Accuracy of hand held BF% checkers?

[rightwingjedi]

Ok, here's the deal. I used to be fat and now I am thinner but have sone loose skin but never really bothered to check my BF due to this.


I am 35 and finishing college right now and have a wellness class and today we used a "video game controller" thing to check BF. You enter age, weight and height then press start and hold it out in front for the BC reading. I will not go into detail as why but I entered age 27 instead of 35 due to my lady friend partner. So my BF read 8.5%.

So the first question is do these "checkers" work? I mean my prof is the soccer coach and says they work.

Question 2, would me lying about my age make my reading high or low and if so how would it change my 8.5% reading?

[Hercules-k]

Ok, here's the deal. I used to be fat and now I am thinner but have sone loose skin but never really bothered to check my BF due to this.


I am 35 and finishing college right now and have a wellness class and today we used a "video game controller" thing to check BF. You enter age, weight and height then press start and hold it out in front for the BC reading. I will not go into detail as why but I entered age 27 instead of 35 due to my lady friend partner. So my BF read 8.5%.

So the first question is do these "checkers" work? I mean my prof is the soccer coach and says they work.

Question 2, would me lying about my age make my reading high or low and if so how would it change my 8.5% reading?

My experience is they are not accurate

[hazto]

I use mine once a week at the same time, AM before anything else to gauge the trend, I don't put much into the number.

[musikguy72]

Ok, here's the deal. I used to be fat and now I am thinner but have sone loose skin but never really bothered to check my BF due to this.


I am 35 and finishing college right now and have a wellness class and today we used a "video game controller" thing to check BF. You enter age, weight and height then press start and hold it out in front for the BC reading. I will not go into detail as why but I entered age 27 instead of 35 due to my lady friend partner. So my BF read 8.5%.

So the first question is do these "checkers" work? I mean my prof is the soccer coach and says they work.

Question 2, would me lying about my age make my reading high or low and if so how would it change my 8.5% reading?

The experience most my friends have with them is they are very inaccurate when giving you an actual bf% compared to what you really have. BUT, they can be useful to see if your bf% is going up or down as a lot of them are consistent in their inaccuracies.

[acrawlingchaos]

Garbage method. Of all the techniques, this is the most inaccurate and IMO should be completely disregarded.

[chrifive916]

I use one everyday, imo that is the best way to use them. They are good for trends, but taking it as gospel is a bad idea. Your hydration level has a big impact on them. The numbers on mine varies for me by about 1-1.5%. Good enough for a basic range and to judge improvement.

[Joog]

I get the owner of my gym/my PT to do my bodyfat. He insists on not letting other PT's do it, as the measurement sites/method may vary slightly and so, give a false reading.

I know age does make a difference, as I remember getting BF testing done a while back, about 2 weeks apart. The mm measurements, compared to BF I had at 39, weren't as good at 40.

[kcmoto]

I would tend to agree that they should be used as a gauge and not accuracy....but I can say that there are switches or programmable data on those hand held devices to accommodate for variables. There is a variable for "normal" and "athletic" ....age is a huge variable. When u input your age at a lower level the device will assume you have more muscle mass if you change the age to older it will be different. This deductably tells you that they use input data as opposed to actual read data to determine your results. They are kinda pre programmed. Try it next time. Change your age...switch to normal and then athletic. If they actually read your BF it would be the same no mater what, right?

[StressMonkey]

I always did these after my sessions with my trainer and the readings were all over the map. I don't trust them.

[Joog]

I will not go into detail as why but I entered age 27 instead of 35 due to my lady friend partner.

LOL...classic

Quick look at BF chart...
age 26-30 @ 8.4% = 9.4% @ 31-35

[Juggertha]

Are you talking about the machine where you stand on it in bare feet, and hold onto the little controllers?

If so, I did that as well and it put me at 24%.

Not sure how accurate it is, but will use it against itself every few months as a gauge.

[miamibodybuilder]

in my opinion the only accurate way to check your body fat is the underwater method. other than that it's mostly a guesstimate. i say this because if you check one persons body fat three times in one day, you'll probably get three different readings all the time. they're a great measure of progress or lack thereof for some, but dont live by it. it's a good way to track yourself and see more or less where you're at. i usually tell my clients to gauge it 2 percent either way. so if it's 10%, depending on how you look, be honest with yourself. you can either add up to 12% or 8%. this method has seemed to work for me in the past so i've stuck to it

[Retroplayer]

I am curious how we *know* these things are "wildly inaccurate", when everything else we measure against is also "wildly inaccurate." If you don't have a "standard" to measure accuracy against, you really just can't make this claim intelligently. Even the DXA is considered inaccurate by some and I myself have seen numbers that just don't make sense by looking at the person.

So, it is a measuring tool of something that is obviously wildly variable in the first place. And until someone is cut apart and every bit of fat weighed, there is no way to tell just how accurate ANY of the methods are. So, use whatever tool as a standard, use it under the same conditions, and gauge against itself. This is true with any of the methods. That's about as accurate as it is going to get.

As far as age or normal/athletic, it is using those as variables in a formula. The measurement itself is another variable. So, it isn't just "guessing", it is using a formula that has been tested on a wide range of people. I really don't think that they are as inaccurate as people make them out to be. But, they do have problems with water retention, etc... I've seen some that claim to be able to measure the water retention as well. I think there is a ton of potential in this technology.

[michail71]

Multipoint caliper measurements are telling me 8% and my bioelectric impedance handheld device is telling me 10.5%. I don't believe either, I suppose my actual number is somewhere in between.

I've had the handheld drive me mad. If I believe it I lost mostly all lean mass on my last cut. Visual and strength indications do not support that.

[ironwill2008]

I am curious how we *know* these things are "wildly inaccurate", .

Speaking for myself, I simply go by past experience.


I've used an Omron bf measurement device which showed a difference of almost 5% between readings (on the same device) within a few hours of each other. Knowing that my actual bf didn't change one iota in a 3 hour span tells me that the measurement process is whack. And this was a 'commercial'-level piece of equipment.

The body fat-measuring scales like you'd buy at Wally World, or wherever, would likely be even further off.




ETA:

If some device was touted to have any measurement accuracy, why would it need to know your age, or whether or not you were "athletic?"

Would it not just simply measure your body fat %?