Aibu about my body fat %

[Onetimeonlyhoildays2026]

Went into boots today and used the weighing machine which also tells you body fat.
I was shocked to find out iam 28% fat

My bmi is 18.6 so apart from lose weight which would mean I'm underweight.

Saying thats isn't bmi crap anyway?
My waist to height ratio is 0.38 which seems ok.

How can I lower my body fat?

you dont need to lower your body fat as it’s within range.
why did you think you needed to?

you could work on building muscle and eating healthily. just make sure you eat enough to support any exercise as your bmi is the lowest it can be in a healthy adult.

do you have an eating disorder, as you need to address that before you start exercising or you risk losing weight, which could be dangerous.

18-28% body fat puts you in the fit and athletic category. What exactly are you aiming for!?

28% is regarded as fit/athletic according to Google. Did you think you should not have any fat if you're slim?

It seems high. Almost 30% of me is fat that can't be normal I've always thought i was skinny fat if that makes sense.

I've been trying to join a gym but not quite brave enough yet but hopefully when I do it would help.

It can be really skewed by boob size btw

You're in normal female range.

It’s a healthy range (am assuming you are female?). If anything in your shoes I would look to build more muscle to change the % that way.

You could work on building more muscle. Then your body fat % would be lower. You'd have to eat more and be ok with your weight going up slightly though.

So for example eating a good percentage of protein, lifting weights.

Have a look at Jeff Nippard's video on Youtube 'What every body fat % actually looks like' to see that 30% is on the leaner side of average for a woman.

Edited to add the Nippard states that at 30% a women is leaner than 90% US population.

I used to compete for GB in triathlon and my body fat was 27% at the time and I was super fit! It’s fine, it sounds a lot (how can a third of you be fat?!) but actually it’s fine. Mine is now 22 % but I am very lean and train a lot and don’t eat anything unhealthy, ever.

That was an excellent video. Really informative.

If your BMI is only 18 then you're very thin and could probably do with gaining fat not losing it? Is this just an attention seeking post or what...

You're meant to have fat. I think you're shocked because you didn't know that and so the % seemed high as compared to 0%.

As others have said, 28% is perfectly healthy for a woman (essential bf % for a woman is around 10-13%, ie any lower is incompatible with life) However, bf machines are notoriously unreliable, so please don't assume you definitely are 28%! They're a guess at best, they use an algorithm.
If this really bothered you, given you have a very low BMI already, it may be worth speaking to someone about your feelings about weight..

But that's pretty much what skinny fat is - skinny body with low muscle mass so higher percentage of fat. It's not massively high, though, but it would definitely help to start lifting weights of all sorts of reasons - getting leaner being the least important of them all.

I definitely need to start going to the gym. Which hopefully will help

My bmi id 18.6 so within the healthy range. Also if I was going to start attention seeking trust me I have more exciting stuff I could post

My bmi is 20. According to my oh so clever scales, I’m 48.2% water, 40.9% skeletal muscle and 29.8% body fat. That means there’s 118% of me, and that doesn’t include my heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestines, brain or bones. I’m practically two people!

Normal sounding reading. That figure is not just ‘chubby fat’ but also fat around organs (which you need) and things like brown fat stores which your body has as an energy reserve. And yes, boobs!

The readings from those machines also a rough estimate at best really. They rely on electrical impedance and make a lot of assumptions and an algorithm to come up with a figure. If your individual distribution of fat and muscle, and other things like hydration levels are different to what it assumes, then will be off.

Are you ok op? This isn't very healthy thinking. Please ditch the scales and be kind to yourself.

I think if you don’t understand body fat percentages it can be a little shocking.

the more important number here is your muscle mass, what was that op?

A healthy and ideal body fat percentage for women is normally between 21% and 32%. If you wanted to build more muscle you could focus on strength training and macros but if your body fat gets too low be warned it messes up your hormones.

Your BMI and your body fat % both put you in the “normal/healthy” category.

Women need more fat than men. You're healthy, well done, now step away from the scales and enjoy life.