The important thing to remember about body fat testing is that the only true way to know your body fat is to do it hydrostatically.
Quoted from bodyfattest.com website:
Body composition analysis through immersion in water has long been the single standard for measuring body fat. Legend has is that Archimedes jumped from his bath naked and ran through the street shouting "Eureka" when he figured out how to determine the mass of an object by using water displacment. You see the king had tasked him with measuring his crown to tell if the goldsmith was cheating him by replacing some of his gold with silver - a metal having less mass and much less expensive. The basic theory hasn't changed since then.
By volume fat weighs less than muscle, and pound for pound fat and muscle each displace a known amount of water, they have a known mass. Basically fat floats and muscle sinks! If you know how much someone weighs, then you can determine how much water they would displace if they were all muscle. Compare that to how much they actually displace, and you can figure out how much of their body composition is fat, and not muscle. (Note: Although we keep using the term "muscle", it's really "fat free mass” or everything but fat).
Isn't it hard to figure out accurately how much water they displace? Well yes, except that you don't measure how much water is displaced exactly, you measure their weight in water, and knowing how much water weighs vs. fat and lean-body-mass, you can figure out the exact amount of body fat.
There are a lot of other methods out there, some of them good, some of them really useless. It's worth noting that whenever anyone describes how accurate their method is, it is always "as compared to hydrostatic". That's right. Every competitor accepts the supposition that hydrostatic body fat measurements are exact and thus they strive to be as close to the hydrostatic measurements as possible. Admittedly, some even come reasonably close, but there is only one standard. Hydrostatic weighing to determine body density, or hydrodensitometry, is the single accepted standard for measuring body fat. And now it's being made available, outside of medical clinics and universities. Why would you use anything else?
It is a little weird because you are lying on your back in a tank and you HAVE to expel all your air out of you body WHILE UNDER WATER. You're not going to drown but it feels like if you wanted to drown, this must be what it feels like...HA!
I was getting bioimpedance testing because it was the only method available at my YMCA. I knew it wasn't accurate but it's usually consistent. It had my body fat 10% higher than what hydrostatic had me. I was relieved to find out today I am at 19% and not 28%.
I have 37 lbs. of fat on my body which means 19% of my body is fat.
I have 157 lbs. of muscle on my body. I weigh 192lbs.
My target body fat % is around 10%. I need to lose around 20 lbs of fat to reach that goal.
My Resting Metabolic Rate is 2038 calories per day. This means I burn 2038 calories just going about normal daily activity WITHOUT working out.
My body fat is in the "good' to "healthy" range. I'm in the 65% percentile for men of my age in the "good" range. To be in the "healthy" to "essential" range I need to be between 7% - 15% body fat range. I think I'm getting close.
This list is Calories Burned in 30 Minutes if you do one of these activities. I do alot of running so 3 times a week I burn around 500 calories running every half hour. I run for at least an hour so that means I'm burning close to 1000 calories when I run.
I teach spin class at least 4 times a week. Some classes are an hour. Some are half hour. I'm burning between 400 and 800 calories depending on the length of my class.
Add those numbers to my RMR of 2038 and that means I'm burning a shit ton of calories. That is probably how I've gone from 220 to 190 so fast and easily. I try to eat healthy but for the most part I have been eating what I want but with just smaller portions. All the food is being used as fuel and not converted to fat.
Downside: I've stopped lifting weights and so I'm losing muscle mass. I have to start incorporating more resistance training into my workouts. Building muscle burns fat. I don't want to get too big but at the rate I am doing cardio, it should all balance out.
Yah for hydrostatic testing!
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