Skinny to Strong

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 ...

In part 1 I briefly described a couple of convenient methods to measuring body fat. In this post I will tell you what devices I use and how often I take measurements with each of them. I also give my recommendations on which device works best based on my personal experience. I have an accu-measure calipers which I used to use a long time ago to measure body fat. The calipers gave very consistent measurements if done right. I got used to taking the measurements consistently at the same location and accurately too. I just used the one location mentioned in the booklet and for some reason I felt that it gave be a lower fat % reading than I expected. I mean I used to see 9% body fat measurements when I could not see any ab definition. I later used the multi-site measurement methods . I generally take readings with calipers once a week, so it did not bother me much that I had to take so many measurements. Still I was not satisfied because each formula gave a different value for my bod...

I use 3 devices to monitor my body fat. One more than the others, but it is mainly a convenience thing rather than accuracy of measurement. There are very many ways to measure your body fat, but most of them are not accurate perhaps with exception of MRI scan. Even more important to note is the cost of these methods. Some of them are really expensive. This leaves us with 2 ways to measure body fat cheaply and conveniently (at home without having to dip yourself in a pool of water). The first one being the calipers method where you pinch a location on your body and measure the thickness of the pinched part. Then you refer to a chart that gives you a table of fat percentages for each range of thickness measurement. This is considered to be fairly accurate and considered to be almost as good as the gold standard (hydrodensity weighing) when done correctly. Now for the pro and cons Pros It is more or less consistent through out the day and your fat percentages will not change during th...