Aria body fat % doubled overnight

[CHill73]

I'm normally around 14-15% body fat, and since resetting the scales to connect to a different wifi hub, it has jumped to 30%! I've subsequently reset it many times, and also tried the 6 consecutive measurements. No luck, still has me at 30%.

Been working brilliantly since Dec, but not so now! Any suggestions?

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[Nicobec]

Well, don't expect any help from the Fitbit support if your warranty is expired... I ended up buying a 28€ scale that is more precise and also gives a lot more data (body fat weight, bones weight, water%, muscle%...) and has an app interfacing automatically with Fitbit's. For less than 1/4 the price of Aria, I really do not regret it!

[Markmarkmark]

Thanks for the tip. I think I will do the same then. I have switched my Fitbit for a Garmin watch anyways, so no need for sticking with Fitbit if their support is this bad

[dforsten]

Same issue here, the body fat value almost doubled to 38% after a Wifi change/reset.

[JackofTrades]

Same issue. Scale stopped syncing, so I reset it, and my weight jumped 2lbs and body fat jumped 15%. 

This is 100% a software issue, like everything with this scale. Fitbit is a joke when it comes to support, and the knuckleheads assigned to CS give the absolute worst troubleshooting steps. Over and over in this thread. Everyone has the same issue and fitbits script is to say "don't wear shoes hurr durr." Get some real software developers and fix the problem. Stop blaming the customer for bad software.

[dforsten]

Try if the following steps helps you:

* Log in to your dashboard at fitbit.com

* Wait for a couple of seconds if any messages appear on the top of the dashboard

For me a message that my gender was not set in the profile appeared, after two attempts I was able to get my profile updated, and that message stopped appearing - which promptly fixed the issue with the excessive body fat measurements.

Why that setting got lost and body fat measurements simply doubled all of a sudden is puzzling, as is why customer support was not aware of that issue.

[JackofTrades]

I tried switching sex, as suggested on a separate thread. 

Got sick of fitbits shenanigans. Between the obsolete wifi chips, the extremely poor software updates (that very clearly caused this issue), refusing to provide real support.

Bought a scale at a third of the cost without the insane issues. I just cannot believe that the support said, multiple times, that the user was using the scale wrong. I didn't gain 15% body fat overnight. Good bye. Aria to the trash where it belongs.

[Coboconk]

Hi

just checked this out as I went from mid 20’s to 38% when I switched to new router and new batteries. 
From reading this report seems getting accurate BF % is a thing of the past with these scales. 
Weight does seem accurate so that part works. Expensive scale for just giving weight but it still talks to my phone  
Good luck finding a fix for next generation scales. 

[ToddyJ]

I take it there hasn't been any software update for this bit yet? 

Exactly the same thing has happened to me. Bought Aria 2 just 2 weeks ago. After 1 day it refused to connect to my home wifi network and I cannot get it to connect back. I had to connect it to my phone's hotspot and from there all my BF% jumped by 15%. 

[euroclyde]

As far as I know, FitBit hasn’t actually fixed this. I followed some advice from someone and it seemed to work: go to your profile online and switch the sex. Save it. Log out, log back in, and switch it back. Save it. For whatever reason, that seemed to work for me.

Sent from my iPhone

[dforsten]

A User Profile (database?) update seems to have left a part of the user account settings either wrongly initialized or not initialized at all, leading to faulty calculations of body fat.

Visiting your account on fitbit.com and updating your User Profile to assure all settings are properly initialized and stored on their server fixed it for me as well.

[ToddyJ]

Thank's for the tips. I did try changing my sex in the app, and the BF% dropped by 10%, but then I tried it wearing socks and it still measured my BF%... I think something is wrong. 

I still can't connect it to my home wifi, will only connect to my phone's when I turn on the hot spot. 

[DuncanE]

Same problem here though I am a bit fatter it seems - 17 to 35 after changing wifi.

[shadow_hunter]

maybe something's just wrong with your scales? cuz body fat can't double up like that

[shadow_hunter]

Anyways, as I was saying, f person's body fat can't just go up like that over night, you know that, right? The funny thing about these smart scales is that most of them are just a marketing trick. They don't really work that well and they certainly aren't capable of showing the right fat percentage of your body. Just buy a normal bathroom scale on amazon dude.

[MoHegarty]

Same problem and weighing 5 times straight just gives me higher numbers each time. 

[MoHegarty]

Saying "my friend " is annoying 

[dforsten]

Try going into your personal settings on the Fitbit website and re-set settings like "gender", "height", etc.

That fixed the issue for me.

Apparently old settings got lost or were never set which the body fat algorithm depends on, and it calculated a completely different number from one day to the next (I assume there was some database or algorithm update on the side of Fitbit which caused the issue).

[Duke_BJD]

I am also having the exact same issue and have tried the trouble shooting measure mentioned. This makes no sense that the reading would suddenly double just because a change of WiFi network.

There has to be a simpler fool proof way to fix this. 

[SunsetRunner]

This just happened to me. A simple change of WiFi network and the body fat percentage went crazy.

The real fix is, as a few others have said: update your profile on fitbit.com. Change your gender, save, logout. Change it back, save.

After that it took about 5 my weigh-ins for it to normalize to where it was. I just deleted all the bad ones after that.