Alright, I have had enough with my non-digital scale in my bathroom. It is all out of whack and I have to calibrate it every time I use it and I still don't think it reads correctly. I am going to buy a new one but am going digital this time. My question to any of you is I have found there to be 2 types, regular digital and digital/body fat scale. Regular is about $20 cheaper. If any of you have the body fat one, does it really measure body fat or is it a joke. I have looked online and they can be expensive and it says that it sends an infared wave thru your body to get your bf composition. Any help appreciated. Thanks

Alright, I have had enough with my non-digital scale in my bathroom. It is all out of whack and I have to calibrate it every time I use it and I still don't think it reads correctly. I am going to buy a new one but am going digital this time. My question to any of you is I have found there to be 2 types, regular digital and digital/body fat scale. Regular is about $20 cheaper. If any of you have the body fat one, does it really measure body fat or is it a joke. I have looked online and they can be expensive and it says that it sends an infared wave thru your body to get your bf composition. Any help appreciated. Thanks

I have a Tanita scale that measures body fat. It seems to give a general reading that is not very accurate. If I weigh myself more than once in one day it can vary by about 5%. However, over a long time period of time it seems to give you a general idea of what your BF% is. Two years ago I lost a lot of weight and it changed from 28% to 16% over about a 7 month period. However, on my weekly weigh-ins lately it has been all out of wack. I have been eating extremely clean and working out hard and this week it actually showed my BF% went up 1% even though I lost weight, lost inches and I can see a positive change in my pics. Personally, I would buy a regular digital scale and spend the $20 you save on a fat caliper. You can get regular fat calipers really cheap on ebay (under $10) and digital ones go for around $30. I just got a digital one and so far it seems to be more accurate than my scale.

One thing I did to measure the accuarcy of my scale wrt the body weight was to weigh my dumbells. I wanted to make sure the reading added up. I tried this on a couple different scales just in case the dumbells were reading wrong, and I found my scale to be accurate.

It's best to do this at different weight points (50, 100, 150, 200 if at all possible) so that you can be sure your scale is still accurate at these points.

I have a Tanita scale that measures body fat. It seems to give a general reading that is not very accurate. If I weigh myself more than once in one day it can vary by about 5%.

Don't forget the Tanita scales vary throughout the day based on your changing resistances. Measure the BF% at the same time every day for comparison.