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Weight Loss Tools
The Best Weight Calculator for You
Whether your weight loss goal is to shed belly fat or lower your risk of heart disease, a few at-home calculations can help keep you healthy and on track
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The Tools You Need
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To determine if your weight is “normal”
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To determine if your weight is a health risk
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To calculate your body fat percentage
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To determine how many calories you need
To calculate your body fat percentage
The body adiposity index (BAI) is a new test proposed as an alternative to calculating your BMI. The BAI can be used to find your percentage of body fat.
How it works: To calculate it yourself, first convert your measurements into metric numbers. Here’s how: Hip circumference (in inches) x 2.5 = hip circumference in centimeters. Height (in inches) x 0.025 = height in meters. Then plug your metric measurements into the BAI formula: [(Hip circumference in centimeters) / (Height in meters x square root of height in meters)] - 18.
For example, if you’re a 150-pound woman with 30-inch hips and you’re 5'5", the math would look like this:
Hips: 30 x 2.5 = 75 cm
Height: 65 x 0.025 = 1.625 m
[75 / (1.625 x 1.275)] - 18 = approximately18% body fat
American Council on Exercise says an “acceptable” range for body fat for women is 25 to 31%, and for men 18 to 25%. You’re considered obese if your body fat is 32% or greater for women, and 26% or greater for men.
If you don’t want to pick up a calculator, let online tools take care of the math. Enter your height, weight, hip measurement (taken at the level of maximum extension around the bottom area), gender, and age in an online calculator, like this one.
You can also try a new feature included on many bathroom scales, Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) technology. BIA is a common way to estimate your percentage of body fat. The device, which starts at around $100, sends a mild electric current up through one foot to the waist, then down the other leg to measure your percentage of body fat.
How it can help you manage your weight: Researches say the BAI is more accurate than the BMI because it takes into account body fat without factoring in weight. “This method has promise as it takes into account many factors: gender, age, height, weight, and hip circumference,” says Burron.
How accurate is it? This new test has been checked against a Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) machine, which is regarded as one of the most accurate ways to calculate body fat, and the BAI numbers were proven to be accurate, at least in Hispanic and African American populations. More research needs to be done with other ethnicities before it’s widely considered a valid measure of body fat. “Until this method has been scientifically determined by the medical community to be an accurate body composition assessment, I will stick with the more common methods such as BMI, body fat analysis, and waist-to-hip ratio,” says Burron.
And in terms of the BIA scale, the device reportedly is very sensitive to hydration (dehydration can cause it to overestimate the percentage of body fat), which can affect its accuracy.
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