How to Determine Your Body Fat

[fern2340]

I have only tried number 2....but I got a kick out of #4, trying to imagine myself in a pool trying to weigh myself!!! lol
:lol:


How To Determine Your Body Fat
**********************************************
The minimum body fat percentage considered safe is 5% for
males and 12% for females. The average adult body fat
considered healthy is 15-18 % for men and 22-25 % for women.

There are several methods for assessing body fat:
1. WAIST TO HIP RATIO - divide waist circumference by hip
circumference. A ratio greater than 0.8% is considered to be
a health risk for women. For men, a ratio of 0.95% or higher
is considered a health risk.

2. SKINFOLD MEASUREMENT – as approximately 50% of fat is
stored under the skin, you can measure the skin thickness at
several areas of the body using calipers to indicate your
overall body fat.

3. BIOELECTRICAL IMPEDANCE - a low level of electrical
current is passed though your body by electrodes placed on
your wrist and ankle. The greater the resistance to the
current flow, the greater your percentage of body fat.

4. HYDRODENSITOMETRY - fat is less dense than water, so the
difference between your weight on dry land and your weight
when you are submerged in water is the estimate of your
total body fat. This test is a very accurate measure of
total body fat.

[jonrees]

I've got one of these and you hold the metal handles after telling it your weight etc and it comes up with a figure.

I've been doing it for the last few wks and using it and my weight to calculate fat lose etc. It started off with the same sort of figure i got from the protein power tables and has fallen slightly but this wk has jumped right up so that of this weeks 6lb loss it tells me only .25lb was fat!

Anyone have any idea about accuracy etc. The total difference was only about 1.5% and i suspect over this range it may not be much good. I'm going to leave it for a month and try again.

[Michelle]

It depends where you hold on to your fat.
I have the Tanita scale, and the current goes up on leg and down the other. The pamplet says it can be up to 8% off for women and 3% for men, depending on hydration level and exercise.
I imagine the one with handles would go up one arm and down the other. So if you have muscular arms and big legs, it would be off. Or vice versa (big arms and muscular legs).
I just use it to see the trend. And not the day to day trend. When I first got the scale it said 43% fat (yuck). Now it says 32%fat.
So if it's accurate, I had:
fat -- 82.13lbs
lean (bones, muscle, skin, etc) -- 108.87lbs
Now I have:
fat -- 47.36lbs
lean -- 100.64lbs
So I've lost 34.77lbs of fat and 8.23lbs of muscle. Not great about the muscle, but I've lost about 4 times as much fat as muscle! So that's good. I want to work on increasing my lean mass (really don't want it to drop below 100lbs) as I try to drop those last 18 pounds. But these pounds have been with me a long time (since Grade 9 I think) so it may be slow going. We'll see.
HTH!
Michelle
Atkins since 11/11/99