Determine Your Body Composition
Don’t step on a scale to measure your progress, however; have your body composition assessed instead. The scale only gives you a raw number; it doesn’t determine your body composition (what portion of your body is fat and what portion is muscle).
Some men might actually “recomp” their body by decreasing their fat mass and simultaneously increasing their raw muscle tissue. So, if they lose 10 pounds of fat but gain 20 pounds of muscle, their scale weight will go up, but they will look a thousand times better than they did before.
When it comes time to determine your body composition there are a number of methods you can use. Knowing the differences between techniques will help you gain awareness of what your numbers really mean. Some techniques are definitely pricier than others, but you are paying for accuracy.
Here are some recommended techniques that will help determine your body composition as accurately as possible.
Underwater weighingOnce called the gold standard technique, underwater weighing determines body composition by submerging the subject underwater. Body density is then measured by determining body volume and applying a formula to the results to determine what portion of the body is fat mass.
The biggest problem with this method is that there will often be variations between races and individuals in terms of established bone density. Since this is taken into account for the equations used, the reading will be off if your bone density is slightly different than what is considered "standard."
Also, if you can’t exhale all the air contained in your lungs (which is required right before you are submerged), this will alter your final reading.
While this method has its downfalls, it is one of the more cost-effective methods available to determine body composition, and it is relatively accurate provided it is performed with someone who is trained in the technique.
Skin calipersDetermine your body composition with a skin caliper, a handheld instrument that pinches the top layer of skin to measure the thickness of the skin fold. This measurement is taken in a variety of places on the body (usually done in a three-site or seven-site reading), and then the information is calculated to determine body fat percentage.
While this technique is affordable, there are some drawbacks: Being measured by a different person each time can alter the reading; the final percentage is based on the incorrect assumption that the outer layer of fat reflects how much fat is found throughout the body; some individuals have more subcutaneous fat than others, so individual variances will alter the raw score.
On the plus side, however, if the same well-trained person is measuring the skin folds, you can definitely use the readings over a period of time to gauge your progress. Remember that if you get a reading of 14% body fat, for example, but you are really at 18% body fat, and your rereading is 11% body fat, this could mean 15%, yet the fact that it went down by 3% is enough to show you that you’ve made progress.
If you are looking to get below a specific body fat percentage for health reasons, you will want sheer accuracy, so this may not be the best technique to determine your body composition.
These techniques can determine your body composition too…