Friday, April 6, 2007

Body Mass Index Revisited and Body Fat Index

I had a chance to have my body fat index measured by one of those electronic body fat analyzers today. The extension office loaned us an Omron HBF-306C, a handheld device that uses bioelectrical impedance to measure your body fat. It was easy to use and incredibly fast, about seven seconds to obtain a reading. It also did a crude correction for muscle by having you determine your FIT level using a formula based on frequency of working out, intensity, and length of workout. There were only two categories, normal (sedentary) and athlete. I consider myself far from an athlete but I was well over 60 FIT points needed to be assessed as one.


Ostensibly the loan was for those of us who are participating in the 8 week “Walk for Health”, but it was available to anyone at the college. I have to say that I was impressed. I put myself in as normal and did the test with a result of 30.6%, not a good number. When I chose athlete, it calculated my body fat as 27%. This was better, but still not where I need to be. At least it took my word for having some muscle after 3 months of four-days-a-week workouts.


It also calculated the body mass index (BMI) from the height and weight information I gave it but it came out the same both times. The BMI doesn't make allowances for muscle as it is based on a sedentary population.


Here is my recap from yesterday.




Daily Dietary Recap-4/5/2007
Calories Protein Carbohydrates SodiumFat % Calories from Fat
1165 69.93 g 192.71 g911.97 mg 17.59 g 13.59%

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hello Prof Bush,

Your comment on my Old Salt-New Tack blog was appreciated and pointed me to your blog. I very much like what I see here. Impressed by your switch from fat and salt and major weight loss. Sometimes it does take some sort of wake-up call doesn't it.

Look for an email from Murphy

Keep up the great work.