Question re: machine's reading of body fat percentage.

[Oldisthenewblack]

I weighed myself on the machine at the gym today. It's one of the type that give your body fat percentage and BMI. I'm always mistrustful of scales anyway, tending to get a different reading from every set! Ignoring the weight bit though - how accurate do you think the body fat percentage figure might be? How would the machine test your body fat anyway?

All info gratefully received....

I've got scales that, in athlete mode, give me an almost identical reading to the calipers - within a percentage point - in normal/non-athlete mode it goes up by about 4%. Looking at galleries of other people's bodies in various body fat percentage ranges can be helpful in a compare and contrast way to see if you look vaguely similar or not.

You want to monitor a trend, presumably, so it's more important that the scales are consistent rather than accurate? I don't think any of these things are very accurate at all but if you use the same equipment each time it could be useful to see changes in body composition, better than simply knowing how much you weigh at that moment in time.

Thanks, thedevilinmyshoes, yes, I want to monitor a trend so having started to use this particular machine, will continue with it every month or six weeks. I always use the same scales to monitor my weight, they're the ones I took my starting weight from in January.

I've looked up some photos of body fat percentage online, and I can see that they do look rather like me, so it makes sense.

The machines are WAY out compared with a RedX scan
but as a trend pattern are just fine