Body Fat Scales

[TahoeDirtGirl]

I have a Tanita at my house in CA and it has a really narrow window of giving you a 'real' number. I had a study that I used for a paper for a college class that I will try and dig up that compared the scales, calipers and the displacement method. If it's used 'right' it's pretty accurate, but even if it isn't, it gives you the same number whether its 'right' or not, and you can watch the numbers go down (or up ). The stipulation is that you shouldn't use it immediately upon waking, after exercise, after eating or drinking, with a full bladder or after showering/being excessively wet. These all impact the fluid balance in your body and in turn, affect (or is it effect?) the impedence of the tiny electrical current (very tiny) that is sent through one foot and then exited through the other. But if you use it the same time every day, you can get a good gage on whether you are losing bf or gaining bf-that's how I used it anyway.

I switched to a caliper you can use on yourself (because I started traveling alot). I found it to be very accurate to the displacement method which I had done a couple of times. The gold standard (which hardly anyone does) is an xray method which is hardly used, I always see it in studies and never have heard anyone say "oh I got an appointment to get my % bf measured by xray"

Here is a link to the caliper:

http://www.amazon.com/FatTrack-GOLD-...6732234&sr=8-8

I like the measuring tape that comes with it too.

[colby]

I've read before (might have been here on TE) that the scales tend to be lower body biased (if you have more fat on your lower body, it will be higher than your "whole body" average) and the calipers upper body biased (if you have more fat on your upper body, it will be higher than your "whole body" average), while displacement is more generalized. Some of the scales (more $$) are apparently more accurate, all things considered.

I do mine occasionally, maybe once a month, while I generally weigh myself once a week (if I'm in an "I care" phase, anyway, I had a long "I don't care" phase ). It just happened to be a feature of the scale we bought, maybe a combination of calipers/scale would be better (if the scale is fairly accurate, anyway, which is still up for debate ).