"There is only one person who can measure your success. That person is you."
David McCullough

Last time I spoke of fat measuring techniques, skinfold tests and how these are best done by an experienced practitioner. However, on a program such as Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, it's important to be able to get regular assessments of your body fat in order to measure your progress.

Accu-Measure have a range of skinfold calipers which are designed for do-it-yourself body fat measurement. I've got their manual product, the 3000 model, but they also have a digital product. With the 3000 you take a single site measurement at the suprailiac skinfold, just above the point of the hip bone. You then read off a chart to find your body fat percentage. The 3000 has an arm which clicks into place once the right amount of pressure is applied to the skinfold and also has a sliding scale pointer which holds the result after the pressure is released.

This sounds great but in practice it's not that easy to get consistent results. For one thing you need to take the measurement in the exact same spot every time and just being out by 1/2 inch can make quite a difference. Another issue is the 3000 mechanism itself. The friction between the caliper and the sliding scale pointer tends to make the caliper move in a series of jumps rather than in a smooth continuous fashion. This in turn makes the click rather hard to discern.

To try and overcome these problems I use the following process. By taking a reference point from the tip of the hip bone I try as far as possible to always pinch in the same place. On the caliper I don't bother with the sliding scale pointer, leaving this at zero. Instead, when I detect that the device has clicked in I just hold the calipers then look down to take the reading. Then I subtract 6.5 from this, to compensate for the scale pointer not being there. Finally I take a series of readings and take the average.