I have a scale with a body fat monitor on it. You step on it with bare feet and there is four pads that apparently measure your body fat. I'm 5'7 1/2 and right now I'm 201 lbs. Back on January 1st I was 212.8 lbs and a couch potato and the scale said I was 45.6% body fat. So, started working out (combo of cardio and some weight lifting) and am down to 201.0 as of today. Scale says I'm 46.8% body fat! WTF! Are those things actually accurate.
I have one of those scales also. The paperwork that came with mine says that water retention will cause the results to skew. I would try to avoid weighing after workouts or other times that you know you are retaining water. So far, mine has been close to accurate. I went to a nutrionist and they used the caliper method to determine my body fat, and the scale and calipers are pretty close. Hope this helps!
the bio-electrical impedence method is very VERY sensitive to how much water is in your system. it actually is MORE accurate of yo uare extremely well hydrated. The foot sensors send an electrical signal through your body and back to the sensors on the other foot. How fast the signal travels determines your body fat. Water is VERY electrically conductive, meaning it will traavel through the water in your system, no problem. Your fat cells on the other hand, do not carry the current as well.
They arent incredibly accurate (no more than any other method) however if you do it under the same conditions every week, or whatever (same time of day, same level of hydration, food intake, etc), then they ARE RELIABLE for charting PROGRESS...or the overall trend.....
Similar to weighing yourself, you shouldn't take your body fat as measured by the scale on any particular day to be THE NUMBER and the answer. What matters is that there is a trend over time--if you are working out (especially doing strength training) then you will want to see, over time, that your body fat is going down. But it may be up or down on any given day--just like your weight may be up or down--and that is not what matters.
I watch my BF% on my scale because it gives me an indicator of when I'm retaining water, and when there may be a "whoosh" of weight dropping off soon. If I see the weight number staying the same but the BF% going down (indicating I am holding onto more water), then I know within a few days to a week I will see a downward whoosh of weight on the scale.
At the beginning of my weight loss, my BF was in the range of 51%. It is down around 43% now. That's a lot of progress--but I didn't get there in one day, and there are many many days when it is up or down or all over the place. All I pay attention to is the trend over time.
Not on my scale, and I have a Tanita, which seems to be beloved on this forum.
At first I thought it wasn't too bad, the numbers seemed reasonable. Between purchase at around 210-ish until maybe the low 160's upper 150's I went from higher 30's to lower 30's. then, all of a sudden, I am 13-15%. Well hydrated or not. New batteries. As far as I can tell, my feet lost a bit of weight and the scale is telling me the body fat percentage of my feet. The globs of fat on my stomach ain't no measly 15%.
I got a test at the gym earlier this week (came with my membership) and got 26%. That seems reasonable considering the trend until I apparently got girl-buff, my weight, and my level of fitness.
Tarisaande , 02-10-2010 02:24 PM
