Quality bodyfat scale?

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Nobody
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby Nobody » Tue Dec 16, 2014 11:22 pm

Mulger bill wrote:Well, that's your Golden Banana award nomination out the window... :wink:
Yeah, not everyone can eat 30 bananas a day and still lose weight, as the vids below seem to show well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_wUHuXw84Y" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShmoS0AnPNA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
As you would expect, these aren't from your favorite Utoob production crew. :wink:

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby CKinnard » Tue Dec 16, 2014 11:28 pm

Nobody wrote:True, but it also reduces the amount of fat you ingest. I believe it was McDougall who said in one of his videos that a third of carbs' energy is required to convert it into fat, where it only takes 3% of the energy from ingested fat to convert it to bodily fat.

I'm on a high carb diet with a waist to height ratio of 0.45 and a BMI of 21.9 (I'm medium build). I generally eat < 28g of nuts & seeds a day to make sure I cover a basic requirement of healthy fat, other than what I get from grains etc.
yes, John McDougall was representing the literature more or less correctly with his 1/3 of carbs energy (actually 30%).
BUT, as much as I respect him for his early firm stance on plant based eating, more recently I've noted cracks in his understanding of the literature. He still teaches that de novo lipogenesis (fat creation and storage from excessive carbohydrate intake) is heavily restricted. It is this point that is critical to his general dietary philosophy, that being that one can overfeed on carbs and not gain weight. This goes hand in hand with one of his mantras "the fat you eat is the fat you wear".

Unfortunately, I discovered that John has been selectively quoting studies that support this view, and totally ignoring studies that refute it. More recently, studies show more clearly than ever before that de novo lipogenesis is not limited at all. And the more carbs one overeats, the more bodyfat accumulates. If John wants to continue to be taken seriously and respected, he needs to change one of the foundation pillars of his dietary recommendations.

The truth is, if you overfeed, primarly on carbs, you will store it as fat. And this is very much what has driven the obesity epidemic over the last 30 years.

As for the difference between 3% and 30% diet induced thermogenesis between fat and carb intake, this is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that fat is more satiating. People tend to overfeed a lot more easily on carbs.

At the end of the day, weight management is all about managing total Calories in.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby Nobody » Wed Dec 17, 2014 12:23 am

CKinnard wrote:yes, John McDougall was representing the literature more or less correctly with his 1/3 of carbs energy (actually 30%).
BUT, as much as I respect him for his early firm stance on plant based eating, more recently I've noted cracks in his understanding of the literature. He still teaches that de novo lipogenesis (fat creation and storage from excessive carbohydrate intake) is heavily restricted. It is this point that is critical to his general dietary philosophy, that being that one can overfeed on carbs and not gain weight. This goes hand in hand with one of his mantras "the fat you eat is the fat you wear".

Unfortunately, I discovered that John has been selectively quoting studies that support this view, and totally ignoring studies that refute it. More recently, studies show more clearly than ever before that de novo lipogenesis is not limited at all. And the more carbs one overeats, the more bodyfat accumulates. If John wants to continue to be taken seriously and respected, he needs to change one of the foundation pillars of his dietary recommendations.
Thanks for the update. :)
I suppose this is the big problem with digging yourself in, in one direction for many years. If it turns out to be the wrong path, it's harder to dig yourself out. :) Of course, none of us have a complete picture that will stand the test of time over the next 50 years, but at least I have something that's working for me at the moment. If in a further year it is still working and I'm still healthy, then the diet I'm on is ahead of many out there that usually fail to stay effective/beneficial within 2 years.
CKinnard wrote:The truth is, if you overfeed, primarly on carbs, you will store it as fat. And this is very much what has driven the obesity epidemic over the last 30 years.
As can be seen from the vids I posted above, I agree that too many carbs are a problem. But the epidemic wasn't caused by people eating whole foods which are usually fairly low in caloric density, but processed foods with reduced fibre and phytonutrients/phytochemicals.

CKinnard wrote:As for the difference between 3% and 30% diet induced thermogenesis between fat and carb intake, this is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that fat is more satiating. People tend to overfeed a lot more easily on carbs.
Once again it depends on the type of carbs. Packaging is important. I seem to remember reading in "The China Study" that those in China on a low fat & protein diet were eating more total carbs, but had a lower BMI than the Americans (US) with higher meat intake. Since the average American diet is 30-35% fat by calories, it doesn't appear to be working too well for them. From what I can gather so far, it appears to be a combination of both processed carbs/sugars and high meat/fat through a lot of processed food.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby mikesbytes » Wed Dec 17, 2014 9:24 am

Nobody wrote:
mikesbytes wrote:I use to be like you Nobody, eat tons of carbs and the waist line didn't become a waste line.
Yes, but I rarely eat processed carbs and I don't eat meat, dairy, oil, or eggs. Having said that, some who have a whole food plant based diet can still put on weight if they don't limit their fruit. We just need to find what works for us as individuals. :)
Yeh processed food was my Achilles heal. It left me feeling hungry all the time. Regardless of dietary preferences everyone needs a decent input of veges in there and the vast majority of the population doesn't cut it

I think we are inviting the banana king, aka TLL to this thread. Maybe a bit later, its shut eye time in France at the moment.
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby toolonglegs » Wed Dec 17, 2014 8:33 pm

Ha... Yeah I won't take that title!. I eat zero processed food, vegan as well... But I still put on weight easy enough if I am not doing 400kms a week. Definitely overweight now ( again ) ... Simple, I work at home around 6-8 months of the year, get bored and eat. Plus winter is long and shite, days like today, grey and dreary I can't get very motivated to ride. Basically once it starts getting colder I get heavier :lol:
PS my weight fluctuates 10-12 kilos throughout a year ... Crap I know !

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby CKinnard » Wed Dec 17, 2014 9:14 pm

Nobody wrote:Thanks for the update. :)
I suppose this is the big problem with digging yourself in, in one direction for many years. If it turns out to be the wrong path, it's harder to dig yourself out. :) Of course, none of us have a complete picture that will stand the test of time over the next 50 years, but at least I have something that's working for me at the moment. If in a further year it is still working and I'm still healthy, then the diet I'm on is ahead of many out there that usually fail to stay effective/beneficial within 2 years.

As can be seen from the vids I posted above, I agree that too many carbs are a problem. But the epidemic wasn't caused by people eating whole foods which are usually fairly low in caloric density, but processed foods with reduced fibre and phytonutrients/phytochemicals.
Yep, nothing wrong with your logic. My view is I won't be surprised if eventually, the obesity epidemic proves to be due to a virus or bacterial infection....and all the diet wars turn out to be naive and ignorance par excellence. Or it may just be as simple as people getting too much nervous excitment, and not enough tranquility in their lives.

I don't necessarily agree that processed carbs are not an issue. I see lots of middle aged and older frugals and bboomers who are struggling with weight and stick quite firmly to whole foods. It's really a portion thing.
Nobody wrote:Once again it depends on the type of carbs. Packaging is important. I seem to remember reading in "The China Study" that those in China on a low fat & protein diet were eating more total carbs, but had a lower BMI than the Americans (US) with higher meat intake. Since the average American diet is 30-35% fat by calories, it doesn't appear to be working too well for them. From what I can gather so far, it appears to be a combination of both processed carbs/sugars and high meat/fat through a lot of processed food.
I think it is flawed to compare people from different cultures with totally different average activity levels (China vs USA for manual work and active recreation).
However, your point is supported by studies of US Seventh Day Adventists (mainly vegetarian whole food eaters) vs standard US diet eaters. However even this comparison was critiqued in the lit in the 70s and 80s by those who argued the SDA's may have derived most of their health benefit from social and religious factors. Cleverly, the SDA researchers then compared SDAs with Baptists, and still found SDAs had a overwhelming health advantage.

However, from memory the China study did not show Chinese overfeed on carbs or anything else, unlike Westerners. Their food resources and cultural habits at that time were not so free and loose.

Occam's Razor dictates that before one can debate which diet is more likely to prevent weight gain, one must first eliminate overfeeding as a confounding variable!

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby wombatK » Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:03 pm

Nobody wrote: Once again it depends on the type of carbs. Packaging is important. I seem to remember reading in "The China Study" that those in China on a low fat & protein diet were eating more total carbs, but had a lower BMI than the Americans (US) with higher meat intake
If you had been to China in the period studies by the "China Study", you'd have seen that the biggest difference is that the average Chinese person ate much less than Australians, and particularly much less animal protein. Most Australians would serve themselves a piece of steak that was twice the daily protein requirement. The cuts of meats served in the supermarket or few butchers left encourage that - it's the McDonalds Supersize Me caper in a less obvious form.

Thanks to the proliferatin of KFC and McDonalds, some of the richer Chinese in the big cities now have kids who are catching up with the obesity epidemic.

The evil is not protein or carbs or fat ... it's too much of them. What people who think it's all about carbs fail to understand is that you body is a digester ... it breaks pretty much every carb down to the same basic molecules, and your body them reassembles this fuel into most of the more complex proteins etc.,. that you need. Even proteins and fats get digested into more basic molecules.

I wouldn't recommend that to anyone follow this example... but the best evidence of this is my son, now 25, who is living testimony to just how many different molecules your body can make out of McDonalds chips and orange cordial. He never ate the burgers nor the coke, and never ate read meat, fish etc.,. at home. He was a bit on the porky side until 15, after which he grew quickly to 188cm ... and is a lean 80 kg. Of course, you can look lean but have terrible coronary arteries or be close to Type II diabetes ... I'd be very much less worried about this if he had a more balanced diet. But the example shows that the human body is a wonderful machine that has evolved to get by pretty well with a wide variety of foods and large imbalances in your diet.

There are differences in how fast your body digests various foods, and some of this might make a difference to how hungry you feel or a liable to eat too much, but it's minor in comparison to the effect of just eating too much of anything.
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby Nobody » Thu Dec 18, 2014 12:30 pm

CKinnard wrote:My view is I won't be surprised if eventually, the obesity epidemic proves to be due to a virus or bacterial infection....
Catalyst did a 2 part series on gut bacteria called "Gut Reaction". It pointed to how diet affects many more systems than most people realize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3iOlRUQkrw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klnYh7SZRic" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
CKinnard wrote:...and all the diet wars turn out to be naive and ignorance par excellence.
As far as I see it, the diet wars are about the health interests of the individual versus the financial interests the pharmaceutical, medical and some food industries. In the current system I can't see the misinformation disappearing any time soon.
CKinnard wrote:I see lots of middle aged and older frugals and bboomers who are struggling with weight and stick quite firmly to whole foods. It's really a portion thing.
But are they still eating meat, dairy, eggs, oil or too much dried fruit & nuts? If not, are they eating too much fruit? (As indicated in previous post, some people can't handle it.)
CKinnard wrote:I think it is flawed to compare people from different cultures with totally different average activity levels (China vs USA for manual work and active recreation).
...However, from memory the China study did not show Chinese overfeed on carbs or anything else, unlike Westerners. Their food resources and cultural habits at that time were not so free and loose.
If you still have access to The China Study, page 74 has a chart of calories consumed by China and US, and starting at the bottom of page 141 it explains that the Chinese studied were office workers. The only difference being a short cycle to work. The Chinese ate 32% more calories per day. On page 142 it says:
The China Study wrote:Furthermore, studies done in Israel and the United Kingdom, neither of which represent primarily agrarian cultures, also show that vegetarians may consume the same or significantly more calories and still weigh less.
CKinnard wrote:Occam's Razor dictates that before one can debate which diet is more likely to prevent weight gain, one must first eliminate overfeeding as a confounding variable!
There are many studies that do. One is in the link above which is summarised by nutritionfacts.org. They ate the same number of calories, but one group put on more weight.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby Nobody » Thu Dec 18, 2014 1:37 pm

wombatK wrote:The evil is not protein or carbs or fat ... it's too much of them.
Yes. The ideal ratio to avoid chronic illness is considered to be by calories consumed, approximately 80% carbs, 10% protein and 10% fat. So considering that most people love their meat (by calories, approx. 76% protein, 24% fat) and processed foods (sugar, fat, salt, artificial flavors and process carbs), it's therefore no surprise to find people eating too much protein, fat and processed carbs.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby simonn » Thu Dec 18, 2014 4:03 pm

This year my wife went back to work full time, so I drive to work taking my son to childcare. No commuting for me, having gone from 5 days = 250km/week for ~4 years, then 2 days = 100km/week + doing other stuff. For a lot of this time, I also had a weekly session in the gym with a PT, but never really listened to her about nutrition. I also had an off and did my AC joint in around the same time my wife went back to work FT, so that was three months off anything serious in the way of exercise.

Anyway, in the past three months or so, I have lost ~10kg (~1/8 of my body weight). This is mostly through diet - 50% protein 35% carbs 15% fat, don't worry too much about fat vs carbs percentage just get the calories right (protein and carbs = 4cal/g and fat = 9cal/g). Not easy if veggie. Have given up on vegan aspirations for the time being. Aim for 14-1500 calories a day and then have gels and stuff on rides if needed. By jove it works. Should have listened to her a couple of years ago. Steamed veggies and copious amounts of green salad FTW! (to fill belly).

Exercise wise, I am for 2 fast 40km-ish pace line rides a week (with riders who generally outclass me) and a fast longer ride on sat ~75km or a 200km+ audax. Indoor cycle class once a week. Two PT sessions in the gym for strength and (a bodybuilder's version of :)) endurance.

Had not been running in 9 months and on the spur-ish of the moment did park run a couple of weeks ago and was 11 seconds off my 5km PB. According to my pre-xmas fitness test a couple of hours ago, I am 8 years younger than I actually am and 12 years younger than I was last year (when I was riding 12,000 odd km/year - probably half that now)... I am nowhere near a mid life crisis as you can probably tel :)

Diet and targeted exercise, don't over-train.

Anyway, back to scales... I've got Propert scales which are sort of home brand-ish from Woolies (I think). Cheap as, probably 25% of Tanita. They come close to matching Tanita (we have a set in the gym). Anyway, due to accuracy - weigh yourself at the same time every day (I do it after my morning hmmm evacuation :)) and look at the trend, not the percentage. As long as the trend shows you are losing fat and not losing muscle. If you are doing that and gaining speed and strength all is well in the world.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby CKinnard » Thu Dec 18, 2014 11:37 pm

Nobody wrote:There are many studies that do. One is in the link above which is summarised by nutritionfacts.org. They ate the same number of calories, but one group put on more weight.
I saw Catalyst, and am aware of effects of 'transpoosions' in rats...and humans :)

re diet wars, I am thinking more of HCLF vs LCHF and Paleo vs Vegan.
As you are probably aware, longevity and reduced morbidity is heavily favored by low fat more plant based diets...in the literature.
Re weight struggles, I think whatever your diet, one is capable of overfeeding. Many things disrupt a homeostatic appetite mechanism - central and autonomic nervous and endocrine systems, poor or reduced sleep, stressors of all sorts, etc. As one ages, many struggle with dysregulation of these things, which leads to weight gain.

Most who debate benefits of diets ignore ageing effects on all body systems which degenerate. For instance, doctors have recommended to the elderly for decades that they take various vinegars with their meals to compensate the stomach's reduced ability to produce digestive acids. Other digestive processes also slow, thus favoring eating processed nutrient dense foods such as blended and cooked meals. Intestinal motility slows, liver and kidney function slow. Indeed kidney size shrinks dramatically.

Often debates about diet are conducted with little consideration of the needs and peculiarities of babies and the elderly.
I think all sides are guilty of having very narrow frames of reference. The raw vegan movement rarely address the physiological limits of toddlers and the elderly to chew and digest raw foods. The Paleo movement don't accommodate the failing physiology of the elderly, esp significantly degenerated kidney function which impacts clearance of protein waste. In fact, their view is once a human is beyond childbearing and rearing age, they probably have been superfluous to survival of small communities (they compete for scarce food reserves but benefit the community very little).

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby CKinnard » Fri Dec 19, 2014 6:43 am

simonn wrote: Diet and targeted exercise, don't over-train.

Anyway, back to scales... I've got Propert scales which are sort of home brand-ish from Woolies (I think). Cheap as, probably 25% of Tanita. They come close to matching Tanita (we have a set in the gym). Anyway, due to accuracy - weigh yourself at the same time every day (I do it after my morning hmmm evacuation :)) and look at the trend, not the percentage. As long as the trend shows you are losing fat and not losing muscle. If you are doing that and gaining speed and strength all is well in the world.
I've known a lot of guys who ride more than 500km week after week. They don't lose weight.
I've ridden more than 700km a week a couple of times, and regularly do 300-350k, but don't lose weight.
What favors weight loss for me is focusing on a calmer quieter life. This seems to help quell inappropriate cravings, and presumably does it by taking a load off an ageing and somewhat dysregulated nervous and endocrine system.

I've got Tanita scales, which were their premium model 6 years ago, and the BF% estimate is way too variable to be meaningful. I also know several dietitians who have newer models and they think they are pretty useless, but they use them in addition to fat fold measurement to appease curious clients.
Maybe newer models are better, but I cannot recommend them for trend tracking or anything else.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby Nobody » Sat Dec 20, 2014 8:54 am

CKinnard wrote:re diet wars, I am thinking more of HCLF vs LCHF and Paleo vs Vegan.
Oh, the other misinformation/book wars. For that discussion, one really needs to define the battle lines, since it's also a war of misinformation and straw-men. HCLF & LCHF are too broad in description. Paleo Atkins+veg versus vegan is getting closer. But even vegan is a broad term, since Coke and chips are vegan. WFPB is more defined and evidence based and therefore harder to argue against. People considering LCHF, paleo/Atkins+veg would probably benefit by having a look at plantpositive.com or his YouTube site.
CKinnard wrote:Re weight struggles, I think whatever your diet, one is capable of overfeeding. Many things disrupt a homeostatic appetite mechanism - central and autonomic nervous and endocrine systems, poor or reduced sleep, stressors of all sorts, etc. As one ages, many struggle with dysregulation of these things, which leads to weight gain.
Fair enough, although being a shift worker is one reason that led me to change my diet and it's helping with the effects of sleep deprivation.

One thing I forgot to mention previously, is people also would benefit by analyzing their liquid intake since evidence suggests liquid calories are not counted as well by our bodies and therefore can lead to weight gain.
CKinnard wrote:Most who debate benefits of diets ignore ageing effects on all body systems which degenerate. For instance, doctors have recommended to the elderly for decades that they take various vinegars with their meals to compensate the stomach's reduced ability to produce digestive acids. Other digestive processes also slow, thus favoring eating processed nutrient dense foods such as blended and cooked meals. Intestinal motility slows, liver and kidney function slow. Indeed kidney size shrinks dramatically.
I wonder how much of this is also due to atherosclerosis, since we both know that it doesn't just affect the heart arteries.
Last edited by Nobody on Sat Dec 20, 2014 2:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby ColinOldnCranky » Sat Dec 20, 2014 12:13 pm

There is no such thing as a body fat scale, just marketing that claims so. They just hjack the BMI, that target never changing as it is related to height only. You can easily establish that target yourself just from your height. You don't need some signal then on your scales to tell you how much over or under you are, just any accurate scale.

Accurate scales are a good way to know how you are once you have a target weight that you wish to hold to and is what I do daily. So really the question to be answered is "can some one point me to an ACCURATE set of scales?"

I can get a general indicator too with how "bony" my collar bone is. Useful for when I am travelling an ddo not have my scales.

The preferred measure these days is the Waist to hip ratio. This gives an indicator not simply of fat but how serious it is. ie How much is bad-for-the-heart visceral fat that the ads now refer to as "toxic" fat and which is the bane particulalry of males. (Even that though is a little too simple in that people of my advanced age, with no change whatsoever of muscle and fat, will find less likely to be met as our glutes sag so reducing the measure of the hip.)
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby Eleri » Sat Dec 20, 2014 12:17 pm

I agree with everyone who said scales are inaccurate.

Last year I was training hard for a 7 day, 800km, 20,000m climbing ride. On one hand I wanted to be as light as possible, but I was concerned about having too low body fat and callipers said I was at 12% which is borderline low for a female endurance athlete of my age. Yet the scales were telling me I had about 19% body fat!

I had been losing some weight and gaining some muscle and that's reflected in the trend data - but that's still a pretty significant discrepancy. In reality for my height / weight I was probably somewhere between the two measurements because of the way that the callipers "weight" the measurement sites. I did look quite gaunt though, looking back at the photos. I'm not that skinny now and the scales say I'm about 21%. I haven't been callipered again but I weigh more and I'm not as fast up hills so the data speaks for itself.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby singlespeedscott » Sat Dec 20, 2014 1:51 pm

Calipers do not measure visceral fat. Something that increases with age.
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby singlespeedscott » Sat Dec 20, 2014 1:52 pm

CKinnard wrote:
Nobody wrote:There are many studies that do. One is in the link above which is summarised by nutritionfacts.org. They ate the same number of calories, but one group put on more weight.
I saw Catalyst, and am aware of effects of 'transpoosions' in rats...and humans :)

re diet wars, I am thinking more of HCLF vs LCHF and Paleo vs Vegan.
As you are probably aware, longevity and reduced morbidity is heavily favored by low fat more plant based diets...in the literature.
Re weight struggles, I think whatever your diet, one is capable of overfeeding. Many things disrupt a homeostatic appetite mechanism - central and autonomic nervous and endocrine systems, poor or reduced sleep, stressors of all sorts, etc. As one ages, many struggle with dysregulation of these things, which leads to weight gain.

Most who debate benefits of diets ignore ageing effects on all body systems which degenerate. For instance, doctors have recommended to the elderly for decades that they take various vinegars with their meals to compensate the stomach's reduced ability to produce digestive acids. Other digestive processes also slow, thus favoring eating processed nutrient dense foods such as blended and cooked meals. Intestinal motility slows, liver and kidney function slow. Indeed kidney size shrinks dramatically.

Often debates about diet are conducted with little consideration of the needs and peculiarities of babies and the elderly.
I think all sides are guilty of having very narrow frames of reference. The raw vegan movement rarely address the physiological limits of toddlers and the elderly to chew and digest raw foods. The Paleo movement don't accommodate the failing physiology of the elderly, esp significantly degenerated kidney function which impacts clearance of protein waste. In fact, their view is once a human is beyond childbearing and rearing age, they probably have been superfluous to survival of small communities (they compete for scarce food reserves but benefit the community very little).
A great post.
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby mikesbytes » Sat Dec 20, 2014 3:55 pm

The problem with studies that use use population norms to identify dietary characteristics and connect them to problems is that the bulk of the population have little dietary knowledge and don't care. All it does is document the food commonly eaten by people who are destroying their bodies one mouthful at a time. All of the people discussing diet here are light years ahead of the general populations dietary knowledge and regardless of approach are much less likely to encounter the problems of the general population.

As has been brought up, portion control is important, this pretty much means limiting energy intake. The catch for many is doing it without feeling hungry. It is not easy to walk around feeling hungry, its just asking you to stuff something in there.

Avoiding feeling hungry is a major win for those who want to realign their health and seems to be the approach used by many of the better known diets (for want of a better word)
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby ColinOldnCranky » Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:36 pm

Eleri wrote:I agree with everyone who said scales are inaccurate.

Last year I was training hard for a 7 day, 800km, 20,000m climbing ride. On one hand I wanted to be as light as possible, but I was concerned about having too low body fat and callipers said I was at 12% which is borderline low for a female endurance athlete of my age. Yet the scales were telling me I had about 19% body fat!

I had been losing some weight and gaining some muscle and that's reflected in the trend data - but that's still a pretty significant discrepancy. In reality for my height / weight I was probably somewhere between the two measurements because of the way that the callipers "weight" the measurement sites. I did look quite gaunt though, looking back at the photos. I'm not that skinny now and the scales say I'm about 21%. I haven't been callipered again but I weigh more and I'm not as fast up hills so the data speaks for itself.
That only indicates that YOUR scales are inaccurate.

However I do recall that I tried about a dozen in order to find one that did exhibit consistency and accuracy. I bought them about fifteen years ago and took about twenty kg of weight plates with me when shopping to ensure that they were at least incrementally accurate. Subsequently I checked them once against a set of balance scales and they were within, from memory, 0.5kg. They are piezzo electric and I was not expecting much at the time.

More importantly they still seem to not vary from measurement to measurement and day to day. And still pass the increment test. That means they do the real job I want - to give me a true indication of small variations in weight.

I ignored the fat/BMI features on scales entirely - it's an abuse of science by the marketing industry. We can all easily calculate our desired BMI and once done it does not change. For example mine is 82.8 for BMI of 25, 74.5kg for BMI of 22.5 and those values do NOT change. It's nto that hard them to work out each time I weight myself if I am in the range I need to be.
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby Eleri » Sun Dec 21, 2014 12:32 pm

ColinOldnCranky wrote:
Eleri wrote:I agree with everyone who said scales are inaccurate.

Last year I was training hard for a 7 day, 800km, 20,000m climbing ride. On one hand I wanted to be as light as possible, but I was concerned about having too low body fat and callipers said I was at 12% which is borderline low for a female endurance athlete of my age. Yet the scales were telling me I had about 19% body fat!

I had been losing some weight and gaining some muscle and that's reflected in the trend data - but that's still a pretty significant discrepancy. In reality for my height / weight I was probably somewhere between the two measurements because of the way that the callipers "weight" the measurement sites. I did look quite gaunt though, looking back at the photos. I'm not that skinny now and the scales say I'm about 21%. I haven't been callipered again but I weigh more and I'm not as fast up hills so the data speaks for itself.
That only indicates that YOUR scales are inaccurate.

However I do recall that I tried about a dozen in order to find one that did exhibit consistency and accuracy. I bought them about fifteen years ago and took about twenty kg of weight plates with me when shopping to ensure that they were at least incrementally accurate. Subsequently I checked them once against a set of balance scales and they were within, from memory, 0.5kg. They are piezzo electric and I was not expecting much at the time.

More importantly they still seem to not vary from measurement to measurement and day to day. And still pass the increment test. That means they do the real job I want - to give me a true indication of small variations in weight.

I ignored the fat/BMI features on scales entirely - it's an abuse of science by the marketing industry. We can all easily calculate our desired BMI and once done it does not change. For example mine is 82.8 for BMI of 25, 74.5kg for BMI of 22.5 and those values do NOT change. It's nto that hard them to work out each time I weight myself if I am in the range I need to be.
I think we are agreeing Colin - what I meant to say is that the scales are inaccurate for measuring body fat which is what the OP was about. I have no reason to doubt they are accurately measuring weight and in any case, it's the trend data that matters as you say. And I correlate weight and body measurements and they show the same trends.

Actually I think neither the scales or the callipers are accurate for measuring body fat.

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mikesbytes
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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby mikesbytes » Sun Dec 21, 2014 2:11 pm

I measured a guy with both the callipers and scales and got different figures as we would expect. In addition the variation in measurement the callipers are measuring upper body fat and the scales are measuring lower body resistance
If the R-1 rule is broken, what happens to N+1?

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby biker jk » Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:44 pm

I just bought a Digital Body Analysis Scale from Aldi for $18. No need to pay hundreds for a Tanita. Pity that Garmin has an agreement with Tanita to stop you from manually uploading body fat %, etc.

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Re: Quality bodyfat scale?

Postby singlespeedscott » Sun Jan 04, 2015 10:01 am

biker jk wrote:I just bought a Digital Body Analysis Scale from Aldi for $18. No need to pay hundreds for a Tanita. Pity that Garmin has an agreement with Tanita to stop you from manually uploading body fat %, etc.
I too use the trusty ALDI scales. They do the job for me
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