Body Fat Percentage vs. Actual Weight - advice

claired789

Hi everyone,

I've recently completed a 6 week 'pre-Christmas fit' program at my gym and have lost 3.3kg (7.2lb) so far, I’m stoked! I have always regularly exercised and had a good diet (generally), but indulged too often and needed to break some bad habits.

Anyway – I weighed myself three times throughout the 6 weeks on a Tanita Body Composition Analyzer and even though my weight in kg’s has dropped, my body fat percentage slightly went up since my last weigh-in, as did my fat mass. I’m wondering if anyone has any advice on why this may be? See below for my results:

HEIGHT: 168cm, 26 year-old female

12 November
Weight: 69.1kg
Fat %: 27.6
Fat Mass: 19.1kg

26 November
Weight: 67.4kg
Fat %: 23.7
Fat Mass: 16kg

16 December
Weight: 65.8kg
Fat %: 25.8
Fat Mass: 17kg.

Weigh-ins have happened at the same time of day (all mid-week in the morning). My clothes feel looser and I feel great so I’m not disheartened at all, it would just be interesting to hear if this has happened to anyone else. I'm going to do the program once more and have upped the intensity in my HIIT and weight training, so hopefully that helps and my results will be more consistent.

Thanks!

Claire

charlieandcarol

Hi Claire,

The body comp scales or analysers usually all work on measuring the impedance of an electrical current through your body. Then your body fat% and Fat mass are calculated from this measurement. They are highly reliant on your hydration status and are notoriously unreliable as one off measures but may be helpful for observing long term trends if you had access to the same device over a 1 year time frame say. I would ignore it and carry on running off what you weight and what your measurements say.

If you really want to know what your body fat % is, a Dexa scan or a bodpod would be more reliable.

claired789

Thanks so much for the advice, I appreciate it! PS Your horse is gorgeous, I have one too

SeanNJ

claired789 wrote: »

Anyway – I weighed myself three times throughout the 6 weeks on a Tanita Body Composition Analyzer and even though my weight in kg’s has dropped, my body fat percentage slightly went up since my last weigh-in, as did my fat mass. I’m wondering if anyone has any advice on why this may be?

I weigh myself much more frequently than you do, which is only meaningful because I have similar day-to-day, week-to-week massive fluctuations in BF% readings from my BIA scale that you're experiencing over the smaller sample. I have zero comfort in the validity of the actual numbers it puts out, but after charting them over several months there is a pronounced downward trend line. So, I'm comfortable using those numbers for that limited purpose.

If you do a google image search for "body fat percentage," there are plenty of photos that show what a person's body looks like at different compositions. That might be the best way judge where you are, as long as you can do it with an honest eye.