InBody: a measurement that leads to a change

The printout doesn't know what happened between measurements

An InBody printout has over thirty values and all of them describe a single day, today. It says nothing about what came before.

And yet the difference between two measurements is almost always explained by what happened in between.

That you got ill halfway through and didn't come for a month. That your shoulder started to hurt and we had to throw out half of the plan because of it. Or that you came straight from lunch today, so those two extra kilos have nothing to do with fat.

I know all of this because I was there and I have it written down in the portal. Without it, the numbers are just numbers.

And above all, something happens because of it

You can read general advice anywhere. The problem is that on Monday morning nobody asks whether you actually did something about it.

With me, the measurement leads to the next plan. If you lost muscle, we reduce the volume and start looking at food. If nothing moved at all in three months, it's usually not the training but how often you actually came, and I have to ask about that out loud.

What I measure

Weight, muscle mass and body fat, each separately. Plus the ratio between them, which matters most of all and which you can't read from the scales.

The measurement takes a few minutes. You step on the device, hold two handles and that's it, nothing unpleasant happens.

Why one measurement isn't enough

The first measurement is a starting point. On its own it says little, because the only thing I can compare it with is tables, and they know nothing about you.

It starts to make sense with the second and third. Only between them can you see the direction: whether muscle is growing, fat is going down, or only the water is changing.

That's why I measure at the start and then roughly once every two to three months. More often isn't worth it, the change would get lost in the accuracy of the device.

Your results don't disappear

I save every measurement in the client portal together with the conclusion we agreed on. You log in from anywhere and have it back even a year later, when nobody remembers where the paper went.

It sits there next to your training plans and the notes from individual sessions, so you can look back at what happened between two measurements.

You can't tell from one measurement, by the fourth the direction is clear.

When it's worth it most

At the moment when the number on the scales doesn't change and you feel nothing is happening. That's exactly where most people give up, even though quite a lot is usually changing underneath the same weight.