Friday. 52kg. 20%. 1 bar Milka. VG. (Tanita Body Mass Tester)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Tanita Body Mass Tester
Date:	12/09/03 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Extremely easy to use. Accurate. Comparatively cheap.

Disadvantages: Those toes, those sweaty toes!

Back in the olden days, people would look at their reflection in a pond or, if they were feeling brave, a mirror to gauge how their body was looking. Years later we had personal bathroom scales, and even more years later the in thing became calculating your BMI (Body Mass Index). I've done all these, but I still wasn?t satisfied, so when I got some vouchers through from My Points, I took myself off to Argos to invest in a Body Fat Monitor.

The idea behind them is simple - weight is not really a good all round indication of health, because muscle weighs more than fat, so you may be above a healthy BMI and be a lot more in shape than a flabby so and so whose daily exercise involves lifting their arm and pressing a button on a remote control a few times. With the monitor, you can work out what percentage of your body is fat, and thus get a better picture of your overall body composition. It also helps when you lose weight to ensure it's fat that's being shed, not muscle.

I have a Tanita, model UM-019 (list price £39.99) which offers both regular weighing and body fat analysis functions. You program it with a few details (gender, height, age) and it stores the info so that next time you can automatically bring up your profile - 2 different people can store their details but other family members can use it to by selecting the 'guest' function. The body fat part works by sending a (painless!) electric current through your body briefly, and timing how long it takes to bounce back (flabby fat slows it down a lot more than toned muscle). To do this you need to be bare foot, so although being a cheap model mine doesn't have a 'weigh only' function, you can achieve this by hopping on while wearing socks - it'll spit out your kg (or stones and pounds, or pounds - it has 3 settings to choose from) but not you % because it senses there?s material in the way and cannot calculate it.

The model is really easy to use - th
e front has 3 buttons, and pressing each a handful of times allows you to program the required info. There's no on/off switch so you need to bring up your (or someone else's) profile each time before it will show the 0.00 display and let you get weighed. Afterwards it repeats the info a couple of times before switching itself off - handy for you since this happens automatically and thus saves battery power (4 x AA are needed, and come supplied with this model). They measure up to 21 stone 6 lb, in 2 lb increments and body fat is shown to the nearest 0.5%

On the back of the box it tells you the recommended safe limits for men and women for different age groups, so you know what you should be aiming towards. The first time I tried it I was on the bottom borderline of what is healthy for an adult, something I found interesting since according to my BMI, I'm safely sitting in the middle of 'normal'. Evidently I have more muscle than I thought. The next morning I hopped on again, just because it's a new toy to play with, not because I was expecting a dramatic change. Somehow, through going to sleep for 9 hours, my body fat had increased 2%, which was slightly worrying. However I read the manual and it explained that readings will fluctuate depending on time of day, level of exercise in the last few hours, any meals eaten, hormones and so on. Each is still 'valid' though, as long as you compare like with like - so if you weigh yourself at the same time of the same day each week, you'll get readings which can be compared accurately. A good way to start is to 'weigh and fat' yourself every day for a month and record the values, then divide by the number of days to get your current %. From there you can go to measuring, say, once a week, and see if your fat level is increasing / decreasing as desired. I'm not that bothered about remaining absolutely static so as long as stay within 19% and 24% (for my details, 21 - 33%
is healthy) I'm happy.

I like my new toy a lot, and so do all our friends. We even had it out at a dinner party recently because a guest absolutely *had* to have a go. My only gripe is that you're supposed to stand on it bare foot, and the material of which it is made is prone to retaining sweaty little toe prints that take a while to fade. Other than that it's fairly nice to look at - white with silver areas for your feet - and could comfortably fit into most bathroom décors. They're slightly bigger than other scales, but not annoyingly so. One thing I especially like is the display - it's digital and clear to read unlike those analogue needle ones.

I bought the cheapest I could find because though I care, I'm not overly concerned about having the most technical gadgets. I'm not sure which functions more advanced models have, but this one certainly doesn't seem to be missing anything. It is easy to use and if your details change (as they will at least once a year - your age - and more if you're growing or shrinking or undergoing a sex change) you can update them in a matter of minutes.

Don't use if you have a pacemaker or other implanted electrical device. Though you can use it safely if you've had, say, a boob job or a hip replacement, they don't guarantee that in these cases, the results will be truly accurate.

Buy from the latest Argos catalogue, Boots (though it's a fiver more there) or any health and fitness style retailer. I've not encountered a single problem as yet, but the 3 year guarantee is still reassuring. It doesn't seem to complicated to claim on, either - just keep your till receipt and the warranty card, and they'll repair or replace it for you if it does develop a fault within this time.

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