While looking in a mirror every now and again is a good way to track your progress as you go along your body transformation journey – losing weight, building muscle, or a combination of both – you’ll never be able to track your progress quite as accurately as you could with a body fat calculator.
Your body fat percentage gives you a much better idea of how your progress is coming along, really drilling down into the amount of body fat you are carrying compared to muscle, bone, and water. It also lets you more accurately track your progress as you lose weight or build muscle since it isn’t focused entirely on your body weight – which could remain the same even though your ratio of fat to muscle changes underneath your skin.
It’s always a good idea to figure out what your body fat percentages before you start any exercise or diet program, if for no other reason than to periodically track your progress to see if what you’re doing is having the impact that you are hoping for.
Our calculator helps you do exactly that!
Breaking Down the Human Body
As we highlighted above, looking at something as simplistic as your body weight alone – or just looking at how you appear in a mirror – is never going to give you the kind of data necessary to understand how your body is transforming as a direct result of your exercise and dietary habits.
The human body is made up of six individual elements (for the most part), those elements being oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, carbon, and phosphorus. A handful of other elements make up the remaining 2% of your body composition from a biochemical standpoint, anyway.
At the same time, your physical body is comprised of pretty much three different elements – 65% water (no surprise there) and then a mixture of protein and fat (with a skeletal bone structure acting as the foundation of your body that everything else is built on top of).
Body fat, commonly referred to in the scientific community as adipose tissue, basically operates as the batteries for your body. This is where energy from food is stored, though it also works to cushion and insulate your body as well.
Figuring out how much of your body weight is comprised of body fat is a big piece of the puzzle in understanding where you fit as far as BMI is concerned (Body Mass Indexing) but also as a core data point that lets you track whether or not your efforts any exercise and diet department are working or if you need to adjust course to get better results, faster results, or more consistent results with different behavior.
Calculating Body Fat Percentage
While our body fat calculator isn’t necessarily going to beat the kind of detailed analytics that a medical professional can provide you with (or provide you with the kind of hyper accurate readout that something like an ultrasound or water weighing protocol that professional athletes go through can), it will give you a “ballpark figure” that you can use to track your progress all the same.
Here’s how it works:
The first thing you’re going to need is an accurate weight measurement that acts as the foundational data point for this calculator.
To get a real sense of how much you weigh (before food and drink enter the equation) it’s a good idea to weigh yourself bright and early in the morning after you have used the bathroom, but also after you have consumed half a liter of water.
This will keep your measurements consistent day after day, a big piece of the puzzle when you’re using a body fat calculator to track and chart your progress.
After popping on a scale and getting your weight recorded you’ll then want to measure yourself at a handful of different locations around the body.
You’ll want to start with your waist, your forearms, your wrist, and then at your hips. A sewing tape measure will make this process relatively simple and straightforward. It’s important to write each measurement down as you record them (and with a notation for the body part that you have recorded them at) before you put them into our calculator.
After that, simply input the facts and figures you have recorded into our calculator and you’ll be provided with a ballpark figure for your body fat percentage. Our underlying technology handles the bulk of the heavy lifting for you, knocking out the mathematics necessary in just a fraction of a second to give you the information you are after.
The best way to use this information is to record your initial body fat percentage at the beginning of a body transformation journey. Then record a new percentage (following the steps above) once a week to track your progress, looking back at your journey after a month (or a couple of months) to see how you have been progressing – but also to figure out where and how you can make changes to your daily habits to accelerate your progress, too.