When an individual is planning to start any exercise or weight loss program, it is very essential for him / her to acquire the most accurate results from them. When you start to employ body fat measurement techniques, you need to ensure that they are fool proofed and not over the top vague propagandas. Therefore it is a key requirement to undertake what is known as a body comparison analysis on regular basis. The most important reason as to why body weights should be frequently measured is that body fat is a unique aspect on its own and should not be confused with normal body weight. Note that when a person loses their body weight it does not necessarily imply that they’ve lost their body fats or visceral fat, which is fat that tends to develop in the form of excess tissues around the many organs. A skinny person may look fit upon first glance but in reality may also sustain a high level of body fat. Thus it is wise to consider and focus on losing excess body fats as part of your weight loss regime.
In general most of us turn to scales whenever we are curious to determine our overall weight, but what we don’t seem to realize is the number the scale renders is just the overall mass of the individual and not the amount of hidden fat. Women will have more body fat that men since it helps with menstruation, while men will have it in the form of muscle bulk, so possessing body fat is not always a setback in healthy living. Remember that muscle and fat have got different characteristics, where the muscles are denser and so weigh more compared to the fat and thus if the readings are high and of course you are healthy, then you should consider going the extra mile. It is also important to differentiate between being overweight and having a lot of fat. Being overweight basically means that your weight is exceedingly high for your body mass index (BMI) which depends on your body height and frame size. Thus it is good to find out different ways of how to measure body fat and some of the most common techniques are
Taking Body part measurements, this is usually a little challenging for most of the people. There are only too ways of doing this; the first is to use a tape measure and second is to use a pair of callipers. But the most recommended one is the use of callipers as the tape measure method is not always accurate. Note that the tape measure technique is most useful when measuring your waists circumferences, wrists, hips, calf as well as your thighs. All these techniques in conjunction with your age, gender and weight provide you with the closest body fat measurements. On the other hand, the calliper technique is good for measuring skin folds. What you should do is to pinch a little skin as well as fat that are surrounding your waist and get a reading, but note that you should not pinch muscles.
Skin fold callipers- start by getting your pair of callipers and do the nipping by taking measures of the thickness of whatever you had pinched; for men it’s usually on the chest or generally on the biceps, thighs, hips, shoulders, lower back, belly, and calves. This technique however cannot be done on your own and is not advisable to convert your readings to percentage due to the errors involved.
Hydrostatic weighing – This simply means undertaking an underwater weighing median. It is the most expensive and painful way on how to measure body fat. This is because one is required to expel all the air from their lungs after, when immersed completely underwater and then weighed. Due to this requirement, this technique is not suitable for the fainthearted fellows. Remember just like in physics that claims body density is associated to the quantity of water that has been displaced which is converted using a certain formula to determine your fat percentage. Note that it can give wrong results if all the air is not expelled from the lungs. It is a painful experience for most people because they fear going underwater to exhaust all the air from their lungs.
Home body fat scales- Note that these are very much different from the traditional scales and take body fat percentages in an easy and faster way. It is a cheap way on how to measure body fat. The home body fat scales use an electrical impulse when measuring your body fat and consider the time that it takes for the impulse to travel throughout your body.
Infrared interaction- This technique encompasses shining of coloured lights above the surface of your skin followed by an analysis of the wavelengths produced as a result of the reflected light by use of a computer. This might seem techno-geeky or complicated, but fact is that is does not provide false or inaccurate results and can be done at home.
In this case we can conclude that it is good to learn how to measure body fat, which should not be done more than once or twice a month in oreder to avoid natural body fluctuations. Remember to also keep the statistics which you’ll use for comparison purposes to determine an increase or a decrease in the body fat, which is extremely motivating. Just try out any of the listed techniques and you’ll be glad for the results they render. You can also consult professionals for more information on how to measure body fat.