Weight Chart & Body Fat Calculator Section

Weight Chart look ups and Body fat calculator results are the easiest way to establish your ideal weight and body fat percentage. There are of course, many ways to decide if you are too fat. You can look in the mirror, listen to friends, use the bathroom scale, a tape measure or an old outfit from your ideal weight era.

But the most accurate ways are to check your perception against the accepted norms, using precise calculations. Try our body fat calculator or our bmi calculator to see if your perception of yourself is right.

Body fat calculator methods & at a glance weight chart showing ideal healthy weight for men and women:

Other Body Fat Measures

Here are some other tests that measure body fat. Sorry, you're on your own for these–no whizzy automatic calculators included.

Body Fat Pinch Test

Special calipers are used to measure folds of skin and fat in several spots on the body and average them. It is not a precise method; a reading of 25 percent body fat could mean an actual number as high as 28 or as low as 22–or worse with a badly trained technician. Some obesity scientists describe this method as a rip-off or "faux information."

Widely available at health clubs; takes a few minutes

Bioelectrical Impedence Test

You lie down, a technician attaches electrodes to one hand and one foot, and a harmless radio-frequency pulse is run through the body to measure its water content. That number provides a guide to body fat with an error of 2 or 2 1/2 percentage points. But exercise and liquid intake before the test can skew results.

Takes only a few minutes; found at health clubs and sports medicine clinics

Immersion Test

So far the "gold standard" of body-fat measurement, this test requires you to expel the air from your lungs and get dunked into a pool–half a dozen times. It under- or overestimates body fat by only 1 percentage point.

Available at many hospitals and some gyms, but it is gruelling and can last an hour

Bod Pod

An egg-shaped chamber that offers precision without pain. You step in, sit for 20 seconds, and that's it. The chamber measures air displacement, which can be converted to relative fat when weight is factored in, since muscular people are denser.

Preliminary tests show it's as good as immersion.
Found at only a few dozen big hospitals and doctor's offices, but it's quick and easy