Why should you care about your body fat percentage? Well, first it can be eye-opening to know how much fat you are actually carrying around with you. Second, it can help you decipher other important numbers like your lean body mass and your ideal body weight. (For more information on LBM and how to find your ideal body weight, click here or here.)
So body fat percentage is important, but how do you figure out what yours is?
You can buy a scale that measures certain statistics about your body on top of measuring your current weight. These scales can measure things like your body fat percentage, your body water percentage, your muscle mass, your bone mass, and more. These kinds of scales can be costly, and you may also be able to find someone (a doctor, a nutritionist, a personal trainer, etc.) who may have a scale like this and can keep track of these numbers for you.
Another way to measure body fat percentage is by using a body fat caliper. These devices measure your body fat percentage by pinching areas of your skin and measuring the fat in that pinch of skin. This method can be very accurate, especially if the test is administered by a fitness professional who knows what he or she is doing, but it can also be limited to people whose BF% is below a certain level.
The last way I know of that is also affordable is to use a body fat monitor. The body fat monitors use the same method as the scales by running a small electric current through your body to measure the amount of fat, but they only measure body fat and they are much more affordable than a special scale. They look like this:
So how do you know what an ideal body fat percentage is? Well I've found a hand dandy chart for you!
Here's another way to look at it:
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