Lately I have been testing my body fat with calipers, but I have a problem: most of my body fat ends up right around my waist. I end up with some in my arms, too, but almost none on my triceps or legs. So I’m pretty sure that my caliper readings are suspect at best.
How accurate are electronic testers? I don’t mind buying one if they’re accurate, but if the tech is bullshit I don’t want to bother.
[quote]supabeast wrote:
Lately I have been testing my body fat with calipers, but I have a problem: most of my body fat ends up right around my waist. I end up with some in my arms, too, but almost none on my triceps or legs. So I’m pretty sure that my caliper readings are suspect at best.
How accurate are electronic testers? I don’t mind buying one if they’re accurate, but if the tech is bullshit I don’t want to bother.[/quote]
They are bullshit. Don’t wast your money. There are WAY too many factors that affect the readouts on the hand held electronic testers. At my leanest, 165 I was 6% body fat but those electronic testers told me I was like 13-14% body fat. Personally, I’d stick with the calipers and not wast my money on the elctronic ones, but that’s just my 2 cents.
Yeah dude. I’m no 6% like Football061, but I’ve got visible abs and I had an electronic scale put me at nearly 18% last week lol
Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
The accuracy of calipers depends on:
who is using them- you really need to have someone trained to use calipers do the skin fold test on you
how many sites the tester is using- if you’re only doing a 3 site test, then calipers aren’t very accurate. If on the other hand you’re doing a 12 site test, then the reading is probably much closer to your actual body fat.
The accuracy of bio impedance devices (like the hand held ones you’re talking about) depends on:
how much water you’ve ingested during the day (or even during the past couple days)
whether or not you’ve worked out lately
what time of day you’re using the device
The advantage of the bio impedance devices is that they’re sort of “dummy proof” in that they require no prior training to use. The advantage of calipers is that if you can find a qualified person to use them and they do a 12 site test then there is less chance of the results being thrown off due to other factors.
In the end I’d say that overall both have probably relatively the same level of accuracy and if you’ve already got access to a pair of calipers, then save your money and don’t buy the bio impedance device.
I’m not too familiar with caliper usage. If you didn’t really care about your official total bodyfat percentage but were more interested in knowing if you’re gaining or losing bodyfat (which is the important point for most people), then could you just pick one very specific spot (probably on your belly) and use that? Or would that also be unreliable?
Brien
Yeah I bought a scale that had “built it body fat analyzing” it gave me like 30 or 25% or somtin crazy, then I used one of those handheld testers at my gym n it read off 8%. So those step on scales are BS IMO but I have never had a calper test done, so I have no stand point there; but I think I’ll get it done to see.