Aria body fat percentage questions

[CarrieV]

Hi, I have a question on whether it is really possible I'm made up of 33% body fat (according to the aria scale).  Here are my stats:

51 year old woman

5' 6"

132 lbs.

currently wearing a size 6

33% body fat according to the charts means I'm obese.  I don't feel obese.  I know I need to lose 8 more lbs. to be at my ideal weight that I feel best at, but this 33% body fat has been pretty consistent the whole time I've been dieting.  Even after I lose 8 more lbs., I do not think it will be much less than 33% body fat on the aria scale.  I'm definitely not lean, so I know selecting the "lean" category in the settings would not apply to me.

I'm fine with just ignoring this and feeling good about the lbs. I've already lost, but every morning it's still a little depressing to weigh yourself and think how is it possible that 33% of my body is pure fat.

I weigh myself bare foot, dry feet every morning before I shower.  I do not move the scale.  It is sitting on the floor in my bedroom, same spot as always.

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[JuanJoFitbit]

@LottieD I'm sorry about the experience you've had with your Aria scale. I appreciate your feedback and comments since this helps us to keep improving.

@Itsonlyneedham Thank you for getting back! Let me go ahead and find a solution for the inaccurate body fat percentage. Please weigh yourself 5 times in a row in order to re-calibrate your scale. If this doesn't fix the issue, go to your profile settings and change the gender from male to female and save changes. After this, change the gender back to male and weigh yourself 5 times. Finally, check out if your body fat percentage gets fixed.

Keep me posted! 

[Crader]

My new aria 2 also reads 10% more than the inbody. Im suspecting that the aria algorithm is set for people with lower muscle mass.

[JuanJoFitbit]

@Crader Thank you for participating in our Fitbit Community! I'm sorry to hear that your Aria 2 is not tracking your body fat accurately either. I'd like you to follow the troubleshooting steps that were recommended in my previous post. This will refresh and re-calibrate your scale.

After you've done this, monitor your scale and let me know if this resolves the issue.

See you around! 

[LottieD]

If you follow my replies and those of your colleagues you would know every debugging effort has been tried. Your body fat algorithm is wrong. Plain and simple. Put it right then you won’t have to keep suggesting these non-effective “fixes”. Changing my age was the only thing that worked for me.

Sent from my iPhone

[Pindyloo]

Here here!

Lucinda

[Crader]

The issue seems to be the algorithm not the scale. My normal weight 30 yo son gets a normal %. I believe your algorithm assumes that due to my age and gender that I have little muscle mass and thin bones, neither is true. I lift free weights 3x per week and have good bone density. When i switched gender to male this AM my % dropped 6 points. Also my cals per minute burn at the gym jumped by 1.5. Tomorrow I'll try reducing my age to see what effect on % that has. In factoring backwards from weight & % Aria2 says I should lose 70-90lbs to get to 20-30%. My trainer who is a professional bodybuilder and well versed with % tells me I need to lose 45lbs. That is a huge gap. My skin fold and Inbody readings run 12-18 % lower than aria. One other possibility is that aria assumes apple shape for men and pear shape for women. But 1/3 of people don't conform to that. If we could input some of the other factors that go into the algorithm these problems would go away. I don't know the formula but if i could say apple shape, >avg muscle, etc. or whatever other factors that would be great.

After changing my gender to male yesterday and getting a 6% body fat reading drop, today I changed my age and lost an additional 4% bringing my reading down to within 2% of my Inbody readings. Initially I thought this would be an empirical reading. Clearly it isn't and fitbit has made some very bad assumptions.

Does fitbit intend to fix these issues or should I send my scale back? I already owned a decent scale. The reason we bought this very expensive device was entirely to track body fat %

Moderator edit: merged reply

[Courtney14]

This blog has been going on for over a year and they have not fixed it, so I would just return it.

Moderator edit: personal info removed

[LottieD]

It still weighs me fine. It’s just annoying how they don’t fix it!

Sent from my iPhone

[jdc115]

If you can still return it, I'd do that. If too late, try to get it exchanged under warranty. I gave up on the scale and no longer use mine. I can find much cheaper alternatives like Xiami though I have no idea if any of them would be more accurate and part of the appeal of using the Fitbit scale is that all the information synced to the app. For now, I use the machine at the gym that spits out a reading for me to track

[jboyle1115]

As someone who is now using a scale and body fat scan via gym, my best suggestion is its about 5% heavy on the fat side. Without impedance through body like feet to hands no more accuracy can be expected. Always error on the side of being fatter, unfortunately. Other methods are quite a bit more accessible these days and more accurate for around 20 bucks use those

Sent from my iPhone

[AndrewTSheldon]

Yeah, that's not true at all.  I've lost 12 pounds and my body fat hasn't budged in 4 weeks.  According to the scale I'm 36% at 225 pounds that would mean I have 82 pounds of fat, which converts into about 10 gallons of fat volume, yet I'm lean everywhere except a bit of a stomach, which volume is probably 2 gallons. 

I've had hydrostatic water testing, where they put you in a tub, and measure your weight and displacement and my BF was 18%.  FitBit will try to make all sorts of justifications blaming you for their hardware errors, but it isn't because you're dehydrated, it's because their product just doesn't work.  But they'll never admit that. 

Go get hydrostatic testing done and compare.  I guarantee you the Aria is WAY off. 

But the app does calculate and show your BMI based on the scale weight, sooooo, it kind of does.  But I think people are really talking about body fat.

Moderator edit: merged reply

[BillyCarlsen]

Yes body fat. I think the scale does not perform as advertised.

[TrimTrish]

Body fat percentage has never worked. Waste of money buying this scale.

Scale was a waste of money.

I agree, it shows my whole family at 30%+ and my sons are under 20%. Totally inaccurate

Sent from my iPhone

Moderator edit: merged replies

[JuanJoFitbit]

@AndrewTSheldon @TrimTrish It's great to see you in our Fitbit Community! I'm sorry to hear that your Aria scales are not tracking your body fat percentage accurately. If you haven't done so, please restart and re-calibrate your scales by taking out the batteries for 15 seconds and put them back in. Once this has been done, weigh yourself 5 times in a row. Finally, make sure that your scale is placed on a hard surface and you are stepping on it barefoot.

@BillyCarlsen Since your scale is still unable to provide accurate body fat percentage after trying the recommended troubleshooting steps, I'll send your case to our Support team so they can investigate further and provide a solution. You will receive an email from them soon.

See you guys around! 

[Pindyloo]

Asking people to follow these steps adds insult to injury. The scales don’t measure body fat accurately. We all know this. Hopping on and off again is a waste of people’s time.

Lucinda

[LottieD]

This has been done many times.  The scales for BF just don't work and
don't have the right settings for sex/age/etc.  Just read the posts.
--

Moderator edit: personal info removed

[JuanJoFitbit]

@Pindyloo @LottieD Thank you for sharing your feedback and comments. This helps us to keep improving.

[obeseone]

Blimey if this is an improvement then I hate to think what regression would look like!

[JuanJoFitbit]

@obeseone Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

[John555]

Hello carder how are you doing?