We may get either good news or bad news when we stand on the scale and conclude that either the diet is working or it’s not working. Some people avoid using a scale altogether so as not to get depressed. These people have essentially given up and resigned themselves to weighing more than they want to by reasoning that it’s due to genetics or hormonal changes or past pregnancies or a wide assortment of other factors. But what if the scale is not giving all the information that is important regarding the composition of fat and muscle in the body? A scale can only determine pounds. What would be much more helpful to know is how much muscle mass we have, fat mass and water distribution both inside and outside the cells. These measurements are possible with a device known as a bioimpedance analyzer. A mild current, as weak as a household battery, is passed through the body from hand to foot traveling through the compartments of fat, muscle, water and bone. This takes a few seconds and a print out indicates both the pounds of muscle and fat as well as percentage of fat and muscle. It also indicates the water distribution inside and outside of cells for unhealthy water retention. Measurements are to the tenth of a point. Each of these markers is very sensitive to dietary and lifestyle changes. The goal is to build muscle, reduce fat and promote a healthy shift of water to inside muscle cells.

Your bathroom scale cannot give you this information. How do you know if your weight gain is due to gaining fat or muscle? How do you know if your weight loss is due to loosing fat or loosing muscle? Anyone can go on a diet and loose 20-30 pounds but unless they were following a specific program to build muscle through diet and exercise, much of that weight loss would be due to loosing muscle and they would be likely to gain back most of the weight. It is quite encouraging for people to learn that their muscle mass has increased even by a few tenths of a point while their fat mass has decreased by a few tenths of a point or more. Some healthcare practitioners are beginning to use the bioimpedance analyzer in their practices for individuals who want to know more than what their scales can tell them.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at 6:57 pm and is filed under wellness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.