My school hosted a health and wellness fair at the rec today and one of the booths had this handheld machine that told you your body fat percentage and how many pounds of fat that equates to. Would this help me in determining what a good goal weight is? He said that the BMI is just a fancy number and has no science behind it, and that I should be more concerned about the body fat percentage. Are both important? Is one better in one way over another? ACK! >.<

Here's an interesting article that I found on Livestrong:

http://www.livestrong.com/article/77106-bmi-vs.-body-fat-percentage/

Meh, BMI is bullshit. A lot of US doctors are starting to get away from using it, mine despises it. Professional bodybuilders at 320 pounds, 6-8% bodyfat are considered morbidly obese by the BMI, yeah, that makes sense doesn't it?

Body fat percentage. The hand held devices are good for ballpark stuff. There are several body composition scans (DEXA) you can get done for exact numbers. It takes in account bone density, body fat (exact), muscle, tissues, all kinds of things.

I guess one good thing about it is that it helped me get approved for surgery, haha. Otherwise I'd be looking at self pay options.

Definitely! And, in fact that's how my doctors team determined my goal weight - it's specific to ME! Their scale was one of the fancy ones that can break out body composition. You can get to a decent proxy for this online if you search for it. Then a "normal" female fat composition is 23-30%. For me, my bones, organs, etc weigh in at 125 lbs or thereabouts. Add 25% or so of fat and goal is low to mid 150s.