Straight to the Bar

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HELPING YOU GET STRONGER SINCE 2004

Estimating Bodyfat
Posted By Scott Bird
Filed In : Diet and Nutrition | Scripts, Tables and Calculators

It’s that time of year again. Before setting my health and fitness goals for 2006, I decided to check the status of a few things first. One of these is my current level of bodyfat – last estimated back in April this year.

Once again I used the same technique as used by the US Department of Defense, the formula being :

% body fat = 86.010 x log10(abdomen – neck) – 70.041 x log10(height) + 36.76
Note that the formula is a little different for females :

% body fat = 163.205 x log10(waist + hip – neck) – 97.684 x log10(height) – 78.387


Plugging in measurements for abdomen, neck and height gave me :

%bf = 86.010 x log10 (35-16)-70.041 x log10(72) + 36.76 = 16.65617 (slightly better than last time).

For demonstration videos showing how the measurements should be taken, have a look at the Physical Readiness section of the NPC site.

Incidentally, if this has got you thinking about your own diet, you might like to swing by Examine.com. Fantastic site.

Over to you. Drop us a line on X/Twitter ( @scottbird ), or add a comment below.

Cheers.

 

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Written By Scott Bird
Scott is a long-time fitness enthusiast (Jan 2004!), writer and photographer living in Sydney, Australia. If you share the passion for spending a bit of time under a bar, welcome. Love hearing how everyone else trains. You can connect via X (Formerly Twitter), Facebook and the various networks listed in the sidebar.
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