Measuring body fat with a fat scale is a terrible subject, but the use of the scale is easy and (when done properly) consistent.

But this is what I finally find the good way to use it:

Since my target is to have a sixpack by training and healthy eating I will then consider myself as an athlete in terms of bodyfat-measurement .

So while my targetsituation will be that I use the scale in the athlete mode, I start now already measuring that way. I will end up having the correct use and accept the miscalculation on the way, the error will be less and less as I near my target .

How about that?

I have come to hate my Tanita. My bodyfat on it hasn't changed, even though I have lost 7 pounds, and measuring and checking bf other ways has shown a 6% drop. I only use the scale to check my weight and use other methods to determine bf %

But did you loose muscle, water or fat, if the Tanita shows no BF change it might be you lost muscle.

Although the exact BF% are know to be different, the trend is normally usable.

Maybe mine is a dud. There is no way I lost 7 pounds of muscle - not only am I almost 2 sizes smaller, I lift weights and can see a visible difference in my muscles, esp. upper body. Plus, in checking my bf through measurements when I started, and again a few weeks ago, it showed a 6% drop in bf. That's why I assume that there is prob. a malfunction. It doesn't work for my husband, either, who has lost about 15 pounds. For him it only showed a 1% drop in bf. Since his belly is now relatively flat, I doubt he lost muscle, also...

IMHO, Tanita's are crap for testing bodyfat. They're good weight-scales, but ignore the other part. Get some good calipers and learn how to use them - more important than trying to figure out your % bodyfat from them is simply tracking the skinfold measurements.

Personally, I don't much understand the obsession some folks have with % bodyfat - the bottom like is you look and feel good, or you don't.

Track measurements, take pictures, and pay attention to how you feel and your performance at the gym.

Very well said, Built.

I have to disagree with you, Built and Galadriell,

If you follow a system you want to monitor your progress, if for instance things don't work out like you expected you want to adjust until they do.

So unless you have years and years of time to try small adjustments and take a couple of months to see its 'long term' effect, you want to know sooner how you are doing.

Especially if you want to combine muscle growth with fat loss it is difficult to see what happens if you grow a couple of kg's.

Is if fat, is something wrong in your diet, is it as you hope, muscle?

In my personal case the belly is the thing not aligning with the rest, it is very important for me to know if I'm on the right track or not. Is it getting less, but still protruding in proportion, or is it NOT getting less. I still am unsure about that. If there is a reasonable way to know how my amount of fat is doing I want to use that!

I do a caliper test at the belly button area. It doesn't give me a percentage but I can follow the trend. Since people store fat differently, one person can look cut at 10% while other may need to be 5%. I personally need to have very low body fat to look cut because my primary storage is lowerback/side of waist. I find I need about 4mm at the belly button to look cut.

Really, I think the way mps does it is the only reliable way to track this kind of progress.

Tanitas don't measure % body fat. Neither does immersion in water, air displacement, callipers, any method. They are PROXY measures - they measure things that are ASSOCIATED with a certain % bodyfat.

The only way to MEASURE % bodyfat is post-mortem dissection - ideally, by rendering the body.

In the absence of this direct measurement method, all other methods may be used with some modicum of accuracy, but because they are estimates based on proxy measures (which themselves are prone to error margins) and statistical models (with their OWN confidence intervals, which are rarely if ever mentioned), I really don't see much point.

The same person using the same measurement tool (i.e. callipers) on the same body part for tracking purposes is very reasonable.

Anything else is so error-prone, I have little faith because of the reliability issues.