In verifying Disneybebe's calculations, I noticed something rather disturbing on PP (and hopefully PPLP has corrected this).

I am VERY sceptical about the validity of the basic approach.

For Women, notice that the %BF measurements do not take into account anything other than the hip and waist measurements (in addition to height). Does it not seem reasonable that we could find two 5' 7" women who had the same measurements and yet one is a large framed body builder with thick muscles and the other is a small framed couch potato with thick fat? Yet both would yield the same %BF by these calculations.

%BF measurements using girth measurements are questionable to begin with - but if you are only using them as a rough estimate of where you are, they are OK. But the simpler the calculation, the worse the validity of the results.

In addition to being way too simplistic - only taking two girth measurements into account - I have a serious problem with this particular approach from another standpoint. The conversion constants are linear and this makes no sense whatsoever since volume is a power relationship.

The abdominal constant is (inches)*(0.71)
The hips constant is (inches)*(1.4) - 8.52
The height constant is (inches)*(0.61)

This makes no physical or logical sense whatsoever. Given how these numbers are used, this says that if a woman's waist increases by 1", that her body fat percentage increases by 0.71. It says that it doesn't matter whether her waist went from 20 to 21 inches or from 40 to 41 inches. Yet the amount of additional fat that can be added in the latter case is at least twice as much.

The method for males is even worse. While it does take into account frame structure (that's the purpose for the wrist measurement since the wrist has very little muscle or fat on it) and the weight, from there it goes into the dumpster immediately.

Notice that it doesn't take into account the person's height at all. For example, let's say that two guys each weigh 180 pounds. Each has a 30" waist and a 6" wrist. According to this chart, they each have the same percentage of body fat. Even though one might be a 5' tall pear shape and the other a 6' tall apple shape. Make sense to you?

Does it make sense to completely ignore the apple/pear shape in determining %BF after spending a whole bunch of time talking about how important it is?

I am VERY dissappointed in the Eades' for this.