Estimation of body composition from anthropometric and physiological measurements of obese college women

Relationships between anthropometric and physiological measurements and body composition were examined in 42 obese college women. Estimates of body density (BD), fat weight (FW), and fat free weight (FFW) were obtained by the helium dilution method. Anthropometric measurements included height, weight, 4 body diameters, 4 body girths, hand grip strengths, and 7 skinfold thicknesses; physiological measurements were daily urinary creatinine and basal metabolic rate. Simple correlation coefficients between each of these measurements and the estimates of body composition were less than 0.7, indicating little predictive accuracy from single measurements. Multiple correlation coefficients (R) were higher for FW (R=0.83 to 0.88) than for BD (R=0.64 to 0.75) or FFW (R=0.72 to 0.80). The equations that most accurately estimated body composition included skinfold thickness, hand grip strength, basal metabolic rate, and a variable calculated from height and weight. When equations selected from the literature were used, BD and FFW were consistently overestimated and FW underestimated.