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What I Learned From Hydrostatic Body Fat Testing By Darya Pino Last month, Fitness Wave made its biannual visit to both Parnassus and Mission Bay campuses. Fitness Wave is a private company that uses hydrostatic technology to determine body composition. Translation: They dunk you under water and tell you how fat you are.Being a campus advocate of healthy living and appropriate weight maintenance, I couldn’t wait to sign myself up. But as I tried to recruit friends and coworkers to join me I started to get the feeling that this type of testing can actually be regarded as too much information for many people. And for the hefty price tag of fifty dollars, I began to wonder if this might actually be true. Certainly for me the decision was a simple one. Curious about how my lifestyle impacts my body fat percentage, how could I pass up this opportunity? But for others, the main question that comes up is what exactly to do with information like this. For most of us on campus, saying we are busy is a glaring understatement. Many people do their best to stay fit, hitting the gym occasionally and eating their vegetables at dinner. But the question of how much time can reasonably be devoted to fitness and healthy eating is legitimate. If the test tells you that you are tipping the scale a bit too much toward fat, is there much more you are going to be able to do to improve it? Indeed, the first question I was asked as I prepared to “get dunked” (the company’s slogan) was my personal body fat percentage goal. I explained that I didn’t have one and was just curious, so the person conducting the test just entered the “minimum” goal of 6 percent body fat. Obviously this is not a realistic number for me, being female. Such a question brings up another potential reason for getting this test, the always testosterone-filled notion of bragging rights. Who can boast the lowest body fat percentage, me or the one friend I did coax into joining me? I can say with confidence that if this is your purpose, hydrostatic testing is a very powerful tool. The hydrostatic testing method is unequivocally one of the most accurate forms of body composition testing and is the preferred method of most doctors and fitness professionals. I have read various numbers for its accuracy (all within 5 percent), but the person conducting the test told me he consistently gets within 1 percent accuracy. Pretty impressive. After getting the test I discovered yet another reason that learning your “magic number” can be something that comes with a lot of baggage. Do you tell people your results? It turned out that people in my lab had a pool going to see who could guess my body fat percentage the most accurately. Am I therefore obligated to share with them this somewhat personal information? How should I feel about the numbers my friends guessed? Since I am writing this article, am I obliged to give my results for the entire campus to see? Well, since I do not have elevated testosterone levels I have decided not to print my results in Synapse, but I am happy to say that I am quite healthy and comfortable with my body image. Also, I was not in the least offended by the uneducated guesses of my gambling lab mates. And while I personally will not do much with the information I have learned about myself, I do recommend it for anyone considering the test. The primary reason I suggest it is for health reasons. Similar to knowing your cholesterol and triglyceride levels, body fat percentage is a fitness biomarker that can be predictive of overall health. Also, it is interesting to compare your current percentage to what it may be later in your life to identify how your lifestyle impacts your health. Though it is arguably less useful to people who are at or very near their fitness goals, it is certainly a valuable piece of information to anyone just starting a fitness program, much more so than the number on the scale or even the body mass index, which can be misleading. This is because the most dangerous kinds of fat are not visible to the naked eye and are located in your organs and viscera. There can also be fat hiding inside your muscles. Additionally, hydrostatic body fat testing can give you a clear understanding of your lean muscle mass, which is a reflection of your resting metabolic rate. In fact, for an additional forty dollars, Fitness Wave will also conduct a basal metabolic rate test that involves breathing into a tube for twelve minutes to measure oxygen consumption. This information is highly valuable for anyone seriously trying to understand their metabolism and how many calories they should be eating each day to maintain, gain or lose weight. It also underscores the importance of lean body mass to your metabolism and demonstrates why both diet and exercise are important factors in weight loss. After finishing my tests (I did the metabolic testing too) I was given printouts of the results. The following day I received an email with more detailed information and analyses, along with recommended fitness goals. This included statistics on how many calories I burn each minute doing specific exercises such as Judo (12.3) or tennis (5.9). I thought this was a nice touch. Overall the testing is worth the investment. But I also recommend deciding beforehand what you will do with the information once you get it and if you plan on sharing it with anyone other than your doctor. Yet, while I think scheduling an appointment with Fitness Wave is a great investment to make for yourself, it probably wouldn’t make the best Valentine’s day gift for your sweetheart, especially if accompanied by a box of chocolates. For more information about Fitness Wave visit www.getdunked.com
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