What’s the best tool to measure my Body fat PERCENTAGE?
Before you start your fat loss journey, it’s crucial to establish a clear starting point as well as an end goal.
This allows us to track your progress accurately and make informed adjustments along the way.
Here’s how we’ll assess where you’re starting from and why each method is important.
THE GOAL
Firstly, it’s important to establish a goal based on your body fat percentage.
This ensures that we’re focused on getting lean and maintaining or even growing our muscle mass.
There’s no point in achieving a target weight when we lose muscle mass too.
This means that a chunk of their metabolism, strength and movement capabilities will have been lost.
1. Why We Don’t Rely on Body Fat Measurement Devices
When it comes to measuring body fat, the methods available to us vary greatly in terms of accuracy.
Here’s a rundown of common methods, from most to least accurate, along with their individual error rates:
Autopsy: The only truly accurate method, but obviously not practical.
DEXA Scan: Accuracy is around ~5%, but it’s expensive and not always accessible.
BodPod / Underwater Weighing: These methods have an accuracy of up to 6%. They are expensive and inconvenient, so not ideal for regular use.
Body-Fat Calipers: With a skilled practitioner, calipers can be quite accurate, with an error rate of around ~3%. However, this depends heavily on the skill of the person using them, so we have reliability issues. Moreover, the percentage we obtain is based on a formula, which relies on assumptions we have to make, some of which are not valid.
Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA): This is one of the least accurate methods, with an error rate of up to 8%. These machines can produce wildly varying results.
Let’s take a closer look at the BIA machines.
These devices, commonly found in gyms and home scales, have a high degree of inaccuracy.
For example, if a BIA machine gives you a reading of 20% body fat, your actual body fat could be anywhere from 12% to 28%.
That’s a huge margin of error, making it an unreliable tool for tracking your progress.
2. How We’ll Measure Progress: Photos, Tape Measurements, and the Scale
Given the inaccuracies of many body fat measurement tools, we’ll rely on more practical and consistent methods to assess your progress:
Photos
Taking regular progress photos is one of the most effective ways to visually track changes in your body composition.
Photos provide a clear, visual record of your transformation over time.
They can reveal changes that the scale might not show, such as muscle gain and fat loss.
Using a photo guide is an easy way to determine where your body fat percentage may lie.
We can simply pick where we are now to where we want to be and then plot our route there.
Tape/Girth Measurements
Using a tape measure to track the circumference of key areas like your waist, hips, chest, arms, and thighs gives us a tangible way to monitor changes in body size.
This method is especially useful for seeing where fat loss is occurring, even if the scale isn’t moving much.
It’s also a great way to ensure that muscle mass is being preserved while fat is being lost.
Scale Weight
While not the sole indicator of progress, your weight on the scale is another important metric. It gives us a general sense of whether you’re in a calorie deficit or surplus. However, remember that weight can fluctuate due to factors like water retention, muscle gain, and even stress levels, so it’s just one piece of the puzzle.
Why These Methods Work Together
By using a combination of photos, tape measurements, and scale weight, we can get a comprehensive picture of your progress.
This approach helps us avoid the pitfalls of relying on a single, potentially inaccurate method and ensures that we’re capturing all the changes happening in your body.
It also allows us to make adjustments to your plan based on real, observable results, rather than being misled by unreliable data.
