Todd_A’s BodyBlog

As much as I faught it, I finally broke down and decided to buy one of these fancy scales with the bodyfat measuring tool built in. You have seen them around and have heard everyone complain about how inacurate they are or how they give off the wall readings or similar. Some like them, some do not.

The reason I decided to go ahead and buy one of these was that it is difficult to and troublesome to wake up on my weigh-in days and get my weight and all my calliper measurements in a timely fashion.  My girlfriend may or may not be there when I am ready to get this done and I do have to have help. Also, she was concerned that she was possibly not using the calipers the exact same way in the exact same position and grabbing the same place and same amount of skin each time.

I think that the Calipers may be more acurate to actual bodyfat, but without consistency you are left confused sometimes whenyou appear to have made progress but the caliper tells you differently. I like that the scales are going to do their process the exact same way every time, and I follow the same ritual every time I use them, so, if for no other reason than consistency, I like the scales. Another plus is ease of use. You basically just step on and wait. You do not need a second person to help with readings, and it is easy to take the readings 3 or 4 times in a row to make sure you are getting the same result to confirm.

So far I have seen very close bodyfat % numbers from the scales that have not varied more than I feel they should form day to day. They are consistent with what I would expect from my diet on the previous two days, so I feel that the scales are more than acurate enough to gague progress and watch for movement in the wrong direction.

In the 2 weeks since I have purchased mine, I have grown to like it more than I thought I might.  I wake up in the morning and I use the bathroom, then I get on the scales and note the results. I step off and I repeat and note the results. If I have a slightly different reading, I go again and sometimes a 4th time to assure myself that I have the most acurate reading, then I record the reading in a spreadsheet I have.

I have been using the scales every morning.  I know, I know… They say do not do this every day because of fluctuations in your weight and bodyfat day to day, but I wanted to observe these fluctuations myself so I can look for trends in the future. Plus with the diet I am on now, I am going through a weekly cycle so I should be able to start comparing my tuesday readings with previous tuesday readings or what ever day I want to compare, and see if I can see a pattern there. It may help me tweak some thigns in my diet or exercise programs. Also, if you have these fluctions day to day adn you only take readings once a week, how do you know you are not taking readings on the one day a week that you are the highest bodyfat? Daily readings will tell you what your lowest is and your highest. Just don’t get discouraged on the readings if they seem high. They may fall the following morning.

My caliper method was showing me to be about 18.5% bodyfat and the scales were showing me to be about 20.5%, so there is definately a differnece, but I am looking for consistent readings and trends, not acuracy so much.  I want to know I am loosing bodyfat, and not loosing too much muscle when cutting, and gaining muscle without too much bodyfat when bulking. I will still take caliper measurements to find what I consider to be a more acurate actual bodyfat measurement, but in my quest to cut and future quest to bulk, I will just rely on the scales to guide me along.

Bottom line is that if you get one of these, just realize they are not perfectly acurate, so just use them to help watch your progress and to keep you informed as to the direction you are going.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 6:14 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.