Three Methods Of Assessing Percent Body Fat In Healthy Older Adults

PURPOSE: We compared body fat using three different body fat percent methods that can be performed in 60 seconds or less. One hundred healthy older adults between 60 and 88 years old (mean: 72.28) served as subjects. METHODS: The three methods used to assess body fat were the following: skinfold calipers using regressive equations developed from seven skinfold sites; tape measure using regression equations developed from waist, abdominal, and hip circumference measurements and age, height, and weight; and body mass index (BMI), using regression equations developed from BMI, age, and gender. RESULTS: Significant differences were found in the calculation of percent body fat between the three methods (F = 143.30825, p<.01). CONCLUSION: While excessive body fat is correlated with several diseases in older adults such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stroke and is an important aspect of all health/wellness programs, assessing body fat can be very expensive and time consuming. The three quick and inexpensive methods of calculating percentage body fat however produced significantly varied calculations of percentage body fat. More research is needed to compare these three methods to the gold standard of measuring percent body fat such as such as hydrostatic weighing and Duel-Energy X-Ray Absorpiometry (DEXA).