Health and Wellness

Body Composition

Measuring body composition allows you to take a closer look at your bodies overall health. Calculating your body composition requires an analysis of how your body’s weight is distributed throughout your body. For example, once the analysis is complete you with have a firm understanding of how much of our body is fat, muscle, bone, extra. From this, your doctor will be able to accurately advise you on your risk levels for obesity-related illnesses even if your BMI shows that you are within a healthy weight range. Check out the 5 benefits for knowing your body composition here. 

Body Mass Index (BMI)

Body Mass Index is calculated by taking your height and weight and inputting it in the formula below:

BMI = [weight, in pounds / (height, in inches x height, in inches)] x 703.

Often BMI used as a measure of obesity. You can quickly get an idea of how much weight you need to gain or loss depending on a simple scale. However, this method has flaws:  

• This measurement does not take into account the proportion of bone, muscle, and fat in the body.
• Bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat.
• Muscle is denser than fat which means if you have more muscle than the average person you are going to get a false read.
• It doesn’t take into account the fluctuations of water weight your body experiences throughout the day.
• It doesn’t take into account where the fat on the body is located.