to be shocked by my body fat percentage?

[Pollykitten]

I've just bought some of those fancy scales that do your body composition - these are supposed to be accurate to within 3% due to having hand as well as foot sensors. I'm 37 5'8", 10.5 stone and regularly exercise, including lots of resistance stuff with a trainer. It says my body fat composition is 32%!!!! WHY??!!! Am I 'fat on the inside'? Is that a thing? It also gave me a visceral fat (which I think is fat round your organs?) of 5 which is OK apparently. Anyone else think their body fat is higher than is 'should' be. I eat healthily, although I do drink quite a bit of wine. No processed food or sugar though. It's my fault for slating my husband's body composition scales - I was convinced they were wrong for 2 years with the % they were giving me (exactly the same as the new ones I just forked out for!)

Can I get one from Argos, mercury ?

I had my body fat measured in a hospital as part of a medical study - full body scan job, took an hour.

Those scales are BOLLOCKS - an utter waste of money.

from the guardian article:

*In Japan, sumo wrestlers have been put through MRI scanners to look at their fat composition. Even though they have a BMI of 56 and are eating up to 5,000 calories a day, they have very little internal fat. 'They have low cholesterol, they have low insulin resistance and a low level of triglycerides [fatty acids],' said Bell. 'Their fat is all stored under the skin, on the outside.'

The Imperial College team has found that the average male has 5.4 litres of visceral fat, and for women it is 3.08 litres. But women carry more fat overall, mostly on the thighs. The total amount of fat in the average woman is 37 litres, and 30 litres for men.*

I guess the sumo wrestler thing explains how you can be fairly 'bouncy' or 'well covered' but still, metabolically quite healthy?

I fail to understand how a set of scales can estimate someones body fat just by them standing on them??? It won't be accurate I am sure.

However, I believe a womans body fat content should be between 22 -30% so really, you are pretty much ok.

mercury ugh to LITRES of fat. That's made me feel all....weird! But good point about the 'covering' vs. the internal. With a visceral fat rating of 5 (0-9 is the healthy range for women apparently) perhaps I fall into the Sumo category?

I thought women were supposed to have about 30% fat (and men 20%) from what a gym instructor told me.

betty it's worked out by passing a minor electrical current through your body - the different bits of your body (fat, bone, muscle and water) all have different resistance to the current. This information is then fed into pre-set algorithms based on your age, sex and height. The one's I've bought also have a hand sensor so it's passing through both the upper and lower parts of body.

Yes that's true bumgrapes up to 33% is fine for women, past 40 it is higher! So you are actually in the healthy range anyway

Ah, BettySwollocks, that's what I was about to ask, how much should it be?

I think the scales are indirectly measuring your body's water content, and using that plus your weight, gender, age and height to have a stab at your fat%.

So make sure you're well hydrated when you get on them.

Having said that, my bathroom scales say my body fat is 40%, which I believe is a record for the thread so far.

Betty I think where and how fat is stored is as significant as the overall percentage of fat.

*As you lose weight, it tends to go from the top and bottom of your body first, so it can become concentrated in the abdomen. That is the most dangerous zone of all, and it's possible that going on a constant series of diets actually encourages the storage of fat in this region.'

The fat just underneath the skin is subcutaneous fat. The fat in the abdomen and surrounding vital organs is visceral fat. The latter is the kind which is metabolised by the liver, which transforms it into cholesterol that circulates in the blood. 'Bad' cholesterol, called low-density lipoproteins, collects in the arteries where it forms plaque that narrows the arteries*

(quotes from the aforementioned guardian article)

Boulevard - thank the lord you came onto the thread, someone who is higher than me woo hoo !

I normally get 24-25% body fat on mine. Do you have big boobs? If so, there is a lot of fat in boobage tissue. That's my excuse anyway !

My mum and i are the same height. She weighs approx 20 pounds more than me. I am a size 10, she is a 14. On her body fat scales my fat percentage is 8% more than her.

I'm a double D on the boobage front - if I, as it were, took them off, what would that do to the overall fat level, do you reckon?!!!

Take a look at this if you want to know what percentages of body fat rate as.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage

Description Women
Essential fat 10?13%
Athletes 14?20%
Fitness 21?24%
Average 25?31%
Obese 32%+

Description Men
Essential fat 2?5%
Athletes 6?13%
Fitness 14?17%
Average 18?24%
Obese 25%+

Some of you are worried about how much you have, but actually you are still within the normal range because women ARE SUPPOSED to have quite a high percentage of body fat.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage

Interesting point about the hand sensors, though, I'll be the first to admit that most of my weight is carried on my arse, so perhaps my lard-tastic result is related to my scales only having foot sensors.

That's my excuse!

(should mention my BMI is 26, so it's not like I need two cinema seats or anything)

Hmm, not sure if I should be worried about having somewhere between 13.5 and 18.5%. I seem to be alive and still get periods though. It does make me wonder though, we are supposed to have plenty of abdominal fat to keep babies warm aren't we?

If your local uni has a sports and exercise dept, you can look out for studies looking for participants for dexa scans- this is how i got mine done, totally for free! I was gutted at my results though. I'm 5ft 7, weigh 9.7 stone, am size 8-10 and i'm 31% body fat. The true definition of skinny fat.

And those scales that claim they measure body fat are rubbish, on those i'm 23% body fat. Not accurate at all. The DEXA and body pod scans are the most accurate.

I had the opposite experience. I was told at the gym that I had 9% body fat (this was before I had done any exercise - I was just joining). By that standard I should have looked extremely athletic and not been menstruating. I was menstruating, and I was also breast feeding DS2 so had 28J breasts. It's pretty unlikely that I had such low body fat. I think those scales are a load of tosh.

apparently you are more likely to be 'skinny fat' if you look slim but dont exercise.

I dont think we exactly need fat to keep babies warm but there is a physiological mechanism which switches off menstruation if a womans body fat drops below a certain level...if you are still having periods I guess it's safe to assume that there is nothing to worry about wrt body fat levels being too low

I am 38, 5"8 and 9 st 2lbs and my body fat is 22%.

I exercise vigorously a lot.

Boodles, do you do alot of cardio?