Body Composition Analysis
What is body composition?
Body composition is a method of breaking down the body into its core components: fat, protein, minerals, and body water. It describes your weight more accurately and provides a better glimpse into your overall health than traditional methods. Body composition analysis can accurately show changes in fat mass, muscle mass, and body fat percentage.
Why is body composition important to measure?
Our conversations on diet and fitness tend to focus on the amount of weight that we want to gain and lose. What they fail to consider is that two people of the same sex and body weight may look completely different from each other because they have a different body composition. Body composition describes the amount of fat, bone, water, and muscle in the body. Measuring your body composition will tell you your own body’s unique makeup and help you identify areas to work on to improve your overall health and wellness.
Body composition analysis is a method of describing what the body is made of, differentiating between fat, protein, minerals, and body water to give you a snapshot of your health. InBody is in the business of body composition analysis, and we’re here to teach you the importance of it today’s day and age to help you reach your health goals from the inside out.
How can BMI be inaccurate and misleading?
You may not have heard of body composition before, but you’re probably familiar with BMI. What’s the difference? Body Mass Index (BMI) is a common method used to assess the health of an individual by comparing the amount of weight they carry to their height: BMI – kg/m2
Despite the widespread use of BMI in clinical practice, BMI has many limitations and is a poor tracking tool for weight change because there’s no way to identify if changes in your weight are in fat or muscle. Predicting health or mortality using a single number such as BMI oversimplifies health risks and ignores important factors that contribute to positive health.
When you’re trying to get healthier, you’re most likely focused on losing fat and gaining muscle. Scales or BMI cannot tell you how much of your weight loss is fat, muscle, or body water, but body composition can.
Whatever your goals may be, an important thing to keep in mind during your health journey is that skinny does not always equal healthy.
Does skinny always equal healthy?
It’s common to assume that having as little fat as possible is healthy. However, being thin does not automatically reduce one’s health risk—“skinny fat” people can carry the same elevated health risks as an obese person.
People who are skinny fat may look thin and healthy because they have an acceptable amount of subcutaneous fat—the type of fat stored just under the skin—but they have increased health risks due to an excessive amount of visceral fat and too little muscle mass.
What’s more, those classified as skinny fat are typically unaware of their potential health risks because, unlike subcutaneous fat, visceral fat cannot be measured with BMI and scales so it goes undetected. Whether you fall into one of the above categories, or you just want to know how you start making healthy changes, understanding your muscle-balance is a great place to start.
A healthy balance of fat and muscle is a vital component of long-term health. Having sufficient muscle mass helps bolster the immune system to fight off illnesses, support good posture, enhance mobility, and prevent frailty in old age.
What are the benefits of body composition?
1. Find your baseline so you know what you need to lose, gain, or maintain
2. Assess your Percent Body Fat so you can focus on fat loss, not just weight loss
3. Maximize your workout routine to fit your unique health and fitness goals
4. Calculate your caloric needs and create a personalized nutrition plan
5. Set realistic goals, accurately monitor progress, and stay motivated
6. Make more educated decisions to improve your body composition