What are you product of? Now in fact I had at all times been advised that it was snips and snails and pet-canines’ tails. But there comes some extent in your weight reduction journey the place the physique composition feels extra necessary than your precise weight.
You see, the reality is that we don’t wish to drop some weight. The website is just not referred to as MAN v WEIGHT. We wish to lose fats. And to try this, we have to understand how a lot fats there may be and the way low we wish to get it.
In the early days you might be relaxation assured that in case you are dropping not more than 1kg (2.2 lbs) per week, you might be most likely not dropping that a lot lean mass (AKA the good things – muscle) and so that you’re simply dropping fats. Weighing scales are greater than appropriate as a way and you’ll simply depend on watching the needle drop every week.
But what if you wish to understand how a lot fats you could have in your physique? Well, your weight received’t inform you that. Bioelectrical-impedance is the commonest technique used right this moment, which have helped shift hundreds of thousands of sensible FitBit and Withings scales. The reality is that bio-impedance is commonly no extra correct a measure of physique composition than the discredited physique mass index (BMI). That’s why we advise utilizing it as a metric, however being conscious that it may be erratic and sometimes a approach off the mark. The old fashioned gymnasium-goers will attain for the calipers, however simply small variations in measurements can result in wildly completely different outcomes. Significant expertise is required.
At MAN v FAT, we now have raved over Bodpod (costing ~£50 per time – proven under) to present you an correct physique fats measurement. Using air displacement plethysmography, it offers a fairly correct physique fats proportion (tends to barely overestimated) however I discovered it missing intimately.
The Gold Standard of physique composition known as DEXA. Until earlier this week, it was unattainable to simply guide a DEXA within the UK.. You needed to have a medical purpose (losing a few pounds is just not acceptable) and be referred by a GP, partly as a consequence of the truth that DEXA makes use of low doses of x-rays.
DEXA, or twin-power x-ray absorptiometry is a medical scanning expertise used for measuring bone mineral density and helps diagnose osteoporosis. It passes a really low dose of x-rays by way of the physique to supply a extremely correct and exact measurement of physique composition – particularly bone, fats and lean muscle. Yes, that basically is my skeleton above.
It is fast (about three minutes), painless and non-invasive. You’ll lie flat on a padded desk, staying very nonetheless, along with your toes in a barely unusual place after which your report can be prepared. The radiation is equal to being on a aircraft for about 30 hours, or 10% of a chest x-ray.
BodyScanUK (https://www.bodyscanuk.com) have launched this in a number of areas within the UK at a value of round ~£119. In the background after you could have stuffed within the varieties, they get you a health care provider’s referral and thus you flip as much as a clinic or hospital and full the scan.
Never once more.
The element of the report is superb. You obtain statistics on each gram of your physique, whether or not your proper arm muscle actually is greater than your left? Is that fats primarily round your trunk or in your legs? How a lot visceral fats (the fats that does probably the most injury) does your physique have? How you evaluate to twenty,000 US Citizens? I don’t suppose this can be a spoiler to say that you may effectively be thinner than all of them!
Over time I’ve misplaced all religion in bio-impedance (Fitbit, Tanita or Withings). I might by no means do a BodPod once more now that I’ve discovered DEXA. If you will pay costly cash for a scan, then there is just one winner in my view. Also, after I final checked, you will get £20 off a DEXA utilizing the code ‘BODY20SCAN’
