Overweight but "excellent" body fat. What does it mean?

[Moominmama0]

I went on one of those weight and height machines.

My BMI/Weight is overweight however my body fat percentage 23.3% which anything under 24.5% is the "excellent" category.

What does this actually mean? I'm going to start changing my lifestyle soon. I don't have muscle because of health conditions I cant exercise . So it can't be that. Is it a mistake? I'm definitely overweight I'm not denying that!

Maybe you’re retaining a lot of water? Or do you have a thyroid condition? Apparently we can have a kind of sludge under our skin which appears like fat but isn’t! Might be something like that?

Okay, that is interesting.

Where do you carry your weight? Excess fat around your waist is more of a long term health risk than fat carried on the hips, thighs and bum so it might be that it looked at your waist-hip ratio and thought it was very healthy.

I’ve got a set of scales which gives body composition data. Shows weight will be made up of all this.

Body fat
Muscle mass
Water
Protein mass
Bone mass

Also gives me subcutaneous fat % (and I can never understand why my subcutaneous fat % is higher than my total fat % - but off point)

Also scales gives a visceral fat score - which is the more dangerous fat in between organs that pp mentions.

BMI machines aren’t always accurate- being dehydrated can affect the reading
Waist measurement is in many ways a better indicator of how weight affects your health- I think it’s 34 inches or less is not a major problem

It probably means the machine is not that accurate unfortunately!

It's really hard to get a good bf measurement without a DEXA scan I think.