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

Yes they are very easy to use! It's a good thing to keep track of. I always weigh / measure myself in the morning so we'll see tomorrow morning how I'm doing!

Dan is looking forward to using it too. i guess we can chart our fat, cholsterol, glasses of water drank, exercise, weight, body measurements, carbs, fiber, protein, and supplements on a daily basis, once we get our lives fully tweaked. Am I missing anything?

That sounds good! I track my % of water (in my body) daily, but my scale tells me that Maybe the # of steps you've taken? Do you both have pedometers?

How about some sort of flexibility measurement? I could post that over in the yoga forum, about what you would measure

hmmm, right pedometers. i have the one. i would think about getting another if he was interested in doing steps. But I kinda think if i wear if for a while I will start to get an idea of "this is a 2,000 step day, this is a 5,000 step day, this is 10k, this is 15k, etc"....and then give it to him to get the same internal sense.

Do you feel your pedo is a much better choice than my simple radio shack one, if I was to get another? I found mine at goodwill for three dollars.

Flexibility tracking. Hmmm. I have to think on how one would calibrate that.

I am looking at my list of things to track above and it's definitely complicated. How to track all this? journal, online, with a program/spreadsheet? and is it worth tracking all that stuff everyday, or is this making new and exciting mental clutter for myself?

Any pedometer is fine I think, they all count steps So yours is great!

For weight / fat / water I just keep a pad by the scale and write it down every morning. So for me that is super easy. You can do the same thing for weight and fat once you get a fat measurer.

I don't know that you really need to write down fiber / carbs / etc. every day. That would mean you track every single thing you eat. You're at a great weight right now so I think that might be overkill for you.

Steps is just fun to count You can post that in the walking forum!

Soooooo, I got the Omron fat measurer from Amazon as part of my BellaOnline Biggest Loser certificate. So Dan and I did the measurements tonite:

Dan - 10.5% fat, BMI 21.5

Jill - 22% fat, BMI 21.4

Dan is like NO fat. Arg. But I am pleased about where mine is for now. I'd like it to be 18%; that's my goal.

Today is 23.9% fat. Hmmm. Let me go read the manual.

Today is 23.7% fat and this is first thing in the morning, after peeing and before drinking anything. I held my arms at a 90 degree and angle, covered the electrodes correctly and didn't giggle around. So i will assume this is the correct fat level I have at this time.

The manual suggests:

- Monitor at the same time each day (waking up is good)
- Don't bother if you've been drinking fluids or eaten in two hours - it will really throw the test out of whack
- Hold your arms out straight, at an exact 90 angle from your body
- stand up with your feet apart - no sitting
- don't move when you are getting the reading
- Cover the metal plates as they show you in the manual. Holding it incorrectly will give a false reading
- Don't use after a shower, bath or a work out - again, the water weight will throw things off


Other notes: you do need to program your appropriate fitness level when you set your profile.

If you work out frequently, you need to set the machine for 'athlete' and not 'normal'...there is a chart for you to see where you fall, based on three things: 1. how many times a week you work out, 2. how long you work out for, and 3. how intense are your workouts. So i just barely fall into Athlete. It makes a big difference how it reads your fat levels from my experimenting.

Okay, given that you have to obey ALL those set conditions, the Omron fat monitor is easy to use.

LOL well it's really like a scale. If you stand on a scale after eating a full meal, you'll be heavier because that meal is in you. So really a different of 1-2% isn't meaningful because of those various reasons. The key with the fat monitor just like with the scale is to spot trends - are you around 20%? Around 10%? You want to aim in a direction

Women naturally tend to have more fat than men, and that's fine We have squishy parts!

It keeps changing from day to day. Today yesterday i was 21.5% fat and today am 23.4%

I keep trying to make the test consistent: upon waking, after peeing and before coffee or food.

But then as my weight fluctuates each day by several pounds i suppose it's fair my fat does too.