An in body composition analyzer is a very popular device today for health-conscious people. It can become a reliable tool for assessing your health status and a blueprint for your future health development. As a runner, it’s a very motivational tool. It can show you how the training works with your chosen data, compare it to earlier measurements, and give you a view of your training results.
A Body Composition Analyzer In General
The most common method we know as consumers is a bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA). It sends a weak electrical current through the body and measures resistance to estimate fat, muscle, and water content.
Your Body composition can often be related to several diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, osteoporosis, and osteoarthritis. Body composition measurements are useful in showing a nutritional state or status and monitoring the changes associated with growth and disease conditions.
Changes in body composition
Changes in body composition often occur when there is an imbalance between nutrient intake and body requirements. Altered body composition can be observed by conditions such as physiological changes when the nutritional intake is inadequate.
Many techniques are available for body composition assessment today. They range from more simple measurements in devices such as digital bath weights or in fitness centers – like the popular brand InBody Composition Analyzer – to more sophisticated advanced measurements.
Some of the methods include tracer dilution, anthropometry, densitometry, and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry analysis. These methods are complex, and many of them are still at the research level.
Body Composition Analyzer To Runner’s Progress
For sports practitioners and runners in particular, using a body composition analyzer could be a great training tool, for measuring various aspects of body composition. This includes body fat percentage, muscle mass, bone density, and other metrics that can provide insight into your chosen parameters for running goals and overall health.
We often see a body composition analyzer in fitness centers, where most members use it as a tool to measure training status and physical progress. But you can also use an app-based body analysis scale in your home/bathroom.
In Body Composition Analyzer In Action
An In Body composition analyzer gives you a detailed insight into your body composition, and thereby a more realistic picture of your health or fitness status.
As mentioned Small and harmless electrical impulses are sent through the body from the weight platform and the two hand grips (Fitness center model) and calculate your body composition.
After you have been measured, the results are presented in an app. You can see your muscle mass, fat-free mass, fluid balance, fat level between the organs, and much more. This information is very important for creating the optimal training plan.
When you have your first body composition, you have your baseline and can move on from it. Regardless of whether you are overweight, a jogger, or a competitive runner, it’s important to know your body composition in relation to your goals.
Manage Your Training With In Body Composition Analyzer
If you want to be in control of your health and give your body the best conditions, you should look at which parameters are decisive for your health and training. Most of us use the number on the bathroom scale as an expression of our health and training status.
But it doesn’t say anything about your overall health. If you want to know how healthy you really are, you need to look at a lot more than your weight. Can your body stand a closer inspection?
What to look for
Even if you have a flat stomach – normal size, it can easily cover up fat between the internal organs, your problems with digestion can be caused by too little liquid and various diets can mess up your metabolism.
It all affects your body negatively, even if your BMI looks fine. Conversely, you can be healthy and fit, even if you have fat on your sides. There are other eye-opening parameters to look for.
A Body Analyze Reveals The Truth About Your Health
A body analysis can reveal how your body is composed and whether it has the best precondition to function optimally. So which parameters are crucial for your health?
It’s not about visible belly fat
For many years I have believed that the visible fat on a person was most important for health. But what worries health professionals is not so much the visible belly fat as the fat that hides between the viscera, also called visceral fat.
The fat between the intestines is a ticking bomb under your health if there is too much of it. Therefore, in recent years, doctors and experts have begun to focus much more on the location of fat in the body than on the amount of fat.
When fat accumulates in the abdominal cavity between the viscera and around the organs, it is due to an unhealthy and inactive lifestyle and this fatty tissue is extremely dangerous to your health.
The fat secretes a lot of harmful signaling substances, cytokines, which move out and around the entire organism via the large blood vessels of the abdominal cavity. Here they lead to an increased risk of insulin resistance, which is the precursor to diabetes and a wide range of other health threats.
That is precisely why you must reveal your visceral fat amount – and get rid of it if it’s too high. So, do you have fat between your organs? A body composition analysis can give you the answer.
Maintenance of your bones depends on how you eat and train
your bones are a living part of your organism. They maintain your skeleton every day, but that rebuilding depends largely on how you exercise and eat. From the age of 30, you gradually lose bone mass.
But you can do a lot yourself to maintain your bones and thus ensure that your skeleton can carry you through life; An active lifestyle, a stable weight, and a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D can help you avoid osteoporosis in particular as a woman after menopause.
With a body composition analysis, you can get an insight into your bone mass and compare it with a normal value. A normal, healthy bone mass for women is between 1.9 and 2.9 kg. For men, it is between 2.7 and 3.7 kg. The measurement is an estimate of the body’s bone mineral and calcium.
Is your resting metabolic rate too low?
An increased muscle mass is also an important factor when it comes to raising the resting combustion. Although the resting burn depends on age as well as genetics, it’s actually possible to raise it by using your muscles and working for the case.
Strength training is a great way to train your muscles and thus raise your resting metabolic rate, but all exercise counts in this account, so you can also give your muscles a helping hand by taking the stairs, cycling to work, or cleaning the house. The more your muscles are used, the higher your resting combustion will be.
BMR means basal metabolic rate (basal metabolic rate) also called resting combustion. A body analysis calculates BMR based on your numbers: gender, age, muscle mass, etc.
Does your body primarily consist of fat or muscles?
This is an important factor, particularly for athletes. Muscle weighs more than fat and therefore you can have a high BMI, even if you have a relatively low body fat percentage. There are many good reasons to build up your muscle mass.
A good muscle mass and strength is a precondition for being able to stay mobile as you get older. Therefore, you should consider building a healthy muscle mass so you have a good muscle reserve as you get older. Strength training and a protein-rich diet help you with the best basis for increasing your muscle mass.
A body analysis can show your body’s distribution of fat/muscle mass.
Do you get enough water?
Your body consists of approx. 60 percent water, whose main task is to transport nutrients into and waste materials out of the cells. But water is also needed to keep your joints lubricated, your food digesting, and regulate your body temperature.
Every single day, your body loses two to three liters of water, and if you are very active, you can achieve a fluid loss of half or a full liter of sweat per hour.
If you don’t make sure to fill up the depots with water, you risk suffering from headaches, constipation, and cramps.
A loss of just one liter is enough to reduce your performance when you train. A body analysis can show your fluid balance status.
Get Answers With An In Body Composition Analyzer
The most important body composition analyses are shown below:
• Muscle mass
• Fat Percentage
• Fluid balance
• Bone mass
• Resting combustion
• Belly fat
• Visceral fat
• Weight
• BMI
The Body composition analyzer analyzes the composition of your body and sends data for the various parameters to your app or print them out. Then you can set goals for your development. You can also consult a coach to make sure that you use the right plan toward your chosen goals.
Final Thoughts
Body composition analyzers are great for tracking fitness and running progress, assessing health risks, and tailoring fitness or nutrition plans. However, the accuracy varies widely across different types of body composition analyzers.
If you want to compare your results with previous results, you should use the same body analyzer type to see progress. The most reliable professional body analyzers are also the most expensive, while consumer BIA devices provide a general, though less precise, estimate.
I hope you get something out of this post. If you have any questions about the topic or want to leave your review, please leave a comment below.
