The Impossiblity of Determing One’s Body Fat Percentage
Determining one’s body fat percentage seems to be more or less impossible. None of the options except DEXA (dual energy X-ray absorptiometry) produce results that are in any way reliable. I have no idea where I would go to have DEXA done.
I’ve decided that all I really care about is how much of a layer of fat there is over my muscle. I’m not going to worry about intramusclar fat since I excercise a lot (which gets rid of intramuscular fat) and that’s all I can realistically do about it.
Since all I care about now is fat thickness, I bought myself a set of body fat calipers and will use them to judge my body fat amount.
Based on the Jackson-Pollack 7 site/4 site/3 site measurements, I’m at most 11.5% body fat. The 7 site version indicates between 6.7% and 9.5% body fat (depending on what age I enter in the forumula). I’ve decided to consider myself 10.5% body fat as of today at 162 pounds. That leaves me with 8 pounds of body fat to lose to reach my goal of 6%. Basically my goal is now to have a maximum skin fold of 6 mm in each of the Jackson-Pollack 7 measurement sites. I think that’s reasonable. I’m already under that at most of the measurement sites.
I’m between 3 mm and 12 mm right now at the Jackson-Pollack 7 measurement sites.
