There's no way that I'm 26.39% fat. When I psychically do it on a machine it says I'm 36%, so which one is right? I've heard that even the hand held ones are wrong. Is there a way to tell?
Before my dr gave me my "eating plan" he sent me to do a zillion examns and one was to detemrine your body composition (lean mass, fat, water, etc) but I had to do it in the hospital together with the one to determine my BMR (it was like half an hour breathing in a special machine!
I guess that was pretty accurate but you have to go to a special place to have it done!
Holy that must be a real rough estimate! Good thing there is going to be body fat testing at the gym next week. I was too scared to have it done before, but now i am super curious.
There are a lot of different body fat calculators online. Even skin calipers aren't always accurate, and these calculators based on tape measurements are much worse. However, I find it's nice to follow the trend, as long as I remember that the actual number probably isn't right. So, I tried several different ones, and picked the one in the middle, which seemed about right. The spread was pretty wide - some I knew I wasn't that high, and some I really KNEW I wasn't that low.
I just did this test, and compared to my WW bodyfat % scale, it is off by a bit. My WW scale says bodyfat is 29%, fat weight is 45 lbs and lean weight is 105. This thing says my body fat % is 23%, fat is 35 lbs and lean bady weight is 115. So, for starters, I like this one better. But I know it isn't as accurate as the electrical impulse test. This one bases too much of the information on the waist measurement, and does not take into consideration distribution of the body fat. What if you had two ladies who were the same height and weight, and one carried all her weight in her abdomen, and the other carried all her weight in her hips. They could have the same body fat %, but they would measure way differently on that body fat scale.
Heeeey, cool! As everyone else has said, it's probably not very accurate. But it's still kind of a cool thing to look at for fun, heh. For me, I actually got more excited about seeing that 51.3 + 158.7 = my weight... Those numbers seem far too small! But if I actually were only 24% fat--how cool would that be?!
I don't even believe those hand-held body fat meters are very accurate. A friend of mine told me he used it one week and it said 13 % body fat, and the next week 17%. He hadn't done anything special and he was quite sure he had not gained weight. I mean, how the heck could that be possible?
I apparently have 17 % body fat according to this calculator, I don't think that's very accurate.