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Body fat measurement: Part 3

In this final post about body fat measurement I will provide you with some of my measurements and make some comparisons between the various measuring devices. First off the omron body fat scale always seems to give higher body fat percentages than the calipers. However there are some formulas in multi-site measurement using calipers that give fat percentages that are way out of the ordinary.

Bioelectric impedance method
With the omron bioelectric impedance method I am averaging about 11% body fat. I take measurements every day once in the morning and once in the night. I keep averaging the body fat % for the last one week and consider that my body fat % for any given day. Here is the data for the morning readings for the past 2 weeks.



The right most 2 columns are my weight and body fat % as measured by the device. The second column is the average for 1 week. Notice how the absolute measurements vary wildly from day to day. But the average is more smoother.

Calipers
Using the FatTrack digital calipers I usually get lower body fat % than omron. I take these measurements once every week. And the last week measurement is 8.74% using Jackson/Pollock 3 formula. I think this is kind of low given that I can see only very slight definition of abs. Usually at 9% I should have more visible definition. I think omron reading is more closer to my actual fat %. I think I will be like 10-11%.

Plugging in the values in other formulas gave the following results:
Jackson/Pollock 7: 8.45
Jackson/Pollock 3: 8.74
Jackson/Pollock 4: 9.39
Parillo: 17.62
Durnin/Womersley: 12.53


For whatever reason Parillo is an outlier. It shows an unlikely 17.62% body fat. So omron is pretty good for a convenient body fat measuring device. Go for it.

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  1. SS GuyOctober 20, 2009 at 5:47 PM

    Thats a very neat, hard-to-find comparison you have. Thanks for posting this. I have ordered the scale; lets see how it works for me.

    ReplyDelete

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