Body Fat Measurement TechniquesThere are many body fat measurement techniques. Knowing your body fat percentage is an important thing to know when you are making any attempt to “lose weight” or to “get fit”. While there are many arguments as to the real needs for us to measure body fat percentages and also the accuracy of many of the methods, I will only be discussing some of the more popular body fat measurement techniques. Height/Weight tables are quick and easy and seem to have been around for a long time. They can be effective in a quick screening process for insurance companies and in medical surveys. Beyond this, they are not very accurate and can be very misleading as to your general level of body fat. I know for me when we do the semi-annual physical testing the in Navy I have to face the height/weight scale. Basically the Navy requires us to be below a certain body fat level. As a first screening process they make the basic assumption that if I weigh less than a specified weight for my height, then it is impossible for me to be above the body fat limits. For this purpose I think that the height/weight tables are a good tool but ineffective in telling me what my body fat percentage really is. Using the BMI method to estimate your body fat percentage seems to be another fairly simple tool. So simple actually that it really isn’t all that accurate. I think it is something similar to the Navy’s height/weight tables…a good rough cut but nothing accurate. You can see the BMI body fat measurement technique to calculate your body fat percentage here. Another method is to take a few circumferential measurements on your body and plug them into an equation. There have been plenty of studies on this method and it is sufficient to say that if the US Navy is willing to use this method as the primary tool in screening us then it must be fairly accurate. For men they measure the neck and subtract from the measure of the waist at the navel. The result is used with a chart and compared to height. The intersection of your waist-neck and height reveals your body fat percentage. For women it is a little more complicated, but it uses the neck, waist, hips, and height. You can Calculate your Body Fat Percentage by measuring the areas yourself and entering them in this calculator. One of the more accurate body fat measurement techniques is the bioelectric impedance analysis method. Here they take a pair of electrodes, one on your right ankle and the other on your right wrist. A small current is sent through your body and the resistance to the current flow is measured. The basic idea here is that muscle and fat will conduct electricity differently. From what I have read this is one of the most accurate methods but does suffer from some inaccuracies based upon the amount of water you were drinking before the test, etc. This method is primarily done in a clinic but there have been a few products that combine a scale and the BIA to give you a tool for home use. These mostly have two plates you stand on and it measures your Bioelectric Impedance, measures your weight and calculates your body fat percentage all in one step. A method I used when I was back in high school was the skin fold measurement technique. Today there are many different methods that use a varied amount of locations on your body and an equation to calculate your body fat percentage. As few as one to as many as eleven locations on your body are used. A pair of calipers are used to measure the thickness of the skin when pinched in these various locations. The basic premise is that a large percentage of the fat is stored directly below the skin. Of course there is an inherent inaccuracy with this method because body fat can be stored in many other locations other than under the skin and this method does nothing other than make basic educated guesses at allowing for these fat stores. All in all, if we are looking for an accurate body fat measurement technique, we will be left longing for more. For our purposes however, we want to be able to estimate our body fat percentage on a repeatable basis. It is important for us to lose fat, not just to lose weight. Picking a reliable method to measure our body fat can help us stay focused on the real goal of losing fat but retaining our lean body mass. Hope this helps!
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