Body Fat Calipers are the best possible tools to measure your body fat – and measuring body fat on a regular basis is the most effective way to see if a diet/exercise plan is really working. Scales simply tell you how much you weight, not if you are losing fat (you could be losing/gaining water, muscle etc). Some scales can “measure body fat” but they are never accurate, they more or less guess based on your height, weight, and sometimes how much exercise you do. If you don’t belive me, next time you are on your scales, hold something heavy in your arms whilst weighing in – your body fat will rocket up! This is because your weight has gone up a load, so the scales guess your fat has to.

 

So how to Body Fat Calipers work? With calipers you can take a measurement of how much flab you have on certain parts of your body. Once you have measured all the parts you need, you can average out the readings and then you can do a quick calculation to change the amount of fat you have on average,  into a percent of your body fat. Easy and accurate!

 

How to use Body Fat Calipers

 

Step 1

The first thing to do is buy a set of body fat calipers. There are plenty of brands that make them, but I use an Accu-Measure caliper (as pictured). They are cheap and well made. You can buy the calipers from:

 

Step 2

The first thing to do is understand how to use your body fat calipers:

Always measure on the same side of your body – which ever side you prefer. Measure at the same time (roughly) every day – I measure in the morning before breakfast.

Go to the area that needs measuring and pinch you flab so that you get hold of a large fold. Use the caliper half an inch below you fingers. Let go of the fat and write down your measurements. Some people measure the same spot either 3 or 5 times to get a decent average – I don’t bother with this and measure just once in each spot. After a week you will have good averages anyway!

Step 3

There are 6 areas to measure -

The tricep (back of the arm, underneath bicep )
The subscapular (just below the shoulder blade)
The supraspinale (love handle – just above hip)
The abdominal (Just below your belly button)
The thigh (front of the upper thigh)
The calf (back middle of your calf)

In each of these areas you should have no problem pinching a roll of flab – that means you are in the right place! If you cant find any fat you are either a very very low percent body fat, or you are in the wrong place. Just move your hand around looking for a flabby area near by.

Step 4

Changing the measurements from your body fat calipers into a fat percentage.

I always use a website to do this for me, as the calculations are pretty long and take into account your weight, height, fitness level etc. If you need a website to do this go to HERE (scroll down the page).

If you are feeling brave, the calculation itself is

Men:
(0.1051 x triceps + subscapular + supraspinale + abdominal + thigh + calf) + 2.585 = Body Fat %

Women:
(0.1548 x triceps + subscapular + supraspinale + abdominal + thigh + calf) + 3.580 = Body Fat %

Step 5

Write down your results and keep track of them over a period of time. They might be a bit different every day, so what I tend to do is measure every day, but average the results out on the 7th day and use that as my 1 week reading. Then I compare my 1 week readings over a few months and see how I am doing. Women probably want to aim for about 18% body fat and men about 12% to have a healthy looking body.