MHW COMPETITION PRIZE:

 

Tanita Body Fat Monitors

How does a Body Fat Monitor work?

The body is made up mostly of skin, bone, fat, muscle and water. The exact composition is changing constantly throughout the day. If you are trying to make lifestyle changes by eating a balanced diet and exercising more, your body composition may change considerably.

By getting a better understanding of your body and how it is changing, you can see the progress of lifestyle changes and make sure you stay fit and healthy.

Weight alone is not a good indicator of your health and fitness as it cannot show the changes in body fat and muscle. Body composition monitors can provide you with much more information. Accordong to the manufacturers, the Tanita Body Composition Monitor BC532 can give you accurate information and assessment about your body in seconds.

The BC532 can measure:

• Muscle Mass - having a higher muscle mass helps burn calories more quickly even at rest.
• Body Fat - vital to regulate temperature, store vitamins and cushion joints. But too much raises the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
• Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) - the daily minimum level of calories (or energy) your body needs when resting. About 70 per cent of spent calories go into powering organs such as the lungs. The more muscle you build the more calories your burn.
• Visceral (stomach) Fat - having the right amount of fat around the vital organs cuts the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and may delay the onset of diabetes
• Body Water - water is vital to many basic body functions and helps concentration, sports performance and general well-being
• Bone Mass - whilst bone structure is unlikely to undergo noticeable changes in a short period, it is important that you develop and maintain healthy bones by having a balanced diet and plenty of exercise.

How exactly do the Tanita Body Composition Monitors calculate all that?

Tanita's Body Composition Monitors use Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA).

The monitor has four metal footplates on the scale platform which act as conductors when you stand on them. BIA calculates body composition by sending a low, safe electrical signal through the body (up one leg and down the other). The signal passes freely through fluids contained in lean tissue, such as muscle and blood, but meets resistance (impedance) passing through fat tissue.

The monitor measures the resistance and which are entered into advanced medically validated equations and set against your height, weight and body type to give highly accurate body composition readings.

Special Offer:

Buy a Tanita Body Composition Monitor BC532 from Scales Express or Scales r Us and receive a free the new HGV Man Manual - published during Men's Health Week -worth £14.99. More on the HGV Manual here.

Information on this page was supplied by our friends at Tanita, a global leader in healthcare technology. We're very grateful to them for their genorosity in supplying these prizes.