Can anyone advise (or recommend reading) on how breast size affects body fat mass please?

[Blueberriesaretasty]

Hi all, really enjoy being active and I'm at the gym or yoga regularly.

I've not long had a body scan done (from a reputable place - uni health department) and my fat mass is higher than I expected. I had it done out of interest more than anything - I'm not an athlete but any stretch!

I couldn't ask the guy doing the test as I felt awkward but wondering if anyone knows breast size affects this reading at all please? I'm well endowed and would help to know. Any suggestions for reading on this would be welcome too.

Thank you.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It is really hard to get it down. As an example. I am 5 foot 3. And I weight 9 stone. When I stand on the fancy scales at home and at the gym they both say my body fat is still obese. !!!!! Sorry. Don’t know about the boob thing. I lost all of my boobs when I lost weight

Highly unlikely that breast size affects these kinds of body fat readings: they're looking for visceral fat mostly.

Thanks both for taking the time to reply!

Hello, can I just jump in and ask what kind of scan you had? I have one booked for next week - also at a university - and it's not a dexa scan. It's a 'bodyscan'. Does anyone know if it will be accurate?
Thanks

It doesn't really impact on what's a healthy percentage for a woman, which is quite a large range anyway. A woman in any given category (athlete, fit, average, obese) is going to have aroynd 10% more fat than a comparable man. By some estimates up to around 28% is reasonable for women. This is all very rough science anyway, as there's no way to actually know the fat percentage on a living subject. They're all estimates. A DEXA scan is as good as it gets, but for the love of God don't drop £200 on a home bioimpedance scale to try and monitor it. They are significantly less accurate than a £1 tape measure.

It totally depends!! Breasts are made up of breast tissue and fat but the percentage of each varies widely from woman to woman (from memory it’s as much as 80:20 either way), which is why when some women loose weight their boobs shrink (they have a low % breast tissue and high % fat in their boobs) and others loose weight but their boobs stay similar size (high % breast tissue, low fat %).

Please jump in @pogglewump . I thought mine was going to be accurate but now not so sure! I hope yours is!

@liann34 @MiddleAgedDread thank you both for your replies. Definitely some info in there to use to research more.

I was unfit about 4 years ago and really had put on weight. I had wobbly bits on my back! I then put a lot of effort into working out - weights mostly and some cardio - and have changed my body shape and I'm way more toned. I have a smaller banding size but my breasts haven't shrunk, If anything they are a shade bigger. My shoulders are hips are broader.

I'm not perfect and have a few more snacks and definitely have some fat in my lower stomach (peri?). I'm a bit surprised that the measurement came out so high as I feel much more muscular.

Maybe I shouldn't put so much value on it. I am very active but life should be enjoyed as well.
Maybe I'm in denial!!!!

Thanks again all for your replies.

I put a lot of effort into it for over a year. And I just couldn’t get it down lower than I wanted. I decided in the grand scheme of things it didn’t really matter that much.
like u I changed everything. I don’t eat crap anymore. I lost four stone on weight. I go to the gym five days a week. I feel so much better and healthy. It wasn’t my hill to die on so I moved on. Just wish I had kept some of my boobs 😂

@Blueberriesaretasty sounds sensible. Having larger than average breasts might feasibly push it up a percentage point or two but....how would you actually know? No-one really knows their body fat to the exact percentage, even if they say they do, so there's truly no point in getting hung up on precise numbers. If you have a reasonably accurate body image, look up a chart that shows images of women in different ranges, look at yourself in your underwear, and that will tell you well enough. If you're body image isn't so accurate, get a tape measure and use one of the online calculators. That'll get you as close as anyone really needs to know it. There's a lot of online nonsense about body fat: influencers claiming to be wildly unrealistic figures (I work in health science and have eyes) or stating they've dropped from one fraction of a percentage to another.

When I was overweight I had huge boobs, but lost pretty much all of them when I lost the weight.

I don't think it's worth worrying about how much fat percentage they add. It's all just part of the overall picture. And of that's where you store fat, that's where you store fat.

@liann34 @Andtheworldwentwhite @FeelinTwentySixPointTwo I'm sorry I have dropped off this thread and have taken a whole to respond.

Thank you for taking time to share you knowledge and experience. Bodies arr interesting things!

I'll keep you the gym work and there are some improvements I could make to my diet which I'm doing.

Thanks for the tips in other ways to measure. It's useful to realise that there is so much we can perhaps control over this.

Thanks all!