Quest For The Fat Truth

The Homedics scale I bought a year or so ago has disagreed with me since it first graced my bathroom floor. The suspicions with its ability to determine body fat percentage began when I was entering parameters. Age, yep. Sex, uh-huh. Height, sure. Then it asked whether or not I was an "elite" athlete. Wha? There was about a 3% body fat difference between "yes" or "no" to that subjective question. In time it was clear that drinking water increased my "fat" percentage. Ummm....

Hidden Bloggers and some co-workers know that I seek to keep tabs on that percentage. It stems from a visit from a nutritionist years ago who talked about the difference between weight-loss goals and body fat composition goals. It's the "quantity" vs. "quality" concept as applied to the world of personal health. Starving or sweating one's way to quantity (weight loss) can sacrifice muscle, cause dehydration and all its related symptoms like fatigue, eye strain, weakened immune system, etc. Changing one's composition - replacing fat with muscle - sold me.

My 2010 goal was to get down to 14%.

Earlier this week I was excited to stumble on a local business called "AlignLife" that purported to do composition analysis. Professionals! I thought. I called them, got a timid "um, let me check with the doctors and get back to you" response, and never heard back. Unprofessionals! I thought.

Then, out of the sky and in perfect ending to the work week, a pair of co-workers stopped by and urged me to go down to the medical department. There sat a hand-held device which read my percentage through my palms. It asked the same round of questions except for the dubious athlete one. Nearby was a paper chart showing the healthy range for my age to be 8-20%. That was nice validation that my goal was right in the middle.

My reading was 11.9%. Which makes way more sense than the 16% Homedics has been claiming. That's what I'm talking about! To think that, instead of "reduce body fat % to 14" as a goal I could've just said "find a device that tells me what I want to hear" and saved a whole lot of cardio.

I could write a cheer. Except that it's hard to come up with a rhyme for OMRON HBF-306. Maybe I'll just order one, and leave it at that...