Weight loss seems to be a national pastime for many American women. Various weight loss products, that seem to offer a quick fix, have been offered for years with the hopes of enticing women desperately trying to lose body fat. Unfortunately there is no quick fix.

If we look to the biology of women, there is a distinct predisposition for the female to carry more body fat than the male. By nature, a woman's body is developed to protect her and a potential fetus. As a result of this genetic coding, women have more enzymes for storing fat and fewer enzymes for burning fat. In addition to this, the hormone estrogen actually actives fat storing enzymes and causes them to multiply.

Women have a tendency to become preoccupied by the numbers on a scale. Often times a certain weight becomes so ingrained in a woman's mind that she will do just about anything to attain that "goal". Just because you weighted 115 lbs., as a high school senior doesn't mean that as a 40-year-old woman, you should maintain that same weight as the ideal. Frequent dieting not only slows down the metabolic furnace, it can actually reduce your lean, muscular tissue, and leave you with more body fat. So it is possible to continue weighting 115 lbs. and be FATTER. Not the goal most women would hope for.

The best indicator as to whether or not you need to lose body fat is by measuring it. By assigning a number to your fat level, you can accurately gauge where you are at and where you need to go in order to achieve your goals.

A road map always makes it easier to get where you are going, and a fat scale or fat caliper is like a compass- it tells you where you are and indicates how to proceed. These weight loss tool are relatively inexpensive. Body fat percentage (%) is the numeric figure utilized to compute your actual fat content into meaningful data. The World Health Organization has developed some standards, based on healthy populations. The body mass index was developed to give a general indicator of the risk for 34 diseases linked to obesity.

In 1999, The National Institute of Health released the healthy body fat ranges for woman. The healthy range for women 20-39 years of age ranges from 20.5% to 35.0%. For women 40-59 the ranges shift to 21.3%-35.8%. Seniors between 60-79 years of age are 22.1%-36.6%. The Institute warns that there are specific health risks associated with low body fat percents, especially for women and children. This is primarily due to endocrine function (hormone production).

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