A lot of people will use a bathroom scale for measuring their weight. This is okay for general weight loss but if you are focused on losing body fat specifically, body fat scales are much more suitable.

The main problem with your typical bathroom scale is that it only gives you the weight of your entire body; your fat, muscle, organs, blood, even what you ate for dinner are all thrown together into this one number.  This is just plain misleading and certainly not a good way to measure body fat. It’s common for example that a person after going through a weight loss program for several weeks could end up at the same weight they started with.  How can this be? Simple; muscle weighs more than fat. The weight that you lose from shedding fat was made up the muscle you gained. In other words you could be well on your way to reaching your body fat goal but instead think you are no better off than you started!

Therefore, if you seriously want to lose body fat, you should consider investing in a good body fat scale also known as a fat monitor. Fortunately, body fat scales are actually quite common nowadays so you should have no trouble finding one in your local department store or fitness shop. Also, if you can, try to purchase a body fat scale that contains a body water monitor as well. A body water monitor will help indicate whether you are dehydrated. This is important as not only is dehydration bad for your overall health, it can actually slow the progress of body fat loss.

You might be wondering how a body fat scale works? A body fat monitor measures the resistance of a small electrical current that passes up one of your legs through your body and down the other leg. The way it measures this electrical resistance is by what’s know as Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA). Since water is a good conductor of electricity, the way BIA is able to differentiate fat from muscle is because unlike fat which contains very little water, muscle is roughly 75% water.  The electrical current can therefore pass through the muscle with much less resistance.

With a 4-5% margin of error, body fat scales are not the most accurate way to measure your body fat percentage but are still close enough to meet most people’s needs and the sheer convenience makes them a highly useful tool in the path towards your body fat goal.