bodyfat?

[muscleted18]

ok somebody needs to clear something up with me. I use the same bodyfat calculation machine at my gym every time i go, but my bodyfat seems to fluxuate so much, one day its 26.3% couple days later 25.4%, today it was 27%, is this normal? or at these little things not very reliable? the only thing that is steady is the amount of weight in pounds of fat i have, its always gone down, never up. anyone got any info to help me out?

I don't know what type of instrument you're using but I'd say "yeah, it's probably pretty inaccurate". As far as I know, the most repeatably reliable and accurate way of measuring body fat involves total immersion in water and careful measurement of weight and volume.

Pinching the skin seems to me to be just an educated guess method.

I don't know what other types of gizmos have been hawked to measure body fat but if they have reliable science behind them they might be useful. Otherwise, I'd assume they were probably plus or minus 20% inaccurate. i.e. if your true body fat were 25% you could read 20% or 30% depending on numerous variables.

[glammaman2000]

how reliable these various testing devices are.but if you always test yourself on the same machine;you should be able to measure"upness or downness".your weight can easily vary 5lbs.day-to-day.i would guess this is true for other factors.

It can be educational to weigh yourself every day just so you can see how much it varies from day to day. You can loose several pounds simply by excreting waste. Weighing yourself when you first get up in the morning is probably the most reliable especially if you eliminate waste first and before you eat breakfast. But anytime that you feel is reliably consistent is OK. Cheap home scales though are notoriously inaccurate so consider that. Even balance scales in a gym can be abused and mis-calibrated, so watch for that too.

After you've done that for a few months, you'll have an idea how your weight can vary with exertion and consumption. Heck, two big glasses of water is a pound.
However, when trying to lose weight, weighing yourself once a week is probably better. Just be consistent in your eating and exercise habits, take your weekly weight (at a consistent time of day and inert material state) and you'll probably get a much better sense of your progress (or lack of it).

An achievable rate of fat loss is nine real pounds a month (three cans of crisco) on the other hand, real muscle gain without steroids is much slower, typically no more than 2 pounds a month. Gains faster than that are probably not all muscle especially when first starting to workout. Don't be discouraged. Two pounds of real muscle per month is 24 pounds a year. The difference between 150 and 175 is significant. The difference between 175 and 200 is impressive. The difference between 200 and 225 is incredible.

Don't be discouraged if your muscle gains are less than 2 pounds/month. You've got to be doing everything right to hit that mark. Even eight pounds of real muscle tissue in six months would be great!

Slow and steady wins the race.

[brent]

I think scales that claim to measure your bodyfat are bunk. I think they use a small electric current, to see how much resistance you have, and use that in a calculation to give you a number. So if you drink extra water, I think it could change that. You should experiment & see!

[RoidBoy]

Most accurate at an affordable price is measuring with caliper. But there are also different methods. You can buy a gripper (hope this is the right english word) for yourself or probably your gym has one.

The electric scales are mostly shit, except one brand -> Tanita. They have different modus for sports (more than 12h per activity per week) and measure also the water-% in your body. They were pretty accurate with measuring in comparison to caliper (difference max 2 %). Important is you need to measure you, always at the same time of the day.

http://www.tanita.com