We had a great time at TheFitExpo Anaheim!  It was a really busy two days down at the Anaheim Convention Center, but we had a great time meeting a lot of fitness enthusiasts and professionals and allowing them to experience one of our professional models, the InBody 570.

On those two days, we tested the body compositions of 402 people.  When we looked at the data this, we found some interesting trends with respect to BMI and body fat percentage.  The results may surprise you.

BMI vs. Body Fat Percentage

When examining at the results, we looked mainly at the discrepancy between how someone using a BMI table would categorize a person vs. using body fat percentage markers.

For BMI, we used the ranges set by the World Health Organization, which begins the “normal range” at 18.50 and “overweight/pre-obese” at 25.

Unlike BMI, there are different ranges for body compositions for men and women. When it comes to body fat, what’s considered “healthy” or “normal” really depends on whom you ask.  For example:

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) ranges for “satisfactory, good health”:

• Men: 10-22%

• Women: 20-32%

The American Council of Exercise ranges for non-athletes:

• Men: 14-24%

• Women: 21-31%

The ranges we use to assess people are actually somewhat stricter for both men and women, and are based on the ideal body fat percentage (15% for men, 23% for women) as described by both Lohman in Advances In Body Composition Assessment and Lee and Nieman in Nutritional Assessment.  From those two figures, we created a 10% range by creating a ±5% window. Our ranges are:

• Men: 10-20%

• Women: 18-28%

These are the ranges that appeared on our result sheets and the ones we will be using when looking at the data.

The Attendees

Of the 402 people who tested, 235 (58.4%) were male and 167 (41.6%) were female, with an average age of 29.  The youngest person we tested was 6.5 and the oldest was 69.

The attendees at TheFitExpo were skewed towards being fit and lean.  As a result, we tested some very fit people. The leanest man had a body composition of 5.1%, with a BMI of 25.8. The leanest woman we tested had a body fat percentage of 10% with a BMI of 21.

The Results

Because BMI does not take gender or age into account, we were able to calculate the average BMI for those who tested: 24.825.  This is just under what the WHO considers pre-obese.

When looking at the overall population – which is what BMI is intended to be used for – a case could be made that the population we tested was verging on becoming overweight.  When we compared the BMI results against the body fat percentages, however, we found that this assumption is flawed, especially when looking at the results for the men.

• Men

For men, the average BMI was 25.87 (overweight/pre-obese).  However, the average body fat percentage was 16.75%.  This is quite close to the ideal body fat percentage and well within the healthy range, even by our strict standards.

When we drilled down the population by subgrouping the men into body fat percentage ranges, we found some even more interesting results.

As might be expected, as body fat ranges increase, as does BMI.  What was very interesting, however, was that men who had body fat percentages in the healthy range – between 10% and 20% – were consistently misjudged by BMI as being overweight and/or pre-obese.

This disagreement between BMI and body fat percentage can be very frustrating for these men if they are being held accountable by a group, such as an insurance company, that bases assumption about weight on BMI results.  We found that BMI actually reported some men as obese when they were in fact very lean; we tested one man with a BMI of 30.8 but a body fat percentage of 12.8%

• Women

The population of women that we tested was less lean than men, with an average body fat percentage of 27.38%.  This is just under where we begin designating women as “overfat.”  The average BMI was 23.78.  Here’s what we found when we drilled down by subgroups:

In women, we found that body fat percentage ranges and BMI ranges agreed in their assessments of people’s weight.  Overweight/pre-obese designations did not begin until body fat percentages rose above 28% – a marker of being overfat by our standards.

Because the average body fat percentage for the group of women was nearly at the overfat range, the correlation between body fat percentage and BMI was higher than it was for men.  The men were much leaner as a group and were much more susceptible to being misjudged by BMI, particularly the group that maintained a healthy body fat percentage.

From what we observed from the results, as you become leaner, BMI becomes less relevant and less useful as a method of assessing body weight.

About Age Being a Factor In Fat Gain…

One common thing we heard over the weekend was people saying that because they were a bit older (and this ranged quite a bit) that they had put on some extra fat.

While it may be true that older people might have more fat mass than younger people, this is potentially due to a long life lived with unhealthy habits leading to fat accumulation over time.

We have always maintained that age should not be taken into account when assessing body composition, which is why unlike other tools such as skinfold calipers, our devices do not use any empirical adjustments based upon age.  Below is the reason why:

*results have been modified to protect privacy

Despite being 65 years old, this person* had a body fat percentage of 13.7%. These results clearly show that age does not necessarily condemn a person to extra fat mass or the loss of Lean Body Mass.  With proper exercise and diet, these results indicate that it is possible to maintain a healthy body composition as you age, even as you approach your 70s.

Were you at this year’s TheFitExpo?  Did you get your body composition tested?  Let us know what you think on our Facebook page, we’d love to hear from you!  You can also watch our recap video below to see what people were saying at our booth at TheFitExpo!

We just came back from having a great show at this year’s American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) annual meeting in San Diego!  It was great getting out from our office in LA and meeting clients and end-users face-to-face at the convention.  When we got to talking to people coming by our booth, a lot of them had some really interesting things to say about body composition.  Here are some of our favorites:

Using BMI to Assess Weight

“There’s so many faults [with BMI], that something like this could completely change the way you are looking at it.  You get a BMI for an athlete and they have 3% body fat…but they’re way over in the obese for BMI.”

“Everyone goes by weight these days and weight is completely inaccurate.  You always hear that muscle weighs more than fat.  I was strong and lean at one time…and it’s better to have a more accurate way to measure.”

“It was nice to see that my percent body fat was 12.8 but my BMI is 25, so I am officially ‘overweight.’  If you’re small, [BMI] always underestimates your fat percentage and if you’re tall or large then it overestimates your fat percentage.”

Testing Body Composition with Other Methods

“We use skinfold [calipers].  That is what we do for body composition. You can have trouble testing body composition that depend on the tools you can use.  For the skinfold, for instance, you need to learn exactly how to do that because you can make mistakes with that tool. So, we have to be sure that all our testing procedures are fine and sometimes you can have trouble based on the subject’s characteristics. It’s not easy at all.”

“This is definitely less invasive because hydrostatic weighing – at least in the tank in my university – is really small so you can feel claustrophobic.  You have to wear a bathing suit, and then you have to blow out all your air and hold it so that there can be a good reading on the scale.

“My initial reaction, full disclosure was that…I was a little skeptical when I stood on it, but when I got my results, it’s the exact same as the Gold Standard, so I’m really impressed.”

Segmental Analysis using BIA

“It’s very detailed and actually very amazing that it has separate results for the right arm and left arm.  It helps me to understand what my weakness is and how I can improve.

“It’s pretty impressive that you can break it down by segment; I think that’s pretty cool.  You can track injuries over time and also see what areas of the body are better strengthened than others. So if you’re right hand dominant, or if your right leg is stronger than your left, you can balance out the athletes.

“Being able to see it broken down by segment is huge, so if all your weight is in your lower legs, or all your weight is in your abdomen, for congestive heart failure, you can see that/visualize it.”

“We haven’t really seen anything quite like it before.  It’s pretty unique technology; I would say that it is unique in the fact that it’s easy to use, simple, and fast, and that’s not always something that’s easy when you’re doing body composition testing.

“A good fit for potentially all institutions that do research or any institution that would use any kind of body composition assessment, for example hospitals or clinics or research clinics or whatever the case may be.  Being that it is so difficult to assess [body composition], it’s nice to have something that is so accurate.”