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.
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 body fat. I would recommend buying this product because it is cheap. But you might as well buy the next product I am about to mention because it is has slightly better granularity.
I later brought myself the FatTrack Digital Body Fat Caliper. This is a good investment because the digital measurements were even easier to take than the regular calipers and they had better granularity. Even better is that the digital calipers is already programmed to apply the Jackson/Pollock 3 site formula. All you need to do is take the 3 measurements in the 3 locations of your body and you are done. The digital display gives you the results. Currently I am using this device to take weekly measurements.
When I understood that my fat % calculations can be so off and not accurate at all then I decided that I might as well buy something that is even more convenient. That is when I found the Omron body fat monitor HB-500. Wow, it costs just $36 now. It was double that when I brought it 10 months ago. I found that like with many body fat monitors this was only good if your body is in the same state every time you take measurements. That means you should have same amount of water in your muscles, the same amount of food in your stomach etc. The readings would vary wildly in a single day. I found out that if I took the measurements everyday in the morning 30 minutes after drinking 300 ml of water the readings are somewhat consistent. And that is what I have been doing. I would strongly suggest this device to anyone who is concerned with body fat. Definitely one of the best investment. One note of caution though. It does not exactly tell you your body fat, but it will give you an indication of whether you are gaining or losing fat. And this good enough as far as I am concerned.
But if you ask me today what I would buy and what I would recommend, I would definitely go for the Withings WiFi Connected Body Fat Scale assuming you have the moolah. This looks wickedly cool. It is very convenient to have the device connect to the internet and store everything there. You just get on it and it and it turns itself on. No need to press the on button. Then it shows your weight and calculates body composition. It automatically detects the user too. On my Omron I have to select a preset and I have to hold on to the handles at an angle until the measurement is taken. Then it stores your measurements on the net so you don’t have to manually enter it somewhere. Neat! Here is a video
No matter what device you use, they can still never give the exact body fat measurement. I think a mirror or photograph is the best guide sans MRI scan. Check out your flab or ab definition in the mirror and head over to Body Fat Percentage Guide for Men to see what body fat % you might have.
In my next post I will do some comparisons between each device which will give you an idea about the body fat % measurements they are showing and the variance between them.
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 the course of the day. It will not depend on the food you take or amount of water in your body. So if you take the readings once a week it will be sufficient to see if your fat went up or down.
Cons It is very hard to master the technique. If you pinch a slightly different location each time then the results may vary. It you pinch too hard then the result may be different. So it is hard to get consistent measurements every time. The best way to do it is to take 3 measurements and then average them.
A slight variant of the calipers method is to take measurements in more than one location (3, 4, 7 or 9 measurements depending on the formula being used), and then plug the values in a formula to get the body fat. I like this webpage for the calculations because they also have videos showing the locations where to take the measurements and how to take them correctly. Again this method also has some pros and cons Pros If you stick to one formula then it is consistent through out the day. More accurate than just a single measurement because different people have fat stored in different locations. Cons Each formula gives a different body fat percentage with a lot of variance between them. I have seen one formula give 9% and another give 18%. So again it all depends on the technique.
The second method is to use a body fat analyzer that is based on bioelectric impedance. These devices are the most convenient and least error prone (from the user’s perspective anyway). You can easily get your measurements by standing on the scales and letting it do its job. A few pros and cons Pros Very easy to use and readings are consistent when taken multiple times at the same time. Cons Readings are not consistent through out the day and everyday. A lot depends on what you ate and how much you digested and how much water you have in your body etc. In the morning it may say 12% and in the night it could be 15%. So you will have to take measurements more often (read: daily) and average it.
This is getting to be a long post so I will stop now. In my next post I will write about what devices I have and how I use them to measure my body fat.
