What Is Bodpod and How Accurate Is It?
date
May 4, 2018
slug
bodpod
status
Published
tags
Tech
summary
type
Post
Yesterday, I used Bodpod for the first time. It was $10 per scan at my company, which was very cheap compared to the industry standard DEXA scan, albeit less accurate.
You have to wear very tight fitting clothes like a swimwear as to not screw with the measurement.
There is two thirty-second measurement, and the result comes out straight away. You will get bodyweight, lean mass and body fat percentage.
I was quite surprised to see that I had higher body fat percentage compared to what I expected but lost 6lbs since early this year. Does it mean I had even more body fat before? Is it even accurate?
This scientific paper compares BodPod with DEXA scan and find that BodPod tends to underestimate the BF% of high BF individual and underestimate low BF individual. This means that my real BF% might even be higher than what was measured at this time.
BodPod works with evaluating the air displacement in the tank. Breathing or moving might affect the measurement. The system will then calculate the relationship between pressure and volume using predetermined formula. Because of this, the result tends to be less accurate than DEXA which uses x-ray to get high accuracy measurement.
I’m leaning towards just skipping BodPod and using DEXA in the future for tracking progress.
Regardless of the accuracy, this measurement still shows that I’m still far off from my target leanness and will be adding more cardio and HIIT on top of my lifting routine.