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Accurate Weighing Scales
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New year and time to get really fit!
Just bought some fat calipers and shocked at my high body fat %. I've never really bothered with overall weight but realise if I'm going to get to my target body fat % and not lose muscle I need to measure my overall body weight accurately.
So which scales do people recommend? I'm looking for a preferably digital scale with large digits, but accuracy is the most imprtant factor.
cheers 
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I bought some Tanita scales to measure my fat percentage last year. I did lots of research and these ones seemed to be the most accurate.
A few weeks back I got on them and noted by body fat percentage. I forgot to check something else, so stepped back onto them a couple of minutes later; my body fat percentage had increased by 1. Bemused by this, I waited another couple of minutes and stepped back on, body fat had increased again. Over the course of five minutes, when I hadn't done anything other than frown at a set of scales, my body fat had increased by 4 percentage points.
I think the more accurate way to check your progress is to measure your waist (and perhaps other areas such as hips) regularly.
You did.
I agree with Debbie excpet that I suggest you only weigh yourself once a week, first thing in the morning on the same day.
Ignore week to week changes look at the three month trend.
Hi Hitman - I completely recommend the Omron BF-500 or BF-510 body composition monitor. They are a medically approved device (therefore, have to have certified accuracy), they use electrical induction method to measure body fat* and are amazingly cheap for what they do. I've been using for 2½ years now and I can track a clear improvement in body fat %, skeletal muscles, visceral fat (the really dodgy stuff that wraps itself around the internal organs of the abdomen) and of course, my weight.
It has memory for 4 different people, and 90 measurements each. I plot the data into my Training Log program (Sporttracks), so I can see these changes in graph form.
* Electrical Conductivity is not a perfect measurement method. Basically, it sends electric impulses through hand held sensors, down through the body into the feet. The current flows faster where there is less resistance (muscle) as opposed to fat. So it gives a reading down to 0.1% increments. But, the water content in your body is a major variable factor. In my experience, this can change a reading by up to 1.5% away from a 'normal' reading.
So every morning, after I've had a pee but before a drink, I weigh myself and check body fat. Although I treat each daily reading with a bit of suspicion as to it's complete accuracy on the day, as a data point in a trend over time, it's brilliant. 2½ years ago, by body fat was just under 20%. Today it is 10%. I have peaked as low as 7.9% when at the height of marathon training. I think these babies sell for around £45 but I have seen them for under £30 at times.
I have absolutely no connection with Omron, the health industry or anything like it. Just a genuione satisfied customer who likes to be able to measure the physiological benefits of his training.
Cheers, TD.
seriously - having worked in medical areas where BMI is used to calculate chemotherapy doses i can tell you that the medical staff calculate it themselves based on an accurate set of weighing scales, and the pt's height, if there was an accurate bit of kit that could use make life easier for them they would use it - but they don't
i have never seen one of these sets of scales which claims to calculate your body fat in a medical setting
HH - not sure what the yawning symbol is supposed to mean but it seems odd to add this to a post where you are asking people for help?!
Lurker - BMI has never been mentioned before and most people understand it's a not very useful measurement anyway. I'd be pretty upset if it was used as a method for calibrating dosage of poisonous chemicals to be put in my body.
Original question was:
i) recommendation for accurate scales with digital readout.
ii) secondary issue was, accuracy of tracking body fat percentage.
I recommended something which I have personal experience of, which fits both those categories and is cheap and easy to get hold of.
As to whether or not you've seen it used in a medical environment, I don't know what we'd really learn from a positive or a negative answer anyway. I grabbed this out of the instruction manual for the device: "This device fulfills the provisions of the EC directive 93/42/EEC (Medical Device Directive)." They claim a 1% margin of error for weight between 40-150kg. Seems straightforward enough to me.
I don't think you can make any judgements about what is or is not a waste of money, because you have no insight into how important an issue it is for HH. He spent money on fat calipers after all, so there is evidence to suggest he is willing to commit cash to measuring his BF?! Maybe he already has 17 pairs of running shoes anyway... ?
HH - take or leave the recommendation - it bothers me not!
BMI is perfectly accurate way of measuring your overall body density. Chemo worked well for me. Once you get down to having practically no muscle or fat I doubt the relative %ages really matter anyway
This is another one of those threads where someone asks a question and gets all sorts of advice, mainly steered by the first reply.
HH was only asking for accurate scales advice - all the other advice has been surplus to requirements really. Keeping accurate track of weight is probably a good idea as long as you understand how much you will fluctuate.
As mentioned before 1pint of water weighs 1 pound. So I'm not sure what having scales accurate to 400g-1500g really acheives.
I know you're being funny but it illustrates that 1kg is a pointless difference.
If you weighed 70.5kg and your scales were accurate to 1% and read in 0.5kg intervals. If they read high they could read 71kg. If your doctor's were reading low they could read 70kg. Both scales would be correct and accurate.
Thta's why weighing daily is fairly pointless and even if your scales say you have lost 2lbs or 1kg in a week that's not really accurate.
"HH - not sure what the yawning symbol is supposed to mean but it seems odd to add this to a post where you are asking people for help?!"
Sorry, not directed at you Tricky!
My original post asked for a recommendation of accurate weighing scales, having bought calipers and had measured my body fat %. I then receive a number of replies ranging from; tellling me to bounce up and down in the mirror; recommending I spend the money on running shoes instead; suggestions on how often to weigh; reviews of scales measuring body fat etc
TBH your post and Debra Bourne made the most effort to answer my initial post, once again sorry for any offence caused
What did you expect? It's a forum.
How accurate do you want the scales? Have you thought about how often are you going to calibrate them and what method will you use?
As I say it seems nonsensical to most of us hence the replies. Even the medical ones are only accurate to 1kg.
Hitman - I'm not offended. It's a forum and anybody can and does say whatever they like.
TimR - I'm sorry, but what you say just isn't very helpful if you are trying to make an acute point here. Weighing on a daily basis can be an extremely useful and significant thing to do. Perhaps what you mean to say is, taking one day's measurement in isolation is an unreliable use of a single data point?
Of course, one daily reading should be taken with a pinch of salt, but 3 consecutive daily readings going in one direction could be very significant. I don't think my weight has moved within a kg for the last 6 months (when weighing myself in the morning - it will have fluctuated way more than that when running).BTW, the device I mentioned before displays in 0.1kg increments. Ciao!
I just think its important to realise how much a kg is (one litre of water) and how accurate the scales claim to be.
They say they are accurate to 1% ie +/-0.4kg at 40kg and +/-1.5kg at 150kg. Yet they show increments of 0.1kg? At 70kg they could read anything between 69.3kg and 70.7kg and still be right.
Fair enough if you are on a very strict diet, eating and drinking and exercising the same every day your readings are going to mean something. Drink a litre of water and you've put on 1kg. Go to the toilet and you could lose a kg. So I don't see the point of being anymore accurate than +/-1kg and don't see the point of measuring in 100g intervals.
My mechanical scales are fairly repeatable and give me pretty much the same reading I get at the hospital and at the doctors.
How much fat can you lose in a day? Is that going to be showing up on scales?
Tim - my point about frequent datapoints still doesn't seem to have got through. Any one reading may be inaccurate. But the most important thing to consider is trend over time. The more datapoints and the more accurately they are recorded, the more meaningful the trend becomes. Anyway, I'm not trying to have a "fundamentalist" kind of argument about it.
I think the most BF conversion to muscle I've seen in a day is around 1.5-2.0%. My first instinct is to rule it out as inaccurate because of statistical deviation from norm principles, but the knowledge that the preceeding day had been spent lugging wheelbarrows of handmixed concrete up and down a very steep hill, suggests I had indeed grown a bit of muscle.
If I take a rest from running, I've got a pretty good idea of how quickly fat starts to accumulate. At the same time, a really strong intervals or hill running session, starts to show up as increased muscle, on the 2nd morning after training. It's pretty motivating when you can correlate training effort to physiological changes.
Cheers. TD
No. I'm with you on the frequent datapoints, just wasn't with you on the interval between the datapoints. I was thinking that the most fat you could probably lose in 24hours is going to be measured in grams and therefore not likely to show up on the scales in a 24 hour period.
Whare do you get that 1.5%-2% fat. For me thats 1.5kg in a day. That's a lot more than I would expect and I would be really surprised if you could keep that effort up every day for a week.
But if it's possible I'll certainly accept that daily weighing is worth it when training very hard.
I've learned something thanks.
TimR - given that the BF and skeletal muscle measurements are expressed as percentages, if i gain a lot of muscle, I typically see an increase in weight as well.
I've been doing some hard training this week after an easier time the last two weeks and I'm feeling the benefit
Thurs
Weight 66.5kg
BF 10.0%
SM 43.0% (skeletal muscle)
Today
Weight 67.5kg
BF 9.4%
SM 43.5%
The BF & SM figures are proportionally related, but do not always add up to the same amount as body composition changes. My weight went up 1kg but it has more to do with muscle gain than fat loss.
Very interesting.
You lost 300g fat and gained 800g muscle. Which is a 500g gain overall, but the scales show an increase of 1000g. Everything is not as at first appears.
It certainly explains why weight loss and exercise are so misunderstood.
As you say snapshots not very useful on their own. It must be interesting to see a trend overtime together with exercise and food diary.
Nearly a kilo of muscle in a week, yep agree with TimR most people seriously misunderstand the muscle building process. My money is going on fluid retention due to unconsidered and unintended water manipulation.
If you want an accurate and calibrated set of scales it's your money off you go and spend; however the point is being made well by Tim that the variations due to fluid manipulation and caliper readings negate the point of a set of scales accurate to 100g. And as Tim points out a tolerance of +/- 1kg does not reveal anything of significance.
But what ever makes the world go around, I knew of a guy who felt it necessary to measure his lifts in mm's and added weight to his squats 100g at a time, pointless but he had little chance of good sex so I guess it served a purpose.
Ok who has been speaking to my wife then?
She announced this morning that we need new scales as our old ones show a difference of up to 4 lbs over the week. So they must be inaccurate. Argghhh. Personally I think she just fancies some nice posh looking digital ones.
Anyway I thought I'd have a look for some like Tricky's. Cheap and accurate enough and she'll even be happy checking her fat too. Great. Found some specs and they say that the fat and MS accuracies are 3.5%
Which pretty much means a reading of 10% could actually mean anywhere between 6.5% and 13.5% wow!
So I checked some industrial calibrated ones. Around £400 from RS components. Accuracte to 0.1% graduated in 50g intervals. So 60kg will weigh +/- 60g. Nice! The only problem is that they say the repeatability - what AllnewTB was talking about is 200g.Think the wife has gone off to spend some money
I have friends who use industrial scales , calibrated for record attempts and they spend a fortune. Which is great for that purpose but pointless spending that form of money and having the scales calibrated and checked when what you want to document at the end is open to errors and fluctuations (fluid and inaccurate caliber measuring) that negate the point of the accurate scales!
Don't go telling your misses Tim she needs to weigh herself on industrial scales, from what I know of women they do not like it