I’m looking at investing in scale that detects body fat percentage but I’m wondering if and how they actually work? For those of you that own one, do you feel confident it gives you accurate numbers?
Mine tells me all many lies. And so many batches of conflicting information, honestly. The weight is right and then it gives me BMI, which is just putting height/weight into a bogus formula .
Then it gives me body far percentage and it varies 5% from time to time.. sometimes 24%, sometimes 29%. Just depending on how much moisture is in my feet (or something?)
That information is valueless. I don’t mind the scale because I got it for free from my health insurance
All bio-impedence works the same way — it sends a low-level electrical charge through your body and measures the resistance caused by water. Then it plugs that data into an equation, which is based on a whole bunch of averages, and spits out its best guess at what your body fat, lean mass, bone mass and hydration levels are.
That equation is not based on people who are fasting. Fasting causes your body to produce less insulin, and because insulin is responsible for helping determine how much water gets stored in your muscles in the form of glycogen, your body fat number may bounce around depending on when you’ve last eaten.
This is why you’ll see people sometimes post things like, “I’m fifteen days into a fast and my body fat percentage went up?!” It didn’t. Their proxy measurement is just not as accurate when you’re fasting and your glycogen levels are depleted. If you’re a person who will panic when your numbers do screwy things, I would stay away from those kinds of scales for your own sanity and go by measurements, photos and faith in the process.
At the end of the day, every method of measuring body fat is an estimate based on some equation — except autopsy. Cheers.
I feel confident that the calculations are consistent and show me if my fat amount is going up or down. I’m not sure the number itself is correct. I’ve had a Withings scale since 2012 and I really like having the history tracked. I just ordered a new Withings scale which at some point (can’t seem to find info on how) will show visceral fat amounts- mostly because it sounds kinda cool.