Comments on: How Do You Measure your Body

By: Peter Prams

Peter Prams — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:35:50 +0000

At most modern gyms they have machines to test your body fat, where you put your arm in to it, and the machine presses on your arm near your bicep. There are lots of home weighing scales that can tell you your body fat too, but im not sure how accurate this is.

By: Saturday Weekly Recap and Links : Weight Ladder

Saturday Weekly Recap and Links : Weight Ladder — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:06:53 +0000

[...] Before I tell you about the rest of my week I would like to point you at an interesting post on BMI… I wrote a post yesterday on using the BMI calculation to determine how much weight to lose… I wrote the article knowing full well that BMI will accurately determine when I reach a normal weight… Lazy Man articulates this aspect of BMI very well in How Do You Measure your Body. [...]

By: Debbie M

Debbie M — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:38:51 +0000

I use many measures:

* weight (at home) – it gives me a pretty good general idea of how I’m doing
* measurements (at home) – it gives me information about my muscle mass or fat mass, depending on what I’m measuring
* height (annually, at the doctor’s office) – tells me if I’m getting osteoporosis yet!
* body fat (at health fairs) – gives me specific numbers I can compare over time
* blood pressure (at the doctor and at grocery store machines) – a measure of my circulatory health
* resting pulse (at home) – a measure of my fitness level
* those lung capacity things they have at health fairs sometimes
* and of course all the blood tests and other tests doctors do at physicals

There’s also how I feel, like how much my muscles are aching, how much I’m panting, how hungry I am, etc.

By: Claude Edwin Theriault

Claude Edwin Theriault — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:27:57 +0000

Thanks for the Body Mass Index and Height correlation to health.I had forgotten about it. Am on it.

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 22:32:15 +0000

Thanks Blaine. I wrote back to this reader individually and then realized that idea can be best used as a separate post. I should have mentioned that here so that it wasn’t an open ended question.

I can’t believe I forgot to mention the measuring of your resting heart rate. I think I might missed it because I was focusing on more outwardly physical metrics.

By: Blaine Moore (Run to Win)

Blaine Moore (Run to Win) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 22:23:14 +0000

There are a couple of options for measuring body fat. The most accurate way is by hyrdostatic weighing, but you probably can’t do that at home since you have to put yourself under water and it requires some expensive equipment.

At home, a fairly accurate way to measure body fat is with skin-fold calipers. It can take a little practice to use them, and it feels a bit funny (especially if you try doing it to yourself.) Make sure you read the directions before trying, since if you do it wrong the results are worthless.

The easiest way to measure body fat is through measuring your bioelectrical impedance. You can buy bathroom scales that you just step on and it sends a small current through your body to tell you your body fat percentage. There are a few disadvantages to using these, though. They can be a little less accurate than the other methods, you shouldn’t eat or drink or exercise for hours before using it, and if you have a body fat percentage less than 10% then you will need a pretty expensive one to get anything close to an accurate reading.

My method for measuring my health is to weigh myself daily and watch the trends as my weight goes up and down. Actually, my weight never changes; it is usually within a 3 to 5 pound range year round.

Another good method for measuring your health is to get your resting heart rate first thing in the morning every day. It’s more likely to be a useful number than BMI or weight or body fat anyway in terms of your overall health.

By: FinanceAndFat

FinanceAndFat — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:43:37 +0000

I would like to measure my body fat percentage, but I don’t know of an easy way to do it. I know you can go have it done, but that takes time and expense. Stepping on the bathroom scale once a week is easy to do consistently.

Any tips for a good do-it-yourself body fat test?