Body fat% keeps going up...why?

I have the aria scales.This happens to me. There's a few things that can alter readings.
1) I will lose weight and show a lower BF% immediately after a shower
2) How clean/dry my feet are
3) How much did I drink yesterday
4) How late did I eat last night
5) TOM

You get the idea. To see my trending I look at the look at the dashboard and look over a month period. Is my body fat lower or higher than last month. If the little trend line is going down then I am heading in the right direction.

If I have a splurge weekend I will often find that I've put on weight but BF% is lower. Hydration is a huge factor in this. My lowest and most accurate weight for me is Friday morning because I tend to eat more consistently through the week and I drink lots of water at work. My weekends I eat all over the place and will often end up drinking more water later in the day to make up for not drinking as much during the day. Also I find after a big workout (my weekends are usually way more active than my weekday) I will always weigh more the next day. I've read this is due to the body holding onto more water to aid recovery.

Moral of the story. Look at the trend dont look at daily fluctuations.

I'll also add that I have looked at those sites where you see a picture and a bf% and I estimate that my current bf% readings are pretty close to the picture. @37% my tummy still has a little overhang but the "W" is now more of a long "U" and my waist is narrowing to come back to my more normal hourglass/pear shape.

When I started I was about 42% BF. I've lost about 10kgs since then.

kuranda10 wrote: »

strong_curves wrote: »

CalorieCountChocula wrote: »

LOL sooooooooo is anything accurate? I'm seeing a pattern here. Even my bod pod test seemed to say 2% error rate on either side. Greattttttttt. So I can't even bank on that 27%? Maybe it's 29%? Or should I be optimistic and say 25%. Yeah. For sure 25...maybe 24.99 even... Yeah...

iirc DEXA is more accurate but yeah, there isn't much out there that's 100% accurate.

My Dexa scan and my Aria scale were within 1% of each other.

Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. The correlation between the two does not say anything about the accuracy of your scale. It simply says that this one time it got it pretty close. The problem with the scales is they are not even ultimately accurate to themselves, and they can be thrown off easily, most notably by water consumption as hydration is part of how it measures your body fat.

nordlead2005 wrote: »

Watching what you eat (low carb, low fat, fad of the year) and drinking a gallon/day of water have no direct correlation to reducing body fat. If they indirectly cause you to eat less calories then you expend, then you'll lose weight and most of it will be fat. So we can ignore that portion of your post. You did say you lost weight though, so you would expect a drop, but 3lb isn't much of a weight change and could all be water weight, we don't know.

As for you, you are relying on a bio-electrical impedance device, which are not particularly accurate. If you are changing the scenarios under which you are measuring (right after waking up vs after exercising) you will get different results, which may lead to what you are experiencing.

2-3 weeks also isn't long enough to determine a trend. I take my BF% every monday with calipers and fully expect some Mondays to be up/steady, and other Mondays to be down despite losing weight.

So, ultimately, understand the limitations of the tool and take the readings with a grain of salt.

CalorieCountChocula wrote: »

LOL sooooooooo is anything accurate? I'm seeing a pattern here. Even my bod pod test seemed to say 2% error rate on either side. Greattttttttt. So I can't even bank on that 27%? Maybe it's 29%? Or should I be optimistic and say 25%. Yeah. For sure 25...maybe 24.99 even... Yeah...

Get a professional water test. It's the most accurate way to measure however it's costly