Body Fat Percentage - Lean Body Mass

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jonesin_am
jonesin_am Posts: 404 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
This might be a stupid question but other than a personal trainer at a gym (I do not belong to a gym) how can I determine my body fat percentage or lean body mass? I thought they might do that during a physical at the dr's office but was told by my dr that they don't.

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  • benjamin1226
    benjamin1226 Posts: 13
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    Body fat calipers are the most accurate. You can purchase one on amazon, and it will come with an instructional manual.
  • SergeiKay
    SergeiKay Posts: 90 Member
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    Body fat calipers are the most accurate. You can purchase one on amazon, and it will come with an instructional manual.

    Yup. Wouldn't call them most accurate, but they do the job. There are multiple formulas to calculate BF%.
    Once you get the calipers, i suggest using this website:
    http://www.linear-software.com/online.html

    it shows you how and where to measure skin folds, then just plug in the numbers and get BF%.
    And, of course, BodyMass - (BF% * BodyMass) = LeanBodyMass.
  • jonesin_am
    jonesin_am Posts: 404 Member
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    Oh okay, I was thinking I had to go somewhere to get this done. After looking the calipers up online I also found some digital, hand-held body fat measurers. Which do you think is more accurate? I can't believe how cheap the calipers are though. That's def worth the investment. Thanks!
  • pgp90xer
    pgp90xer Posts: 219 Member
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    You can buy the Calipers at any GNC store, I did, it was about 12$. I too use the site www.linear-software.com. Make sure you view their How-to videos, they are great. It is important to make sure you take your measurements in the same place every time. The videos again will show you how. Best to take your measurements first thing in the morning too.

    Good luck
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    Body fat calipers are the most accurate. You can purchase one on amazon, and it will come with an instructional manual.

    not very accurate at all if you do your own measurement and are not trained on how to use them. Also the more spots you check the more accurate, a minimum of 3 should be used, preferable 5+
  • neverstray
    neverstray Posts: 3,845 Member
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    They are all good. I bought calipers, and was having trouble really undestanding. But, I came up with my reading. Then I bought a scale thinking that that would be close enough. It was exactly the same as the caliper measurment. So, I just go with the scale now. it's super easy. It can be off by a little, but who cares, you're looking for trends, not precise accuracy.
  • MinnieInMaine
    MinnieInMaine Posts: 6,400 Member
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    A friend of mine is a personal trainer and uses the digital hand held model. As I understand it, they're not quite as accurate as the calipers. However, the calipers are only as good as your measurement accuracy. Like pgp90xer said, you need to follow the directions closely and measure the same spots every time .

    Bottom line is to pick one way to measure and stick with it, just as you would for body weight measurment. If you weighed yourself on 2 different scales, they'd probably tell you 2 different weights...
  • Awkward30
    Awkward30 Posts: 1,927 Member
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    Calipers are great. Probably not accurate in absolute terms. But if you are consistent (you can do it 3 days in a row and get the same or a similar number), than you can still gauge progress
  • DocMarr
    DocMarr Posts: 132 Member
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    Also some online calculators if you want a rough idea of what your body fat is : http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bf/

    You can also buy scales that will measure it.
  • SergeiKay
    SergeiKay Posts: 90 Member
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    Oh okay, I was thinking I had to go somewhere to get this done. After looking the calipers up online I also found some digital, hand-held body fat measurers. Which do you think is more accurate? I can't believe how cheap the calipers are though. That's def worth the investment. Thanks!

    A word of advice, electronic body fat measures that rely on resistance (if they have two metallic plates on handles that you have to grab) completely suck. When i was in college, my coach was demonstrating how much they suck, he had a couple different ones, and yes, yes they do suck really bad. same for BF-measuring bathroom scales.
  • aweigh2go
    aweigh2go Posts: 164 Member
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    I have a lot of body fat so I use a tape measure to measure my waist, neck and hips and then plug them into the military body fat calculator on fat2fitradio.com/tools/mbf.
  • JasonDetwiler
    JasonDetwiler Posts: 364 Member
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    Most colleges have a Bod Pod. You sit in an egg-shaped pod and it determines your body fat. The professors and graduate students generally love to test people.

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