With our 50 Workout Challenge underway and a lot of people using the InBody Scanner for the first time I wanted to talk about how you can use it to help you improve your health and fitness. We are big believers in this scanner (which is why we now own two and want to have one at every location in the future) and have seen tremendous results from using it. If you use it consistently and know how to read your results and use them to make changes it can be a huge tool in your health and fitness journey.
So what is the InBody scanner and why do we use it? The InBody scanner is the most accurate machine that we have found (within 2-3% accuracy) that you can use outside of going to a professional medical facility. The accuracy is incredibly important for us and is why we invested in these machines and do not recommend that people use cheap knock offs. We always want to be as accurate as possible when we are measuring things (full range of motion for reps, exact reps for workouts, exact measurements for runs, etc.) and measuring weight and body fat is no exception. If you are using something that is not very accurate you cannot make reliable decisions. The InBody tells us a lot of cool stuff with the scan. Not only does it give us our weight and body fat %, but it tells us how many pounds of muscle we have, how many pounds of fat we have, our mass distribution from limb to limb and side to side (very helpful for injury prevention), our basal metabolic rate, and many other things. It also saves each person's information so that they can track their progress over time. Overall it is a phenomenal tool that can tell you a lot about your body.
Let's talk about the main things we are looking at when you get your scan done. When looking at your print off sheet the first thing we are going to look at is body fat percentage. People always ask what a good body fat percentage is and I always say that it depends. It depends on your goals, your gender, your genetics, your age, and a lot of other factors. In GENERAL, and I am talking in very broad terms here, for guys under 20% is a good healthy place to be, under 15% is when you are going to start seeing some abs, and under 10% is when you are going to start looking "shredded" (6 pack, vascular, etc.). For women it's typically about 5-10% higher, so under 25% is a good healthy place to be, under 20% is really lean, and under 15% is super super lean. One thing to keep in mind here is that a healthy place to be is to fluctuate over time. Being super lean for a long period of time isn't the best thing to be (messes up hormones, psychological tole from being super strict, etc.) so it's ideal for this to fluctuate 5-10% each way over the year and years.
The next thing I'm going to look at on someone's scan is their muscle pounds and their body fat pounds. We can compare their muscle pounds to their weight and determine if they need to add more muscle or if they need to lose more fat. Generally it's a combination of both but sometimes that are people who have a ton of muscle for their body weight and just need to lose body fat (and it's ok to sacrifice a few pounds of muscle) or on the flip side there are people who don't have nearly enough muscle (typically people from a cardio heavy background like running or bootcamps and/or live in a major calorie deficit) who need to add some muscle. This is a very important part of the process because some people might be doing a ton of cardio to get their body fat percentage down when in reality what they need to be doing is more strength training. Having someone who knows how to read the scan is very important in this step of the process.
The final few things that I look at are weight distribution from limb to limb (left versus right side) and basal metabolic rate. We want our weight to be evenly distributed from limb to limb so that we don't have imbalances, which could lead to injury down the road. Generally we see when people first start out at our gym some imbalance, but over time those even out from all of the unilateral and mobility work we do. We can also look at basal metabolic rate to get an idea of how many calories you need to be eating in a given day. One thing to note here is that we aren't spending much time looking at weight. In our eyes this is just a data point and does not tell us a whole lot. We see all the time people who's weight goes up on the scale but body fat % goes down because of adding muscle. We want to get our members away from obsessing over what the scale says and more focused on what their body fat percentage is.
So let's say you do a body scan and aren't happy with your results. What should you do? We always go through a basic troubleshooting process with this person. Step 1 is look at their attendance. How often are they coming to class? If you post your results on SugarWod you can look back at your history and see a cool graph of how often you have been logging results. If you don't we can pull up your attendance history in ZenPlanner. Our goal is a minimum of 4 classes a week. If you aren't coming 4 times a week EVERY WEEK then we can't promise that you will make progress. You might at best maintain and at worst (if your habits outside of the gym aren't great) regress. Step 1 for a lot of people is to come to class more often. Step 2 is to look at protein intake. We want people getting somewhere around their body weight in protein. So if someone weighs 200 pounds we want them getting around 200 grams of protein per day. This is tough for most people (and most people from what we see are getting about half of what we want) which is why we get a lot of people to supplement with protein. Step 2 is to start getting enough protein intake EVERY DAY (7 days a week). For most people these two steps are enough to make DRASTIC changes in their body fat. We have seen people lose 2, 3, 4, 5, and even 6% body fat in ONE MONTH simply by making these two changes. After these two steps we can also go even further and start looking at water intake (at least 100 ounces a day), sleep, outside stress, adding extra strength work, cutting down alcohol, and others. But for most people coming to 4 or more classes a week and getting their body weight in protein makes a huge difference.
The thing to talk about with the InBody is frequency. How often should you be scanning? In an ideal world you would scan once a month on the same day of the week and time of day (we want to keep the data as consistent as possible). For the challenge each person gets a free scan at the beginning and end of the scan, and we also give people a free scan when they first join the gym. All other scans are $10, which comes out to $120 a year if you scan once a month. For access to such a powerful (and expensive-over $6,000) machine that is a huge deal in my opinion and much cheaper than the $50 recommended by InBody. If you use the scans to measure your progress and make changes as you go it can be an absolute game changer for your health and fitness.
So there you have it. We are big believers in the InBody scanner and have seen tremendous results from using it. If you use it consistently and use the data to adjust your habits it can provide a tremendous benefit and help you get where you want to go. I encourage you to make the scanner a part of your monthly health and fitness routine and get a coach to help you get a game plan after each scan. If you use it consistently over time and use it to implement changes I promise that you will see tremendous progress!