Your body density or weight under water is recorded as your body places a buoyant counterforce on the water and displaces it. The fat cells in humans are composed almost entirely of pure triglycerides with an average density of about 09 kilograms per liter.
How To Calculate Body Fat Percentage Accurately 7 Steps
Body fat measurement water displacement. Water displacement provides a higher degree of accuracy plus or minus 15 percent but skin calipers provide greater convenience that may encourage more frequent assessments. Most modern body composition laboratories today use the value of 11 kilograms per liter for the density of the fat free mass a theoretical tissue composed of 72 water density 0993 21 protein density 1340 and 7 mineral density 3000 by weight. Skin calipers provide an easy means of measuring body fat. Using these two numbers and the density of the water operators can accurately determine body volume and density along with the breakdown of fat mass vs. Measured waterisotope dilution volumes allow prediction of fat free mass and fat percentage in normal weight individuals but are of questionable value for overweight and obese ones due to the assumption about an average proportion of total body volume of 73. This proportion however ranges from 67 80 and some of it is present in extracellular fluid 15 30 and it increases with the degree of adiposity.
Hydrostatic underwater weighing or hydrostatic testing is a method of determining body composition body fat to lean mass. Body fat percentage can be a pretty good indicator of disease risk. Whole body air displacement plethysmography adp is a recognised and scientifically validated densitometric method to measure human body fat percentage. Hydrostatic weighing or underwater weighing compares your normal body weight outside the water to your body weight while completely submerged in the water. You measure skin flaps at various points on your body and use a mathematical formula to calculate body fat. It measures a persons total body density using archimedes principle of displacement.
The weight recorded can then be used to calculate your body fat. Also the water displacement test is said to be as the most accurate test that helps to determine the body fat percent however the ymca formula or us navy body fat test is referred as sufficiently accurate within 1 3 for most people. Body density can be determined with great accuracy by completely. Adp uses the same principles as the gold standard method of underwater weighing but representing a densitometric method that is based on air displacement rather than on water immersion. Body fat percentage is the mass of fat that your body holds divided by its total mass which includes the weight of everything else muscle bone water etc. 1 hydrostatic underwater weighing has been considered the gold standard for body composition assessment.