Gregg Wallace has revealed he has just 17% body fat after a five-stone weight loss.
The MasterChef co-host has been open about his weight loss journey, after his doctors told him that at 17 stone he was at high risk of a heart attack.
In an Instagram Reel (video) filmed in a gym, the presenter stretched and flexed his muscles alongside the caption: “60 years old, 12 stone, less than 17% fat.”
Body fat percentage refers to the total amount of your body weight that is comprised of fat. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) explains that the higher the percentage, the more it can “increase your chance of heart and circulatory diseases”.
Doctors recommended to the BBC that women have a body fat percentage below 32% and men under 25%, so Wallace is well below the average. Elite male athletes can typically have between 6 and 13% body fat, while elite female athletes have around 14 to 20%, according to Livestrong.
In order to measure your own body fat, you can use a guide outlining various methods that the BHF has put together or use a weighing scale that offers this insight into your health metrics.
Everyone needs body fat in order to be healthy and having too little can be as detrimental as having too much, in order for the body to physically function properly.
Wallace lost weight without following a strict diet. Instead, he told OK!, he made healthy swaps to his existing diet.
“When I was looking at the calorie content of a bowl of cockles and a plate of oysters, I realised it was virtually non-existent,” he said, “And then I looked at the calorie content of a piece of cod that I cooked in the pan as opposed to a piece of cod from the fish and chip shop, and realised that I could eat about nine fillets of cod for the equivalent of a fried one.”
The presenter has been open about his relationship with his weight and the fact that he had tried “all the diets under the sun” in the past, but “none of them” worked.
Wallace has also candid spoken about his doctor’s encouragement to lose weight due to the health risks of being overweight. Speaking to Michael Ball on BBC Radio 2 in February, he said: “I was getting really big. And there’s a picture of me and my lovely mate John Torode in India. He looks lovely and I’m big – my shirt is hanging over my trousers, I wasn’t happy.
“At the same time, my doctor did a blood test and he said ‘We need to do something Mr Wallace. This blood test sample, your cholesterol is through the roof. You’re in for some big illness here.’ Those two things combined – being unhappy with how I looked and then the doctor telling me I was going to have a big heart attack – I started looking very closely at how I was living.”
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