Or should I say, just calculated from your height and weight? I'm 21% body fat... But I've got no extra fat what so ever lol. My BC1000 Tanita has me a 6%. Now the Tanita bio-electrical impedance has it issues. Like hydration levels and such. But even though the Garmin is supposed to use the same sytem, it seems totally based on weight and height. I weight in barefoot, 21%. Wet out of the shower, 21%. Socks, 21%. Running shoes, 21%. Bike cleats, 21%. Ok, just kidding about weighing myself with the bike cleats.
If it is a joke, it's wearing thin. Garmin has acknowledged that the body fat metric isn't working well (for many of us not at all). If you have time please call them and complain/log an issue. One metric they do take seriously is the number of people that effectively complain.
Some of the metrics also depend upon what "activity level" you select on your profile. If you are a professional athlete, or train a significant amount then you may need to set your "activity level" to 8, 9 or 10. This then changes how the metrics are reported out. I came from a Tanita scale to the Garmin and found that the body fat was within 0.5%. I use Activity Level 7 as while I exercise daily I am far from being a hard core athlete. I am around BF 13.5%
Some of the metrics also depend upon what "activity level" you select on your profile ...
That's meant to be how it works and for many of us it doesn't. I've set my activity level above and below 7 and the BF metric never moves. As I said, at least one Garmin rep has acknowledged this in the thread linked below, saying his is stuck at 7 percent too. I do work out nearly every day and I suspect that my BF must be at the lower end of the bell curve. But the problem is that it records at precisely 7 percent every single day while the other metrics move around a little as you would expect them to. What this does is undermine the credibility of the product as a whole, because how can we have any confidence in it if it is stuck like this and not being addressed. The problem has been ongoing for more than a year. And that bold type is for Garmin.
I tried 2 different scales on the weekend, first one gave in BF% of 30.5%, second one gave me 20.5% DEXA has me at 21.5% so actually happy with the 20.5% for the price regard accuracy. First scale consistently had me at 50% water, second at a more realistic 58%. My FFMI is 23.3 (dexa) so not expecting it to be super accurate regard BF%. But it doesn't give you a lot of confidence when straight out of the box (both were new) that you get that much variation. I returned the first scale as I was pretty confident it had issue(s). It also read a full KG higher than the second and any other scale I used.
