Are body fat calipers accurate?

_lyndseybrooke_

My husband and I went to the Vitamin Shoppe this weekend and spent $18 on a set of body fat calipers. I know it's not as accurate as the dunk test or whatever, but it was pretty cheap so we got it.

We read the instructions, went one inch up from the point of our right hip, pinched 2-3 inches of skin/fat away from the underlying muscle, placed the calipers 1/4 inch from our finger, squeezed until we heard the click, read the reading in mm, and checked it on the chart. Seems simple enough.

My husband, who is 5'9" and 156 lbs, kept getting readings like 21-25% body fat, which I thought sounded quite high. He's been lifting for about a year and, while he's not all that "muscular," he doesn't have much fat that I can see. I used the calipers on myself and got 15%, which I thought sounded quite low. We did multiple readings and I ended up doing his for him so we could eliminate any differences in our technique. In the end, we settled on 18% for him and 23.8% for me.

You can see pictures of me on my profile and this is a recent picture of him totally relaxed, no flexing at all.

http://i62.tinypic.com/29d7l8l.jpg

So, does 18% for him and 23.8% for me seem right based on our photos? The calipers claim to be really accurate, but I'm not sure I'm convinced. Or maybe we're doing it wrong, but it's not exactly rocket science. He's trying to bulk right now and is super impatient. He was expecting a lower number and his goal is more like 10%, so now he's talking about cutting, but it seems too soon for him to do that. Not that I know anything about that...

juggernaut1974

I'm no good at estimate body fat % by photos so I won't even try.

But calipers are only as accurate as the people using them and how they're using them.

I don't say that as an accusation - just that if you've never used them before, and by your own admission you're getting widely varying results, it's likely you're also not getting tremendously accurate results.

_lyndseybrooke_

I'm no good at estimate body fat % by photos so I won't even try.

But calipers are only as accurate as the people using them and how they're using them.

I don't say that as an accusation - just that if you've never used them before, and by your own admission you're getting widely varying results, it's likely you're also not getting tremendously accurate results.

I just watched some instructional videos about using the calipers and it looks like we did it correctly, but we may try again tonight.