Measuring Body Composition

This is the second in a series on Body Composition where I will discuss various methods of measuring your composition. Remember, determining body composition gives a MUCH better idea of your health, fitness status, and progress than a scale ... however, that doesn't mean it is accurate. The main reasons for measuring body composition are to monitor body fat loss and muscle growth resulting from exercise and to provide baseline data for nutritional counseling and treatment of obesity. So many of my clients want to know their body fat percentage, but have no idea what that number really means or how it is actually determined. Bet you didn't know that ultimately, direct or indirect density (body composition) determinations are correlated with the density/body-fat ratios of cadavers.