Baseline
Establishing a body composition baseline is crucial for gaining insights into your overall health and fitness. By utilizing a Dexa Scan or Inbody scan, you can obtain valuable information about your body composition and measurements. These detailed reports provide comprehensive data on factors such as bone density, muscle mass, body fat percentage, and visceral fat. While formulas may help estimate your resting metabolic rate (RMR), having an accurate measurement through scans is a game-changer. Understanding your RMR enables you to precisely tailor your nutrition and exercise plans according to your body’s unique needs. Settling for estimations is not advisable when you have the opportunity to optimize your health journey with the accuracy provided by a Dexa Scan or Inbody scan. Moreover, utilizing your RMR in setting your calorie target is the first step in employing a scientific approach towards achieving your health goals.
Analysis
Below are the first 2 pages of an example Dexa Scan report. Here’s the whole Example Dexa Scan Report if you are interested in diving deeper. On page 1 (left) we can see that the subject has had 4 scans, 3 in 2016 and 1 in 2017. For each date we can see body fat percentage, total mass, fat tissue, lean tissue, and bone mineral content. On page 2 (right) we can see the corresponding RMR for each measurement.
From a health standpoint we don’t really care about total mass, basically how much you weigh. What we care about the most is the body fat percentage because that is the best indicator of overall fitness. That number is an artifact of how much of your total weight is fat vs. muscle. So, your body fat percentage can go down if you lose body fat, or if you gain muscle, or both. The subject in this case has lost 4% body fat in the course of almost a year, and they picked up 6 lbs of muscle!
On page 2 we can see the latest RMR is 1,331 calories a day. That’s the number of calories the subject will burn if they don’t exercise or perform an activity that burns extra calories. Note that even though the subject lost about 5.4 lbs of fat, their overall weight went up almost a pound, because they gained 6 lbs of muscle. Note also that their RMR went up 50+ calories becasue of the extra muscle. Muscle is a fat burning machine.
