[Evaluation of bioelectrical impedance method for fat measurement in corporate fitness program]

Control of body weight has been one of the major issues in corporate fitness programs in Japan. In scale of overweight and obesity, several measures have been used. In the present study, the recently developed bioelectrical impedance method (BIP) was evaluated to assess percent body fat in a corporate fitness program. Reliability of BIP was assessed in a male worker group repeatedly in a day and with a 3 month interval. In a larger population, BIP and two conventional measures of subcutaneous fat (SCF) and body mass index (BMI) were examined for their relationship and evaluated as predictor for the level of hypertension. According to the results, BIP showed a satisfactorily high reliability and the correlation coefficients of BIP to SCF and BMI were 0.501 and 0.455, respectively. Among the three measures for fat and overweight, only BIP and BMI were related to the level of hypertension, and BIP is a better predictor for the level of hypertension compared to BMI. These results validate the usefulness of BIP and further application of this method for corporate fitness program is suggested.