It's the Goldilocks theory when it comes to fat- can't have too much or too little. According to LiveStrong an average women in the US has a body composition between 22-25% and an average man in the US is between 17-19%. However, these numbers dramatically change if you are a dancer.
An average female ballet dancer has between 11-17% body fat and a professional modern dancer has between 10-16% body fat.
For men, a professional male ballet dancer is between 7.8-11% body fat, and a professional male modern dancer has an average of 7.9% body fat.
You may be asking yourself why is it important to know your percent body fat, well, it's to help you design to perfect weight control approach for your body. You may realize loosing fat could be beneficial, or you could realize gaining fat would be the best idea, or that everything is just right. There are three main methods to determining body fat; hydrostatic, skinfold, and bioelectrical impedance.
Hydrostatic weighing involves weighing the person underwater to determine their body density, this technique requires special equipment and a trained person to conduct it. It's the most impractical, but also the most accurate. The skinfold-girth method is most commonly used, it involved obtaining the circumference of the neck, a skinfold (pinch) reading on the side of the tummy regain, and a skinfold reading on the abdominal. Using these three numbers a professional finds the persons density, and using another equation finds the percent body fat. The last method, bioelectrical impedance, is based on the fact that electricity is conducted better through water, and since muscles are made mainly of water, they are able to find the person's body density this way. Bioelectrical impedance is very expensive and there are variables that can throw the number off (like how much water the person drank that day).
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