Why is body composition important to measure?

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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.

Why do you need to understand your weight in terms of muscle and fat?

You may be aware of the normal weight ranges, but how do you get there? If you only focus on losing weight, you may end up losing muscle mass and eventually sabotage your efforts. By differentiating between muscle and fat, body composition removes the guesswork of determining what your weight fluctuations mean, be it muscle gain, fat loss, or anything in between.

Whatever your goals may be, an important thing to keep in mind during your health journey is that skinny does not always equal healthy.