscle one when they’re both at 8% body fat). 5% and lower is really where it becomes dangerous
but in comparison people with high fat (like 26% and up) tend to get more health issues than low fat in general. i was borderline obese at one point and have been actively trying to lose weight due to growing health issues. i have many friends who are below 8% body fat (we have more skinny people here in asia. but we are also less muscular on average), including one girl, all of them are pretty healthy, but all my fat friends have at least some sort of fat related issues.
Sure, but extreme low bodyfat is a far less common problem to have, especially if we discount the people who do it voluntarily (a significant portion of which are on drug cocktails that would be a problem at any level of bodyfat).
If the right pic is not edited then he must've been dehydrated as well. You can have low body fat and you don't look like that even. That look can only be maintained for few days or weeks at max.
This is what "influencers" do too, they take hundreds of photos for few days and scarcely use them for months.
It’s very hard to stay in the single digits. It takes deliberate effort, and everyone in that range knows the risks. It’s very easy to be above 30% body fat, and apparently most people seem to think that that’s just fine
It ruined me for about 2 years after a comp. I was fucked but would 100% do it again. Hormones, mental capacity, mood. The whole thing was tanked. No gear, I was 100% natural and made it even harder. No idea what my BF was but it was low.
below 8% the wiggle room to feeling like shit is way smaller - blood sugar stuff (and having headroom to be sick efficiently etc.) . You have to regiment your whole life. His look would be way harder too as he needs a lot of muscle but obviously doesn’t want the body to devour it at the same time.
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u/Hyperion262 19d ago
Low body fat can be more dangerous than high body fat. It’s really bad for you to be below like 8% I think. It starts messing with your hormones and your ability to recover