What’s The Best Way To Tell Your Body Fat Percentage

When you’re trying to lose weight, you are going to want to focus on losing fat and not muscle. Part of that involves eating a proper diet that focus on protein consumption and healthy fats, and part of it involves weight training. You don’t want to crash diet because that will create a skinny fat physique that looks gross. Look at any fitness model and you see someone who understands the difference between losing fat and losing weight. It’s important to maintain muscle when you lose weight. You shouldn’t focus on the amount of weight you lose, what you want to do if focus on the amount of fat you are losing and the amount of muscle you are preserving.

Take a female athlete such as Miesha Tate or Lindsay Vonn, for example. They are both in super good shape, Lindsay Vonn even posing nude in bodypaint for Sports Illustrated. The reason these woman look so good is because they understand diet. They both lift weights and eat a good diet. You can see Lindsay Vonn doing pull ups during her bodypaint shoot. As you can see, she has a awesome body. This is the result of understanding diet, bodytfat, and excercise.

She’s not overly muscular, and she’s someone who trains a lot. So don’t worry that you will look gross because you lift. Those two women are professional athletes and they have sexy physiques. It’s doubtful that an average woman will be able to overdo it!

The same scenario goes for guys, but most guys are not worried about getting to big. For guys, its often a problem of not getting enough protein and calories. That’s a different topic (getting big muscles…it requires tons of extra calories, bulking, etc…)

The first step in deciding if you are dieting in the correct manner is to figure out your body fat percentage. Some people post photos online to places such as Reddit, or bodybuilding forums and ask others about their anonymous bodies. This is helpful, but not too accurate. To get a more accurate reading of your bodyfat, you should use one of the measurement devices below.

Body Calipers

The most accurate way to get a body fat measurement at home is to use body calipers. These are cheap, you can pick them up from Amazon, and they don’t require lots of special knowledge. Basically, you pinch the fat off your body at different areas (stomach, arms, etc…) and then use these measurements to determine your overall bodyfat percentage.

Body Fat Scale

If you don’t want to spend time doing calculations on your ipad or pen and paper, and want a simpler way to measure bodyfat, then consider a bodyfat scale. These work by sending up an electronic signal through your body. The rate at which the electric pulse travels through muscle, fat, and bone is all different. The computer in the scale is able to determine the amount of bodyfat you have by this signal. The critics of this method say it’s not very accurate, and they are partially right. It’s not the most accurate. It would be better to use a caliper and compare it to the scale. The calipers are very cheap, so it would be a good way to determine how accurate your scale is. You could use the calipers once to get a more accurate reading and the compare it to your scale. If they are close, then you can know that the scale is pretty accurate and then use it when you are weighting yourself.

Even if you don’t want to test the scale using calipers, the scale is better than nothing. You want some indicator to tell you you are losing fat and not losing too much muscle. Even if the scale isn’t as accurate as a submersible water tank, it’s pretty good.

Water Tank

 These are not things you can do at home. Even most gyms don’t have them. You will have to find a special doctor or physiologist who has these tanks. You float in them and the water is displaced. They are then able to use calculators to measure your body fat.