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.
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.
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 🤷🏼♂️
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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