BMI and Body Fat scale

JAHittle

I'm looking to upgrade my bathroom scale. So, I'm looking for suggestions regarding a unit.

Cheap and accurate. And, specifically, which ones to avoid.

Ideas??

Thanks!!

sijomial

BMI is a height / weight ratio and any decent scales should give you an accurate weight.

To improve your chances for getting a somewhat reasonable body fat estimate go for a model with both hand and feet sensors and use them in a consistent way looking for a guideline to see a trend rather than expect an empirically accurate number.

I used an Omron four sensor model a few years ago and it was pretty reasonable (at least as useful as BodPod scans - not that they are gold standard either though!).

Whatever you get it's a bit of a lottery as many are simply hopeless, try to verify whatever numbers you get against another source even if it's just online body fat sample pictures.

JAHittle

Yep, I'm not looking to be terribly scientific with a bathroom implement. Just need something that can show a reasonably believable trend, especially in the body fat scan capabilities.

Thanks for your feedback! Why did you move on from the Omron?

sijomial

The Omron died!
It coincided with me getting to goal weight so I just decided to go by what I saw in the mirror as I never had a particular BF% in mind as a goal.

My gym has recently provided free to members a BodyTrax unit and I sometimes use that, it seems pretty decent if used at same time of day under same conditions.
Consistency is a big thing with BIA estimates, different hydration levels throw them out badly and also food timing. Eat a big steak and it will think you've gained a pound of muscle.

JAHittle

THERE ya go !!!

I'm currently using the typical hit-me-once-to-turn-me-on (and don't you wish all things worked that way?) load cell bathroom scale, which isn't too bad if you leave it in the same location and don't move it. Move it, and it can show that you've gained 1.6 pounds between weighs, even if all you've done in the interim is to take a healthy dump.

I'm guessing that aspect is true of all of the new-to-me digital read-outs on simple load cells, but hadn't even thought of that until I happened to read of the phenomena of mis-reads due to even slight moves on another discussion thread somewhere here on these forums.

I didn't even realize that scales with other stats were in existence until a couple of days ago, so my "I don't know what I'm doing" has kicked in yet again!

Hopefully this old dog can be taught some new tricks!

Again, thanks for the feedback. I've been looking at the Omron. With "empty nest" a definite reality, I shouldn't need more than 4 people capability in the tracking/recording function. I'll google to see if your reliability issue might still be a concern.

DancingMoosie

I have a Weight Watchers digital scale from Walmart. You can program in your age and height. It gives you weight, BMI, BF% and water%

jamesakrobinson

I have both a more expensive Withings Body Cardio, (now Nokia) and a cheaper Omron with both hand and foot electrodes.

The Withings is wifi and Bluetooth and gives heartrate, weight muscle mass, bone mass, fat mass, hydration, and even today's weather! (used to give PWV too but they disabled that because it makes it a "medical device" and there's some regulation involved). Convenient because it automatically populates an app, which shares with MFP and Google Fit...

The Omron on the other hand gives weight, bmi, bodyfat and muscle as well as a visceral fat rating... It's not connected to anything though. Manual entry for tracking.

I get a dexa about twice a year and the Omron is always closer, probably because it's using upper and lower body.

Neither is really accurate but for tracking trends it's fine... are you getting fatter or leaner, adding or losing muscle mass... The a numbers are not actually accurate (except weight of course).

I like the connectivity of the Withings but the information of the Omron... LOL can't really win.

DX2JX2

Don't spend a ton of money on it. I made that mistake (bought the Garmin model) and totally regret it. In fact, you might want to reconsider altogether since the non-weight info is notoriously inaccurate (and isn't even good for tracking trends since the all of your numbers will tend to in proportion to your weight anyway).

Automatic uploading of weight information might not be as helpful as you think it would be. If you have multiple people using the scale who weigh about the same then it's inevitable that the data will eventually get mixed up.

JAHittle

DX2JX2 wrote: »

Don't spend a ton of money on it.

The more I read/research, the more I'm coming to your suggestion of total reconsideration. I haven't completely arrived either way, yet, but I'm getting much more reliable weight measurements since I stopped moving the one I've already got.

My doctor's scales already read
Way
Too
Fat

so maybe I don't really need to track the body fat numbers, anyway.

As far as the # of users go, it would just be the better-half, and me, and we're 120 pounds apart, so I'm thinking the mix-up possibilities are pretty low. There's no way she'd want to gain even to the 160 that I'm eventually hoping to get back too.