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Body fat calculators-accurate?

  • 11-08-2014 12:40pm
    #1
    araic88
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 313 ✭✭


    I'm very confused about my body fat.
    Just for fun while killing time, a friend and I used one of those BMI/blood pressure/body fat machines in a chemist. My BMI was normal but body fat came out as 41%!! I was horrified as iv been doing a lot of exercise the last few months and have lost quite a bit of weight, yet even before that I wouldn't have thought it was very high.
    A week or so later I saw the same machine in a different chemist and this one gave my body fat as 28%, right in the acceptable range. I hadn't done anything in that one week to change it so much!
    I decided to get an assessment done in the gym I go to, thinking they might use a more accurate method (a caliper test or whatever its called!) but it was basically the same hand held instrument. It gave a reading of 38%. The instructor said "well that's in the obese category but obviously you're not obese". She suggested weight training and changing my diet but I would otherwise have been happy with my diet and fitness (I got a "good" score for overall fitness in the assessment, again with a normal BMI, average muscular strength and 'excellent' waist to hip ratio)

    Basically I'm wondering do I need to be worried about such high body fat percentages or does the fact that they've varied so much suggest that they're not very accurate?


Comments

  • #2
    Alf Veedersane
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 24,694 ✭✭✭✭Alf Veedersane


    In the context of your health and fitness being fine and your BMI being normal, then I'd be inclined to say to completely disregard the reading from those electronic calculators. They're notoriously inaccurate.

    Even calipers can vary, depending on the competency of the person using them.

    If everything else is in order, I wouldn't be worried about a couple of readings that don't make sense presuming everything else, i.e. diet and fitness, is fine.


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