Accuracy of body fat calculations?
neldabg
Posts: 1,452 Member
My university offers free gym access and free fitness assessment tests, and in the test, body composition is taken with tape measures and calipers. I was told that my body fat is at 21.4%, but after a quick Google search, I saw that my body didn't really look like what 21.4% looks like on any of the examples. I included one of the examples below, and you can clearly see some ab definition in the woman, while I, on the other hand, am still flabby. Is it likely that a mistake was made, or is this just a case of "everyone looks different," or do I just have a larger image of myself than I really am (pictures below)?
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Replies
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They are not that accurate. Plus you are at the mercy of the person who is doing the test. My first trainer came out with a reading of 16% body fat when I weighed 163 pounds. lol. no.0
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Bodyfat measurements have a huge plus-or-minus range. How much strength training do you do? No matter how low your body fat, if you don't have the lean muscle mass you're not going to show abs, upper arm definition, etc.0
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Since this past July, I've been doing workout DVDs, especially those from Jillian Michaels. She has a 3-2-1 system for strength, cardio, & abs, so that's the strength training I get 6-7 days a week. The heaviest weights I use are eight pounds.Bodyfat measurements have a huge plus-or-minus range. How much strength training do you do? No matter how low your body fat, if you don't have the lean muscle mass you're not going to show abs, upper arm definition, etc.
Really? I didn't know that. I'll be doing a Google search for lean muscle mass soon.0 -
That's true. Wow. I would've asked for a re-evaluation. Lol.arditarose wrote: »They are not that accurate. Plus you are at the mercy of the person who is doing the test. My first trainer came out with a reading of 16% body fat when I weighed 163 pounds. lol. no.
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Another question: what body fat percentage do I look like to you guys?0
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I can't tell through your fur but you're a fox.0
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Sorry.
I don't think you can judge really well based on your photos because they show such a small portion of your body. We all carry fat differently. I could take a picture of myself that looked like the 20-22% woman but the truth is that under my waistline I have a sizable hidden roll of fat that takes me well above that percentage.
I saved a few links to pictures of women who had DEXA scans to figure out their bf%. Here they are.0 -
Sorry.
I don't think you can judge really well based on your photos because they show such a small portion of your body. We all carry fat differently. I could take a picture of myself that looked like the 20-22% woman but the truth is that under my waistline I have a sizable hidden roll of fat that takes me well above that percentage.
I saved a few links to pictures of women who had DEXA scans to figure out their bf%. Here they are.
When comparing those people's measurements, it is worth noting that DEXA scans usually register 3% higher than most traditional caliper methods. This may have to do with DEXA is going to detect visceral fat a lot more because it is an x-ray. The 25.7% woman from your link looks more like she's between the BUILTLEAN picture's 15-17% and 20-22%.0 -
Sorry.
I don't think you can judge really well based on your photos because they show such a small portion of your body. We all carry fat differently. I could take a picture of myself that looked like the 20-22% woman but the truth is that under my waistline I have a sizable hidden roll of fat that takes me well above that percentage.
I saved a few links to pictures of women who had DEXA scans to figure out their bf%. Here they are.
When comparing those people's measurements, it is worth noting that DEXA scans usually register 3% higher than most traditional caliper methods. This may have to do with DEXA is going to detect visceral fat a lot more because it is an x-ray. The 25.7% woman from your link looks more like she's between the BUILTLEAN picture's 15-17% and 20-22%.
Agreed.
I think that body fat % is interesting because it is a number but I don't think that it is a very useful number.0 -
Sorry.
I don't think you can judge really well based on your photos because they show such a small portion of your body. We all carry fat differently. I could take a picture of myself that looked like the 20-22% woman but the truth is that under my waistline I have a sizable hidden roll of fat that takes me well above that percentage.
I saved a few links to pictures of women who had DEXA scans to figure out their bf%. Here they are.
Thank you for the link! I see. I'm going to post full body pictures then.
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Okay. I'm just glad I didn't invest in calipers then. I'll use my eyes and better judgement from now on. Thanks for the estimate!
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Yeah, ultimately for most people, I'd agree with the go by how you feel about what is in the mirror approach. I've had a DEXA scan in June, and will probably do one again in December (the place I has a minimum of six month wait between scans, which is also decent timing to me), but I'm a numbers/statistics interested person, and I have a poor sense of aesthetics to go by the mirror.
Sorry.
I don't think you can judge really well based on your photos because they show such a small portion of your body. We all carry fat differently. I could take a picture of myself that looked like the 20-22% woman but the truth is that under my waistline I have a sizable hidden roll of fat that takes me well above that percentage.
I saved a few links to pictures of women who had DEXA scans to figure out their bf%. Here they are.
When comparing those people's measurements, it is worth noting that DEXA scans usually register 3% higher than most traditional caliper methods. This may have to do with DEXA is going to detect visceral fat a lot more because it is an x-ray. The 25.7% woman from your link looks more like she's between the BUILTLEAN picture's 15-17% and 20-22%.
Agreed.
I think that body fat % is interesting because it is a number but I don't think that it is a very useful number.
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Yeah, ultimately for most people, I'd agree with the go by how you feel about what is in the mirror approach. I've had a DEXA scan in June, and will probably do one again in December (the place I has a minimum of six month wait between scans, which is also decent timing to me), but I'm a numbers/statistics interested person, and I have a poor sense of aesthetics to go by the mirror.
Sorry.
I don't think you can judge really well based on your photos because they show such a small portion of your body. We all carry fat differently. I could take a picture of myself that looked like the 20-22% woman but the truth is that under my waistline I have a sizable hidden roll of fat that takes me well above that percentage.
I saved a few links to pictures of women who had DEXA scans to figure out their bf%. Here they are.
When comparing those people's measurements, it is worth noting that DEXA scans usually register 3% higher than most traditional caliper methods. This may have to do with DEXA is going to detect visceral fat a lot more because it is an x-ray. The 25.7% woman from your link looks more like she's between the BUILTLEAN picture's 15-17% and 20-22%.
Agreed.
I think that body fat % is interesting because it is a number but I don't think that it is a very useful number.
I'll admit that even though I think the number isn't too useful I would like a DEXA scan done too. I can get a two visit package for $70 (one visit $40), which isn't bad at all. The info on how my fat is distributed interests me. I am very uneven/disproportionate from what I see in the mirror. Nobody (or at least very few people) is completely proportional, of course, but that's the part that interests me the most.0 -
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Yeah, a university near me offers it for $40, which is what made it rather accessible to me. I just barely found out about the service, and before that was contemplating spending ~$100 for a less accurate BodPod visit, which also would have involved a 45 minute drive.
Yeah, ultimately for most people, I'd agree with the go by how you feel about what is in the mirror approach. I've had a DEXA scan in June, and will probably do one again in December (the place I has a minimum of six month wait between scans, which is also decent timing to me), but I'm a numbers/statistics interested person, and I have a poor sense of aesthetics to go by the mirror.
Sorry.
I don't think you can judge really well based on your photos because they show such a small portion of your body. We all carry fat differently. I could take a picture of myself that looked like the 20-22% woman but the truth is that under my waistline I have a sizable hidden roll of fat that takes me well above that percentage.
I saved a few links to pictures of women who had DEXA scans to figure out their bf%. Here they are.
When comparing those people's measurements, it is worth noting that DEXA scans usually register 3% higher than most traditional caliper methods. This may have to do with DEXA is going to detect visceral fat a lot more because it is an x-ray. The 25.7% woman from your link looks more like she's between the BUILTLEAN picture's 15-17% and 20-22%.
Agreed.
I think that body fat % is interesting because it is a number but I don't think that it is a very useful number.
I'll admit that even though I think the number isn't too useful I would like a DEXA scan done too. I can get a two visit package for $70 (one visit $40), which isn't bad at all. The info on how my fat is distributed interests me. I am very uneven/disproportionate from what I see in the mirror. Nobody (or at least very few people) is completely proportional, of course, but that's the part that interests me the most.0 -
I'd say it in the sense that won't tell you if you have a nice physique or not. I remember there was a case of a Mr. Olympia competitor that was sure he was going to win simply because he was using newer (at the time) body fat measuring hydrostatic weighing, and knew his percentage was around 4%. He didn't even place top 3. He was too focused on the number.
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I'm not entirely sure how to answer that other than to say that I literally do not see a real use for it. The only thing I can think to do with it is to plug it into a calorie calculator to help get an estimate of how many calories to eat but I can just as easily figure out that calorie level based on my experience tracking my food. I could figure out my bf% now and then 6 months from now and that would be interesting but I don't think it would really be useful other than to say it decreased or increased.0 -
The only useful thing I get out of that is I wouldn't date woman #1 because she is a corpse.
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None of them are particularly accurate although some have better prediction rates than others.
If you want a good overview read all the parts to this series:
The pitfalls of body fat measurement
From the article:When a weather man gives you a forecast, he doesn't measure the weather. He is predicting the weather. And that's exactly what is happening when you have your body fat tested. We are predicting your body fat levels, not measuring them. Along with that prediction comes a certain amount of error. Just as the weatherman cannot predict the weather with 100% accuracy, we cannot predict your body fat levels with 100% accuracy. In fact, we can't even predict your body fat with 70% accuracy. In this article, you are about to learn just how bad the prediction really is.0 -
And ignoring all the other issues of the somewhat distasteful issues here, why would anyone have access to a person's BF% and not actually have the ability to see the person? To flip it onto you, if one woman has 15% body fat and another 16% body fat, are you automatically picking the woman with 15%?0 -
Show me a person who literally needs a body fat % report to tell you whether or not they want to date a woman and you'll have an argument. Even if you use more moderate percentages, let's say 18%, 25%, and 32%, I can't imagine that there are people who couldn't figure out if they liked the way a woman looked, using simply their eyeballs, rather than needing a number.0 -
I'm not entirely sure how to answer that other than to say that I literally do not see a real use for it. The only thing I can think to do with it is to plug it into a calorie calculator to help get an estimate of how many calories to eat but I can just as easily figure out that calorie level based on my experience tracking my food.
Not everyone logs, some do not log accurately, and even some don't have the common sense to figure out when they are overeating based on the scale not moving down.
Knowing bodyfat % also helps a person to accurately gauge lean body mass. And I see a lot of people like using LBM to calculate their macros on here.0 -
Well then, in that sense, a rational person would realize that for the $40 cost of DEXA scan, they could afford 1,371 grams of whey protein, which over a 6 month span works out to 7 grams to pad their protein estimates. And now they didn't have to spend 10 minutes inside of a medical device.
I'm not entirely sure how to answer that other than to say that I literally do not see a real use for it. The only thing I can think to do with it is to plug it into a calorie calculator to help get an estimate of how many calories to eat but I can just as easily figure out that calorie level based on my experience tracking my food.
Not everyone logs, some do not log accurately, and even some don't have the common sense to figure out when they are overeating based on the scale not moving down.
Knowing bodyfat % also helps a person to accurately gauge lean body mass. And I see a lot of people like using LBM to calculate their macros on here.0 -
None of them are particularly accurate although some have better prediction rates than others.
If you want a good overview read all the parts to this series:
The pitfalls of body fat measurement
From the article:When a weather man gives you a forecast, he doesn't measure the weather. He is predicting the weather. And that's exactly what is happening when you have your body fat tested. We are predicting your body fat levels, not measuring them. Along with that prediction comes a certain amount of error. Just as the weatherman cannot predict the weather with 100% accuracy, we cannot predict your body fat levels with 100% accuracy. In fact, we can't even predict your body fat with 70% accuracy. In this article, you are about to learn just how bad the prediction really is.
Thanks for the article series! I really like that weather man analogy. I think I'll just save my money after all and go by visual cues. Haha. Perhaps it's not something worth worrying about as long as I know that I am eating well and working out to be the best I can be.
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This discussion has been closed.
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