i'm thinking of putting my exercise focus on reducing body fat rather than obsessing over calories burned for a while....

do you have to pay a trainer to measure your body fat? can you measure it yourself?

is this a good way to focus and track your fitness??

Hi Blue,
I think that measuring body fat % is a great way to track progress. You can have two people of the same height and weight, but if one has a body fat % of 35 and the other has a body fat % of 18, they will look very different and also be at different risks for obesity related diseases.

Muscle mass is fantastic. But the scale shows muscle mass as pounds, so if you only use the scale to track your progress, you can miss out on the fact that you are building lovely muscle mass.

You can measure body fat percentage in a few ways. One is a water immersion process that is hard to find and pricy. Another is with calipers. That is less accurate, but if you have a trained person doing it each time, I think you can get some consistency and a nice trend, which is what you are really looking for. It is my understanding that those scales that predict body fat percentage can be woefully inaccurate.

My personal trainer measures my body fat on a regular basis. I hope this helps!