How reliable are the hand bodyfat things?

[guest439437484421]

We had a health care at work today. At one of the booths they had one of thoese hand held body fat things that you put in your height and weight, then squeeze the handles and it figures out your body fat percent. It said I was at 41.4% bodyfat. I'm rather budious to trust that number as it seems to be a lot higher than it should be. you can see by body shots here

so, how reliable are these?

[jimmie65]

I've read some reviews that don't give any of them high marks. Others seem to trust the very expensive models.

Have you tried using calipers?

[Zorch]

We had a health care at work today. At one of the booths they had one of thoese hand held body fat things that you put in your height and weight, then squeeze the handles and it figures out your body fat percent. It said I was at 41.4% bodyfat. I'm rather budious to trust that number as it seems to be a lot higher than it should be. you can see by body shots here

so, how reliable are these?

Not very. My gym had one of those that said <5% for me, when in reality I'd put my best guess at 10-12% at the time. In my case, it was probably my height(6'6") that threw things off. In general, they use a formula that's tailored to "average" people, so the further away from "average" you are, the less accurate they'll be.

I've read some reviews that don't give any of them high marks. Others seem to trust the very expensive models.

Have you tried using calipers?

Calipers aren't perfect either - there are several different formulae out there that you can find if you look around; some were way off for me(again, the ones that said I had 4% BF were obviously wrong), others were reasonably close to the mark.

In the end though, the absolute number is less important than being able to measure progress over time. I think that's the most important thing to keep in mind with regards to all fitness topics.

[jimmie65]

Calipers aren't perfect either - there are several different formulae out there that you can find if you look around; some were way off for me(again, the ones that said I had 4% BF were obviously wrong), others were reasonably close to the mark.

In the end though, the absolute number is less important than being able to measure progress over time. I think that's the most important thing to keep in mind with regards to all fitness topics.

I agree with all of this. The biggest benefit of any of these tools is being able to keep track of progress.

[LRB]

I own one of those -- I input my height, weight, and age, and then hit "start" and hold it according to the directions. I think it is pretty close to accurate -- maybe high by 2 percentage points or so. But really I use it to see variation and trends over time, rather than to have an absolute number.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

One thing to consider is the difference between accuracy and precision. Accuracy means that when something 33.46 units is measured, the device reports it is 33.46 units. Precision means that the gradations are correct. In other words, if something is 23.53 units and the device reports it is 21.67, but adding .6 units means the device reports 21.73, then it is precise. If you can get a device that is consistently precise, it can be useful for tracking changes, even if it does not tell you what your BF% really is. Steve has a very early article on his blog about calculating BF%, basically the only really accurate means are expensive.

[EmCee]

Agreed with everyone above. My dad has one of the handheld ones and I just consider it to be -/+ 2 either way. More concerned with tracking progress versus the actual number.

[eseng666]

i think the best way to monitor your body fat percentage is to take pictures like every two weeks or so.