Talha Azeem

Your Ugly Body Fat - How to Measure it

Body fat is definitely ugly part of your body, so measuring it is a crucial factor if you want your body to be fit and slim smart.

You may have heard about lean muscle mass. Since muscle is denser than fat. Someone with a large percentage of their weight in muscle would look trim compared against a person of the same weight whose weight is generally in fat. So how you measure your body fat can be a crucial aspect to your health and fitness regime.

Most common techniques of measuring body fat.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) - An x-ray "excites" water and fat molecules in the body, thru a magnetic field. A computer scans a person's body, while he lies within the magnetic field. It produces high quality photographs illustrating how much fat there is and its location. The process takes approximately 30 minutes and is considered safe because it does not use ionizing radiation.

Pros: Safe and comparatively correct.

Cons: The equipment, as well as the analysis of the results is costly.

Hydrostatic Weighing - This is the one which I've heard about as being the most accurate. First off, you get weighed in the normal way. Then you're dunked fully in a tank of water and weighed again.

Because densities of muscle and bone are higher than water and fat is less dense than water, the person who has more bone and muscle will weight more in water than the person with more fat.

The expert can then determine the volume and density of the person's body, and therefore, the proportion of body fat.

This is one I have always wanted to try, but haven't taken the time to hunt down where I can find such a tank.

Pros: It gives pretty correct results

Cons: Likelihood is you don't have a tank in your home and might not like to get one.

Bioelectrical Impedance Scale - While frequently utilized, this isn't the most consistent. A special scale applies small electric current all though your body. Since fat and muscles exhibit a different resistance to the prevailing, the scale shows how many pounds of body fast you have compared to muscle. Fat and muscle resist the current at different rates

Pros: You can get one of these for home use from Amazon and other online market places for approximately $40.00

Cons: But a professional scale works best and begins at about $1500

Body Fat Caliper - This is the one I use, but I never feel sure that I'm using it properly even though I follow the directions, You are told to nip the skin away from the muscle about one inch above your hip bone, Then you use the calipers to measure the fold, then consult a chart which lists weight according to age, to determine your body fat.

Even though it is easy to use, I'm never quite sure I'm pinching only the fat. I understand also, that highly overweight individuals have a harder time of it.

Pros of this method are portability and low cost.

The cons are, as I noted above, ability of the person using it.

The main way you can reduce body fat is to build muscle.

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