On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Trish Tipton wrote:

> Hi all,I had my body fat measured yesterday at a health fair.  How
> accurate are those things anyway?  They took my weight, height, body
> frame,gender, age, exercise frequency, intensity and duration, then put
> this black disc thing on my bicep, after fingering it a bit, I guess to
> separate muscle from fat????  while holding my arm at a 90* angel.  Then
> this small printer printed out my results.  Said I was fair at 29.7% fat,
> was low on body water content which was at 58%.  said it should be at 70%
>  and my lean body mass was 127 and body fat in pounds was 43.  She said I
> need to be at around 25%.  any takes on this?

This was an electric impedance test.  Like all BF tests, there is
considerable variability, depending on the skill of the people
using the instrument, etc.  I have had this sort of test done,
and got a number very close to my immersion and skinfold
readings.  It's probably a fair ballpark estimate.

Todd Moody
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