Fool your body fat meter with water

Did you know that you can trick your body fat meter with water into thinking you have a different body fat percentage than you really do? Now I doubt you want to do this on purpose. What’s the point of measuring if you’re going to falsify the results? But knowing how you could trick your meter into giving wrong results tells you how to make it give more accurate results. So let me walk you through how to trick your body fat meter and we’ll take you from there.

First of all, you should know that this trick only works for devices that use Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) to calculate your body weight. In other words, if you use one of those gadgets that applies a small electrical current to you to measure your body fat percentage, this trick will work.

The trick

Here’s the trick. In order for your body fat device to display a lower body fat percentage, be sure to drink plenty of water to stay well hydrated. Rather, to show that you have a higher body fat percentage than you really do, allow yourself to be dehydrated.

Here’s why the trick works. BIA devices measure the amount of resistance your body provides to the small current with which you are discharged. Fat has less water than muscle and provides more resistance. And muscle offers less resistance than fat. In effect, the device measures the total amount of water in your body. You can fool it by manipulating the amount of water in your body yourself.

Drink plenty of water and stay well hydrated, and your device will show you that you have a lower percentage of body fat. If you don’t drink enough water, or if you get hungover and dehydrated that way, the device will show you that you have a higher percentage.

How does knowing the trick help you?

If you know how to trick your body fat measurement device, you also know how to make it more accurate. Try to keep your intake of water and other fluids consistent from day to day. Doing so will keep the amount of water in your body relatively constant, making for more consistent results from the device. In the same way, be consistent about whether you have something to drink right before you measure. A large glass of something shortly before measuring could also skew the results.

And don’t measure your body fat percentage if you drank a lot of alcohol the night before. You probably don’t like what you see. Alcohol dehydrates you and that will make your body fat percentage appear to increase.