What If You Had 0% Body Fat

Getting in shape is one thing, but going for the shredded look has way more risks than you realize! Check out today’s insane new video about the actual cost of lowering your body fat to 0%!

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Is it true that a man sometimes called a  “legend” in bodybuilding once got down to   almost 0% body fat? Is that even  possible? And how low is too low?  When Arnold Schwarzenegger was  asked to play Conan the Barbarian,   his breakthrough acting role after  claiming the Mr. Olympia title seven times,  

He had so little fat on him that he  was asked to add some fat to his body. When Brad Pitt got down to six percent  body fat for his role as Tyler Durden   in the cult classic movie Fight Club,  his physique became the kind of Holy  

Grail of the male body. This is what men  want, we were told, but is it unhealthy? When Christian Bale lost 62 pounds (28kg) for his  role in the Machinist, going from 182 pounds (82.5   kg) to just 120 pounds (54.4kg), no one in their  right mind would say they wanted a body like that. 

Today, we’re going to explore the  limits of the human body. Just how   much can it take when we rid it of fat? When we talk about healthy weight,   we’re getting into a controversial area. You  might, for instance, find out online you are  

Overweight because you’ve used one of those BMI  (body mass index) calculators, and it’s told you   bad news. BMI, which is your weight in kilograms  divided by your height in meters, squared,   doesn’t tell you what percentage of body fat you  have. You may have a high BMI but have lots of  

Lean muscle, and you might have a low BMI and  be skinny but still have an excess of body fat.  Still, BMI is a fairly good method  of working out if you have too much   fat on you without having to do scans, such as a  dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scan, aka DEXA,  

Which can indeed tell you with quite high accuracy  how much body fat you have. Most of the time,   you probably know just by looking at yourself  if you have too much or too little body fat. 

The fat under your skin is your subcutaneous fat.  You can feel the fat on your belly or your arms,   but you can’t feel visceral fat, the fat inside  you, wrapping around your internal organs. As you  

Can guess, you don’t want too much visceral fat.  An excess of this stuff has been linked to all   kinds of badness, including high cholesterol, high  blood pressure, heart disease, type 2 diabetes,   stroke, and even Alzheimer’s. A fatty liver,  aka non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD),  

Affects one in four adult Americans. You might need a CT scan or an MRI   to know if you have too much visceral fat, but  there’s a very crude way to measure visceral fat   on your belly. You grab hold of a tape measure and  wrap it around your waist. If you’re a woman and  

It’s over 35 inches, this could mean you have  an excess of visceral fat. With guys, over 40   inches is when you might want to be concerned. If you have a high BMI and a worrying amount   of weight around your belly, you might  have an unhealthy amount of fat on you.  

A study at Oxford University said when this is  severe, it could reduce someone’s average life   expectancy by ten years, similar to smoking. The  researchers wrote, “Obesity increases death rates   for some types of cancer, but the main way it  kills is by increasing risk of heart disease  

And stroke.” They also said life expectancy was  reduced for people who were very thin, too thin,   according to what are deemed healthy standards. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention   says a normal BMI for someone over  20 falls between 18.5 and 24.9. So,  

Anything under that can be said to be underweight,  and anything just over that is called overweight.   A 25.0 to 29.9 BMI is called pre-obesity. The WHO  says between 35.0 and 39.9 is Obesity class II,   and anything above 40 is Obesity class III. The  term you’ve all likely heard is morbid obesity,  

Relating to the word morbidity, an illness  or condition that can affect mortality.  In case you haven’t been looking, there’s a  lot of obesity in the USA. The average BMI in   the US is 26.6 for adult men and 26.5 for adult  women. According to data from the US National  

Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, almost  1 in 3 US adults (30.7%) are overweight. Over 2   in 5 adults (42.4%) have obesity, and about  1 in 11 adults (9.2%) have severe obesity.  For young people in the US aged two to 19, about  1 in 6 are overweight, and 1 in 5 are obese. 1  

In 16 are severely obese. The US and the UK are  said to have the highest levels of obesity in   the highly developed world, but they aren’t the  most obese countries in the entire world. Nations   such as Nauru (61% obesity), Cook Islands (55.9%),  and Palau (55.3%) beat the US and UK hands down. 

In the UK, the Health Survey for England 2021  said that 25.9% of adults in England were obese,   and 37.9% were overweight but not obese. As  is often the case, the most deprived areas   had the highest rates of obesity. An obesity  map the researchers created showed that once  

You pass the middle of the country, aka the  Midlands, the obesity rates generally climb. Researchers have talked about a “North–South  divide,” with the North faring worse   economically and in terms of general health.  The obesity map is a startling example of this. 

The states in the US with the highest rates of  obesity are West Virginia: 40.6%, Kentucky: 40.3%,   Alabama: 39.9%, Oklahoma: 39.4% and Mississippi:  39.1%. There seems to be some correlation between   poverty and obesity here, too, with the US  Census Bureau saying the states with the highest  

Levels of poverty are Mississippi (19.58%  living in poverty), Louisiana (18.65%), New   Mexico (18.55%), West Virginia  (17.10%), and Kentucky (16.1%).  Worldwide obesity is said to have more than  doubled since 1980. You can read any manner   of reports stating that obesity is a much  bigger problem than hunger in most countries  

In the world today. Only about 13% of Americans  were obese in 1960. Things remained around that   level until 1980. In terms of statistical  graphs, this is about the time we can say,   “Houston, we have lift-off.” The  obesity rate has sky-rocketed since. 

Talking about Houston, in 2012 and 2013, it  used to be called “America’s fattest city.”   It’s not anymore. A recent study revealed the  top five cities were McAllen-Edinburg-Mission,   Texas; Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana;  Memphis, Tennessee; Jackson, Mississippi;   and Mobile, Alabama. The obesity rate in  McAllen-Edinburg-Mission is said to be 44.9%. 

There are many reasons why the world  is experiencing an obesity crisis,   with one of the leading reasons being a diet of  ultra-processed foods packed with sugar. This   diet has been exported all over the world: items  that come in colorful packages, often attractively  

Marketed on TV, and, importantly, cheap. Many health experts now say we humans spent   too many years demonizing fat when we should have  been demonizing high-sugar, ultra-processed foods.   Recent studies say these foods now make up 73%  of the American diet and 56.8% of the British  

Diet. Astonishingly, the British Nutrition  Foundation said its survey revealed that   70% of Brits interviewed “had not heard of  the term ultra-processed food.” We thought   this was strange until we found a 2022 survey  by the International Food Information Council   that said about 76% of Americans “are unfamiliar  with what qualifies as an ultra-processed food.” 

For many Americans, and people from other  countries for that matter, they might wonder   why they are not losing weight. In 2018, the CDC  reported that 54% of Americans did what the US   government advised them to do and get in 150  minutes a week of moderate-intensity workouts.  

That might just entail going for walks. Many other  people are recording how many steps they walk.  The problem is that you might only burn 200  to 350 calories going for an hour’s walk. It   might be more, depending on your weight and  how hard the walk is, but for most people,  

It’ll be in that range. A small Dominoes pizza,  which anyone could manage, is around 1,200   calories. A large pizza might contain between  2,000 and 3,000 calories, depending on the crust,   what’s on it, and the amount of cheese. A bowl of sugary cereal with milk might be in  

The region of 500 calories. Someone then might  have a couple of Oreo cookies (110 calories),   maybe a can of Coke (139 calories), and a bag  of chips (240 calories), and maybe for dinner,   they have something like Cheesecake Factory’s  Pasta Napoletana, coming in at 2,310 calories.  

They could then have the Sonic: Pineapple  Upside Down Master Blast Shake for dessert,   which is another 2,020 calories. That sounds like  a lot, but it isn’t, really, not for the average   American, who consumes 3,600 calories a day. Okay, so this is why more and more people  

Over the last 40 years have become obese.  The change in diet is the major factor,   as might our more sedentary lifestyles,  but the diet is the main thing.  You might now be wondering  how to lose the extra weight. 

Many people these days go without food for  a period of anything from eight hours to   an entire day, something called intermittent  fasting, which can be very good for you when   done right. Back when we were hunters and  gatherers, we didn’t have cans of Pringles  

In the pantry (900 calories per can) to snack  on in between the bowl of berries we had in the   morning. Intermittent fasting is nothing new.  We did it for millions and millions of years.  When you fast, your body uses up your stored fats  for energy. Research shows that 16/8 fasting,  

Meaning eating for eight hours and fasting  for 16 hours, can help with weight loss. But   fasting gets dangerous when we do it for  too long. To give you an extreme example,   in 2023, a pastor in Mozambique died when he  tried to replicate Jesus Christ’s 40-day fast.  

The BBC wrote, “After 25 days without food or  water, he had lost weight to the point where   he could not stand up. He was aged 39.” We doubt he went 25 days without water.   Humans generally get very deathly or dead  after three days without water. Even so,  

The Guinness World Record says that the longest  amount of time a human has survived without food   and water is 18 days. That was in 1979 when an  Austrian teenager named Andreas Mihavecz was put   in a holding cell and forgotten. As police  ignored his mother’s pleas on the telephone  

And he screamed and screamed, he wasted away  (53 pounds, 24kg) although he managed to get   some amount of condensed water from the walls. How long we can go without food depends on many   things, mostly how healthy we are and how much  fat we have. It’s generally thought that people  

Become very weak anywhere from 30 to 50 days, and  most will die anywhere from 43 to 70 days. There’s   the case of the Scottish man, Angus Barbieri,  who, in 1965, when he was 27 years old, started  

A fast that lasted for one year and 17 days. He was 456 pounds (207 kg), and during his fast,   he lost 275.5 pounds (125 kg). His goal was to get  to 180 pounds (82 kg), so the man did well. Still,  

You should never, ever try something like this. He did this under the supervision of the   University Department of Medicine at the Royal  Infirmary of Dundee. What is also very important   is the fact he was given vitamins, electrolytes,  and yeast for all his essential amino acids. He  

Also got tea and coffee, lots of water, and  every now and again, he might have gotten the   odd spoonful of sugar in his drink. Throughout  all of this, he was constantly being monitored.  He maintained his low weight for the next  20-odd years, but he died young, aged 51,  

In 1990. We can’t find the cause of death,  but it has been speculated that his super-long   fast might have harmed his body. As you’ll  see in this show, that’s often the case.  If you are obese, you could likely live longer  than a skinny person if you both went without  

Food but still got water. Those fat reserves  would help you in times of need. Nonetheless,   people with plenty of fat reserves could still  starve to death with much of those reserves left.  You need the essential vitamins to metabolize your  fat stores. You need nutrients and salts. Thin  

People will generally start to feel the really  bad health effects of starvation when they’ve lost   about 18% of their body weight, but much bigger  people will also feel such negative effects when   they still have fat left but have lost around  20% of their body weight. If you were to lose  

A third of your body weight in a short amount  of time, you would be taking a very big risk.  So, yes, you can die from starvation even if you  have plenty of flab on you, just because your body  

Needs those nutrients to keep going. It doesn’t  matter where you start in terms of your weight;   if you give your body nothing, within eight  to twelve weeks, you’ll probably bite the   dust. There might be exceptional cases,  but this is how it usually goes down. 

Władysław Fejkiel, a Polish prisoner  at the Auschwitz concentration camp,   noted how some prisoners starved faster than  others, but all succumbed in the end. He wrote:  “The border between the first and second phases  is hard to define. With some, the change happens  

Fast, with others very slowly. In general, one  can say that the second phase begins when a person   has lost a third of their body weight.” No one is superhuman. Fejkiel described   the effects of starvation as follows: “The eyes become dull; the face takes on  

A non-caring, thoughtless, and sad look. The  eyes recede into the head and become fallen   in. The skin takes on a grey hue and becomes  thin, paper-like, and hard. It also peels.”  The thinner they got, he said, the more easily  they fell victim to infections. That’s because,  

Without food, severe malnutrition represses our  body’s immune system responses. Fejkiel explained:  “Hair becomes colorless and breaks easily. The  head becomes elongated, cheekbone and eye sockets   become very noticeable. The sick person breathes  slowly, speaks quietly and with great effort.”  Okay, but what about people who actually  want very low body fat rather than victims  

Of horrific abuses of human rights?  Is it okay to try to do that sensibly?  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition  says a healthy body fat percentage for a   man aged 20 to 39 is about 8-19%. For a guy 40  to 59, it is 11-21%, and for a guy aged 60-79  

It is 12-24%. In case you’re wondering  about the age differences, a paper in   the National Institutes of Health explained: “Muscle mass decreases approximately 3–8% per   decade after the age of 30, and this rate of  decline is even higher after the age of 60.” 

Women can have more body fat and be in the healthy  bracket since their bodies need more fat due to   childbirth. They also burn energy slower after  eating due to their higher estrogen levels. For   the female of the species, the 20-39 age group  should have about 21-32% of body fat. For women  

Aged 40-59, the healthy level is 23-33% body  fat, and for 60 to 79, it is 24-35% body fat.  It’s generally thought the average in  the US regarding body fat is ~28% for   men and 40% for women, although most  studies on weight in the USA use BMI,  

Not body fat levels. Whatever the  measurement, it seems, in general,   there’s too much body fat around for most  of us to enjoy a long life with good health.  You might be well under the average and, say, have  only 10% body fat. That’s fine. Just remember,  

Though, you might be thin and still have  a lot of visceral body fat. Nonetheless,   the average person with about 20% body fat will  look like someone we consider an average size. The ultra-obese people who took part in the  TV series “My 600lb Life” may have had a body  

Fat percentage in the 66-75% range. It’s  hard to know, as the doctor in that show   only usually talked about BMI. Still, a large  difference in body fat level is very noticeable.  At around 40% body fat for men, people will  look like they definitely have a hefty calorie  

Intake. The so-called “dad bod,” which is  neither too fat but also not close to slim,   will be in the 25-30% body fat range. Many male athletes will have a body fat   range between 6 and 13%, and with female athletes,  it is often between 14 and 20% body fat. One of  

The best soccer players in soccer history,  Christiano Ronaldo, is thought to have just   7% body fat. While most athletes wouldn’t go  to the trouble posting about their body fat,   it’s generally thought fighters in the  boxing world and UFC will have about 9%  

To 16% body fat, but that’s only the men.  Women boxers might have 14 to 26% body fat.  Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez is said to have 14% body  fat when he’s fighting fit. The retired British   cruiserweight and heavyweight champion David Haye  was always ripped, but lately, he wrote that he’d  

Put on a lot of weight and then lost it again.  He said on his Instagram account, “Body fat went   from 10% to 22.5% in three months, just by doing  what everybody else is doing. I’m not overeating;   I was eating desserts and drinking alcohol  with everybody else, and this is what happens.” 

Then you have the current heavyweight champ,  Tyson Fury, who famously ballooned up after he   won the world title during a deep, dark period  of severe depression. In 2012, when he was much   slimmer than he is now, he wrote on Twitter,  “After training today 182 8.4% body fat!” He’s  

Nowhere near that now, although he’s still much  slimmer than he was when he hit his peak fatness.  In 2022, someone asked on Reddit how this guy  could be so good when he was around 20% body   fat. We won’t go into the many reasons,  but we will say someone with a dad bod  

Can still float like a butterfly and sting  like a bee. Sticking with British fighters,   the heavyweight with the most ripped body  right now is Anthony Joshua, who is thought to   have 14.7% body fat. Well, that’s one estimate.  Others have said he has more like 10% body fat. 

If we look at sports where people have the lowest  body fat on average, sprinters are up there,   with men said to have between 8 and 10% body  fat and women between 12 and 20%. For swimming,   it’s 8-10% for men and 12-20% for women. For  basketball, it’s 6-12% for men and 20-27% for  

Women. For gymnastics and long-distance running,  it’s 5-12% for men and 10-16% for women. For   football, the American kind, backs might be 9-12%,  but linemen between 15 and 19%. Male cyclists have   very low body fat, between 5 and 15% for men. So, it seems the lowest body fat you get  

For professional athletes is about 5%.  But if anything is going to beat that,   it’s going to be bodybuilders, who generally have  between 5 and 8% body fat. For women bodybuilders,   it’s usually between 10 and 15%. After all, when these people compete,  

The whole point is to have turned all their fat  into muscle. You can’t get any more ripped than   a bodybuilder. So, you might wonder,  why don’t they just try and get down   to 0% body fat? Why not just lose the excess?  Wouldn’t that win them all the competitions? 

Well, according to the American College of Sports  Medicine, if you go below 3% body fat, you’re   asking for trouble. Still, people have tried. One of the USA’s most decorated winter Olympians   is a man named Apolo Ohno, who won a bunch  of medals in the 2000s. He has said that he  

Had just 2.8% body fat when he was in his prime.  When an expert was asked about this by Scientific   American, he said yes, that is fine, but  only as long as the person is eating the   right foods, including a lot of proteins. Okay, but can you go even lower than 3%? 

In 2019, media articles talked about an American  football player named D.K. Metcalf, saying he   was “absurdly ripped.” He still is, which is  evident when you see him play for his team,   the Seattle Seahawks. Even so, was he really the  1.6% body fat that was claimed? When a trainer  

For college football was asked about this, he  said he just didn’t believe it. He explained:  “That’s not healthy, and I highly doubt that  it’s possible for him to perform at a Division   I level with that body fat percentage. The  lowest BFP out of my athletes is 6 percent. I  

Can’t imagine what 1.5 percent looks like.” He might have had 4% body fat, but certainly   not 1.6% since he was performing at the highest  level of sports. You need at least some body fat.   That fatty tissue plays a part in how the body  regulates glucose and cholesterol. You need it  

For energy storage and energy release. When  people go too low, almost everything in their   body is affected, including the cardiovascular  system, the nervous system, the endocrine, renal,   skeletal, and gastrointestinal systems. That means with too little body fat,   you’re possibly looking at heart failure,  among many other things. You are definitely  

Opening yourself up to myriad diseases since  malnutrition affects the immune system.  Okay, so let’s go back to the start when we  introduced a man, a legend of bodybuilding,   one apparently once got down to  0% body fat. Is this possible?  Before we answer that, let’s explain that  you have your storage and essential fat.  

The storage stuff is the fat you’re aware  of, but remember we said fat is also on the   inside. Some of it is essential. It’s  all around your brain, your nerves,   and keeping in touch with your other organs. So, when the former Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman  

Told the podcaster Joe Rogan that he once had only  0.33% body fat, it’s likely he had quite a bit   more than that. Even scanning machines might miss  some of that essential fat. He wouldn’t have been   able to survive with 0.33% body fat, according to  experts. Even the so-called most shredded man on  

The planet, Helmut Strebl, still has about two  percent body fat when he’s at his most ripped. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was at his best,  when he was told to add some fat to his body   to play Conan, he was likely at about 8% body fat.  Schwarzenegger said in an interview that he went  

Up to around 12% for that movie. Still, what about this legend of   bodybuilding? His name was, and note we  used the past tense “was,” Andreas Munzer. This guy was so insanely ripped that he was  sometimes referred to as the “man with no  

Skin.” He died aged 31 from multiple  organ failure in 1996, with reports   stating one of the reasons was his perhaps  over-enthusiastic use of anabolic steroids.  Still, doctors said this guy had pushed his body  way too much. Pathologists couldn’t believe what  

They were seeing. Writing in a paper for the  Institute of Forensic Medicine in Munich,   Germany, the pathologists said they  could barely see any fat deposits   on him. This was the fat under  the skin, the subcutaneous fat.  This man’s use of various performance-enhancing  drugs had damaged his body, but his lack of body  

Fat was also blamed for his early demise. He  had tumors all over his liver. The pathologists   said part of his liver crumbled in their hands  like polystyrene. His heart was damaged. His   testicles were tiny. He was a walking train wreck. On the outside, he was a hulk, but on the inside,  

He was a withered old man. No pain, no  gain, might be true, but when you add   into the equation “no brain,” an obsession  can become incredibly damaging to your body.  Now you need to watch “Why Your Muscles Won’t  Get Any Bigger.” Or check this out instead!