Measuring body fat?

Slipshoddy

Hello all,

Can anyone recommend a reliable weighing scale that also measures body fat.

Tia.

StillGoing

Tanita BC730. About £30 from Argos, possibly cheaper if you search on line.

Slipshoddy

Cheers Phil I'll have a look online.

ugo.santalucia

Don't bother with those scales... I have one and the numbers it churns out are pretty much random... I can float between 23 and 25% just by having breakfast or having a poo.... besides, I don't think I am a quarter made up of fat, seeing I weigh 71 kg and I'm 5'10''

Decent calipers are a better way to measure fat in different body parts

fenix

I'd really not bother with scales either. All over the place.

craigus89

How could scales possibly measure your body fat percentage!?

fenix

Craigus89 wrote:

How could scales possibly measure your body fat percentage!?

Badly usually.

cooldad

Easiest thing is look in a mirror and jump. In the words of the immortal Arnie, "If it jiggles, it's fat."

joey54321

Yup, no reliable way really. Even DEXA scan and bod-pod things can be wrong.

Scales measure your bio-impedance so very dependent on hydration levels, they also rely on the company 'accurately' converting this impedance in to a % of fat (another source of inaccuracy) and since electricity will take the shorter distance it will likely only measure your legs.

fat daddy

the scales try to work using the principle of electrical impedance analysis where an electric current flows easier through muscle rather than fat, so by sending a signal up one leg and comparing it to the signal returning down the other leg.

An awesome principle .... but completely unreliable as temperature, hydration, how damp your skin is all skew the results.

you are best off tracking your changes with a tape measure and a pair of calipers ..... then realise none of that even matters and just look in the mirror .... like what you see then good .... if you don't then eat better and workout more

sungod

as above, the scales aren't much use, if you're disciplined about hydration, timing etc. you can probably use one for trending, but not accurate measurement

looking in the mirror can give you a fair idea...




...from https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/body-fat-percentage/

mercia_man

I find those Tanita scales pretty good at tracking my body fat. It can occasionally give an unusually high reading but if you weigh and measure yourself at the same time each day under similar conditions, such as doing it three hours after lunch, you get consistent figures.

For example, I am 5ft 10in and around 68 to 70kg. When I am at my fittest and lightest in early autumn I am 13 or even 12 per cent, my usual figure is 14 or 15 and I go up to 16 early in the new year.

Slipshoddy

Thanks for the info, i'm currently using calipers but thought scales would be alot quicker and easier. Didn't know they could be inaccurate though.

daniel_b

That's useful above, that would put me at about 14-20% I reckon.

sloppyschleckonds

sungod wrote:

as above, the scales aren't much use, if you're disciplined about hydration, timing etc. you can probably use one for trending, but not accurate measurement

looking in the mirror can give you a fair idea...




...from https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/body-fat-percentage/

Have you got anything above 32%?

Asking for a friend

sungod

you could try google image search for "chubby men"

cooldad

Or better still, "fat bastards".

ric/rstsport

Slipshoddy wrote:

Hello all,

Can anyone recommend a reliable weighing scale that also measures body fat.

Tia.

As other have mentioned scales aren't particularly useful. The gold standard used in many exercise physiology labs is done via hydrostatic weighing, but even that makes assumptions that aren't always correct.

There is one way to measure body fat and have it dead accurate. But it isn't much use to anyone wanting to improve their fat mass ;-)

(Edited for naff grammar, sorry folks)

kevin_stephens

My Withings scale consistently indicates 22%, which is not out of line with the body image photos. Annoyingly the Withings scale has wifi and downloads measurements to my phone on which a graph tries to motivate me to eat less and ride further
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Withings-Body- ... ings+scale

neeb

sungod wrote:

as above, the scales aren't much use, if you're disciplined about hydration, timing etc. you can probably use one for trending, but not accurate measurement

looking in the mirror can give you a fair idea...




...from https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/body-fat-percentage/

Could maybe slightly overestimate body fat for cyclists as we don't generally have well-developed upper body musculature, especially pecs. Would be useful to get a bunch of pure cyclists of different fat percentages photographed for a similar chart!

StillGoing

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Don't bother with those scales... I have one and the numbers it churns out are pretty much random... I can float between 23 and 25% just by having breakfast or having a poo.... besides, I don't think I am a quarter made up of fat, seeing I weigh 71 kg and I'm 5'10''

Decent calipers are a better way to measure fat in different body parts

I have a set gathering dust. I always found them to be variable depending on where you placed them and despite drinking so much water daily I was having headaches because of it, they still insisted I was retaining water. They're pretty quick to label you obese too for being a couple of pounds overweight.

sloppyschleckonds

If you can pinch more than an inch, you're in trouble