Body Fat Percentage or BMI?

My theory, based on images of other women with a similar body structure, is that the real number is something between the two.

Actually boob fat shouldnt be considered lean mass either because it isnt, so neither method sounds entirely right.

I have no boob fat though.

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Yeah, this is how mine works as well. You input your age, height & sex.

I’m not sure why age is a factor at all unless there’s some adjustment for kids.

I mean, your typical 46 year-old will have more body fat than your typical 26 year-old, but why would the age affect the calculation of body fat percentage?

yeah, not seeing why age would matter here.

i think boobs ultimately should be weighed separately and subtracted from both the numerator and the denominator, but not an easy task there.

Boobs are part of the “lean and bones” department of the formula. There is some fat in boobs, but it’s not all fat.

I think boob fat is included in the other factors, or that the chest measurement is less significant in determining body fat than the included ones.
My opinion is based on:

  1. The fact that the formula is linear;
  2. The fact that it does not include every single measurement ever;
  3. The inference that only the significant measurements are included.

Again, it is only a best-fit linear regression. If your actual body fat (however you obtain that, via X-rays or Dunk-in-water) differs from the formula, well, that is called error. Now, will the error-to-actual be consistent when your measurements change? I hope so.

How accurate are the ways to measure fat?

not entirely sure i get all this math talk, but if someone has big boobs, wouldn’t said boobs weigh a lot? it would seem that including it in the denominator, but excluding it entirely from the numerator would make a chick with big boobs appear to have lower body fat percentage than she really does.

boobs consist of both fat and breast tissue which isn’t fat.

don’t entirely get this either. i suspect you’re not really gaining muscle weight, but it’s water weight in some way. i think you only gain weight, muscle or otherwise with a calorie surplus.

When you’re sore, your muscles do retain water as your body heals the micro tears. Not sure if that accounts for all of it though.

Bodies are complex things. Women’s bodies are seemingly even more complex when it comes to weight loss. I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand it all. But humans are certainly made up of more than water, fat, and muscle!

Hmmm, I’ve always just assumed that I was building up muscle, which does weigh a lot.

Even though I’m gaining weight, my clothes feel looser so I’m shrinking. And muscle weighs more than fat.

Building muscle is a lot slower than people realize, even when returning to working out from a layoff. Muscle does have some level of memory, so it can plump up rather quickly; but most of that is water/glycogen stores returning where they weren’t needed before. If you’re diet isn’t changing and you’re just adding back exercise, you’re probably replacing fat with water which is also more dense (fat floats). True muscle mass would probably increase by about 1lb per month for a female adult.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/as-obesity-rises-big-food-and-dietitians-push-anti-diet-advice/ar-BB1kZWtn

As obesity rises, Big Food and dietitians push ‘anti-diet’ advice

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I can’t read that without downloading an app!

There’s a button underneath that says “expand article.” Tap that.

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I thought I did but I must have missed… twice!

Ugh, what a mess. Too hard for average people to distinguish advertising from non-advertising.

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But she felt as if a burden had lifted when she discovered YouTube influencers advocating “health at every size” — urging her to stop dieting and start listening to her “mental hunger.”

Step One: Stop trying to find the advice you want. Find the advice you need.

Interesting article. I guess it is not easy to manufacture healthy food (nature does a pretty good job already), and that it is more efficient to get people to eat sugary crap by paying “influencers” to hawk their wares.

I have been working with a dietician this year. I was looking for help with my cholesterol. She has mostly said that I’m already doing the right things, and she is coaching me on mindful eating.

(I had cut way back on red meat & sugar over a year ago with no impact to my cholesterol.)

We’ve also talked about “processed foods” vs “highly processed foods”, increasing legumes & other fiber, not getting weighed at the dr’s office, how fruits are not evil, and other interesting topics.

Mostly genetics. Also, the cholesterol meds we have nowadays are basically side effect-free.
I was listening to a podcast and this doctor basically said there’s no excuse for anyone to have high cholesterol nowadays. In fact, it’ll actually save more people if everyone was required to take cholesterol meds because of how safe they are, and how effective they are.

BTW that article may appropriately summarize the advice of a few influencers, but it’s not a good characterization of the Health At Every Size approach to eating.

For people like me who have spent most of their lives “on a diet” or “not on a diet”, HAES is useful.

I know a ton of people who have side effects from statins. Thankfully I’m not one of them. Also many of these drugs are not well tested on women. Also women’s cholesterol often increases as their estrogen declines.

I decided to go ahead and try the statin after learning that there may be a genetic component to my high cholesterol. Thankfully I haven’t experienced side effects. I’ll recheck my cholesterol later this month.

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Please provide an example or two. I’d like to look into that.