Anyone familiar with Tanita Body Fat Analyzer

uthinkuknowme
uthinkuknowme Posts: 126 Member
edited December 1 in Fitness and Exercise
The gym which I frequent has a Tanita Body Fat Analyzer, model TBF-105. It's not not very accurate with regard to body fat %, but I use it for a baseline to measure my weight and its variations over time.

I can't find any support material for it online, so I'm guessing it's very old.

How it works - Gym staff advises you enter 2.2 at the start to compensate for clothing. You then enter Child, Adult or Athlete. Then gender and height. You step on it. After a couple seconds, you get a readout of weight, body fat %, and amount of fat in pounds.

My questions:

1 - Why is the athlete and adult settings so drastically different? Set on athlete, I get a body fat % around 7-8%. At adult it's around 15% (almost double).

2 - Monday I weight myself as athlete. I get 165.2 pounds, 6.8% body fat, and 11.2 pounds of fat. Tuesday is an offday, and I overdo it with calories (almost 4,000 due to a six pack, trip to Olive Garden). I go in Wednesday - 48 hours later at about same time of day - and weight is 168.7, but body fat is 6.0%, fat 10.1 pounds. This isn't the first time I've seen the ratio reverse after a bad day. Any reason why?

Again, I DO NOT BELIEVE THE NUMBERS (lack of cut abs is proof of that). But even when weighed as adult, the reverse ratio (weight up, body fat down, after a binge) holds.

Is it the scale? Or something with how the body deals with a binge?

Thanks.

Replies

  • kimdawnhayden
    kimdawnhayden Posts: 298 Member
    Maybe something with the way water is carried in the muscle tissue and dehydration due to alcohol?
  • SonyaCele
    SonyaCele Posts: 2,841 Member
    the tanita isn't super accurate, they send some electical signal through your body, and it travels different speeds through fat vs lean mass, so its just estimating whats going on . The best way to use them is to measure daily under the same exact circumstances , such as first thing in the morning after you pee before your coffee. And just track those daily numbers and pay attention only to the change in those numbers. The number itself isn't gonna be accurate, but a change in the number will give you a more accurate estimate if you are gaining or losing body fat %. But its all just estimates, its just one way to track measurements. and there are more accurate ways to calculate BF but that requires things like dunk tanks. Even thats just estimates.
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