Side-by-side comparison of Body Fat estimation methods

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WATRD
WATRD Posts: 25
in Fitness and Exercise
My gym had a "health fair" today, so I had five methods of measuring my body fat available at the same time. Most folks did one or two of them, but I wanted to get a sense of which worked for me, so I did all of them. Below are my results. As always, your mileage may vary.

15.3 - Navy Method/Measurements/Android App
15.5 - Immersion Tank
16.4 - Calipers/Measurements
18.3 - Capacitive (Hand Held)
19.1 - Capacitive (Bathroom Scale)

I have been using an app for my Android phone that allows you to input measurements and it calculates your body fat. Based upon how close to the immersion measurement it was, I am going to stick with it and steer clear of the capacitance machines. I did see a woman stand in line to do all the methods like I was doing and her results seemed to support the same spread, so I entered her into the phone app and it was again closest to the immersion. "Body Fat Calculator" is the name of it.

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  • wolfchild59
    wolfchild59 Posts: 2,608 Member
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    Any idea who makes the app? I have an iPhone and often the same apps are available but under slightly different names and I'd love to find the one you're using. :)
  • WATRD
    WATRD Posts: 25
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    I just checked and it's by "FullQuieting"

    "Body Fat Calculator - FullQuieting" It's got a blob of something, presumably fat? being squeezed by a tape measure for a logo.
  • Nikstergirl
    Nikstergirl Posts: 1,549 Member
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    Thanks for the info! I'm looking on my iPhone to see if I can find something similar, and there are even a couple of free apps... we'll see what they say, I don't like the handheld thing at my gym. I had lost like 30 pounds and they said I only went down 3% body fat... I don't think so!!!!
  • tigersword
    tigersword Posts: 8,059 Member
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    Definitely stay away from bathroom scale models. So far this week, my bathroom scale gave me a consistent weight (it's always very accurate for weight) but I've had a body fat percentage of 25%, 23%, 29%, 33%, and 30% over the past 5 days. Meanwhile using the Navy calculation I get about 22%, which is very close to the calipers I was tested with.
  • Rae6503
    Rae6503 Posts: 6,294 Member
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    Interesting! All I've done is a hand held thingy (23.4%), and a website that asked for measurements (25%).
  • Jeff92se
    Jeff92se Posts: 3,369 Member
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    Nce. I downloaded this one: US Army APFT-Body Fat Calculator for the iphone and it seems to take the same measurements as the google adroid one.

    Great info!

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