Bought a scale with the body fat calculator

[CowgirlJane 14,260]

After the talk on here I decided it was worth the investment. It is a weight watchers scale from target, not sure how accurate, but I figure it will measure trends. It kind of hit me that at maintenance, having goals that focus on getting fitter/reducing body fat a bit might be good to track. I am also very curious how plastic surgery will impact these measures. I mean, does the skin count as fat, Water or bone density...LOL. anyway, we shall see... my initial body fat % is 29% which is what I expected based on photos I looked at of other women and is range of normal for my age. I could see working to get down to 25% though...

I think the % on these scales is impacted by various factors such as hydration levels, so I will be playing with it a bit to see.

[AtlantaRed 651]

I am looking to get one of these before my surgery. I'm hoping it will help during a stall. Hopefully it will show if actual fat is being lost and muscle being gained, or some kind of recompositioning during the stall!

[LindaS 316]

Those scales are based on hydration levels. When I bought my scale, it recommended that I weigh naked just before dinner in order to get the most accurate reading due to hydration levels.

That doesn't work for me. I still weigh in the morning, and I just know that it is "off" a bit because of that although it is consistent because I weight at the same time. I don't think it makes that much difference in the percentage.

[RickM 1,752]

Our weight tends to be most accurate or stable in the morning, before the variable intake and excretions occur during the day, while the body comp percentages are best in late afternoon before dinner. With me, that was a fairly consistent difference of 4-5 percentage points between early morning and late afternoon, and that didn't seem to change significantly between being in the low 40sBF% and the mid teens. Check it out at both times when you can to see what kind of offset you have.

I didn't notice any big shifts after my plastics, but I didn't have that much done, and everything is screwed up for quite a while with all the swelling, inflammation, drainage, etc. that I don't think that the numbers have much significance for a few months, until things settle down some. I know that I have lose some muscle tone in the six months since then as I have been in couch potato/rehab mode for much of the time as with the hernia repairs that I had done at the same time, the doc hasn't wanted me to be doing much to stress those repairs or the stitching in the ab muscles, so it's hard to do much muscle building overall when you can't stress the core (swimming has been most of what I have done the past three months or so, which helps some.)