BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Low Carb What % Fat Are You?

OK I got a new toy This one is a hand held fat monitor. It sends a little electrical current through your hands and by knowing your weight and height it can then calculate how much of you must be fat, for the signal to go through you in X seconds.

I also have a scale that does the same, so I can compare them!

My floor scale says I am 24% fat and 50% water

The handheld Omron one says 23.2% so that's within the range of reasonability

Do you know what yours is? How do you test it?

I have a hand held Omron too and my BMI is always 24% and the fat fluctuates from 28.1 to 28,4% fat and the scale is always off and I have the wrong age on that since changing the age always increases the numbers and that one says 36.7 % fat and way off.


I am on prednisone again so the numbers are going to be high for me since this causes weight gain, but taking hydroxycut to stop that from happening.

On the Omron handheld unit, the BMI won't change The BMI is only a calculation based on your weight and height. So unless you go into their settings and change your weight or your height, the BMI will always give the same value.

The fat should fluctuate though

Which model do you have? We have the HBF-306, I'll get a photo in a second ...

OK here is an image of the one we have -



It's really easy to use and stores multiple people in it. You put in your height, weight, age, gender and activity level and that lets it calculate your BMI (which is a static number based on height/weight) along with the fat % (which is dynamically determined by holding it).

by BMI is in the mid 30's to low 40's I think.

For people who don't know their BMI or Body Mass Indicator, we have an online calculator here -

BellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

OMG mine is 46

BMI is a straight number - so it's not a percentage. It is an "artificial number", that is, the number is just a ratio. It isn't that it should be half of your weight or anything else like that. Your BMI should fall into these ranges:

< 20 very good, perhaps even underweight
20-25 healthy
> 25 at risk

Now, keep in mind that a BMI is still only a "rough guide". It doesn't take into account at all how big boned you are or how muscular you are or so on. All it is is height and weight. So if for example you are 6' tall and 200 pounds it could say you are at risk. And maybe that's true if you are zero muscle and all fat. But what if you were a football player who was solid muscle? You could easily be 200 pounds in the best shape of your life but the BMI would still show 'at risk'. So that's why this is a good starting guideline but not the last word by any means.

I fall into the football player analogy, so I ignore my BMI. I'm big boned and very muscular for a 5'2" woman. Unfortunately, my Dr. doesn't take this into account. She sees the 170 on the scale and chews me out for having a high BMI (by those charts, I'm obese)... though I'm strong enough to literally pick her up and haul her out of the room. If I can lift my fiance (roughly 200 lbs), I can lift that little round woman.

Do I sound bitter? I am.

I'd be interested to know what my actual fat% is. How much do those little gadgets cost, anyway? And how accurate are they?

I have the same model - HBF-306BL

the scale is a tanita BF-625

I do change the settings onthe body fat and create new people on it, but they are all me. I will most likely do another new one next month when I turn 48 since I like to see the readings for my ages over the years.