InBody Scans 

Before we dive into this if you haven’t already read the first article about InBody scanning then I’d suggest clicking here and checking this out. If you have and therefore already have a good idea of the basics of why we do inBody scans then read on. 

You will inevitably find that when measuring body composition progress there will always be results which you don’t like, that don’t feel fair and don’t feel reflective of the actions you're taking. With InBody (bioelectrical impedance) scanning the most common example of this is when muscle mass drops and body fat percentage (BF%) increases. This can be super annoying to see and often feels pretty demoralising when you have been training well and perhaps making diet changes too. 

Before you go any further its essential to remember that BF% is a proportional measure, therefore if muscle reduces BF% will automatically increase as fat then occupies a larger proportion of total weight. In the same vein if body water increases, weight may increase but BF% reduces as more of the total weight is occupied by water and therefore as a percentage less is fat.

Why this might happen 

Disclaimer: All of these points are based on assumptions that InBody tests are being performed frequently (weekly or biweekly), the individual scanning is training regularly and is also making attempts to change their diet to achieve as weight loss or body fat reduction goal. 

Errors in Scanning 

1. You have done your body scan at a different time of day. In the evening hydration levels are higher therefore BF% reads lower. You also have more food in the digestive system which can read as muscle. So if you have jumped from an evening to a morning scan then you are likely to appear to have lost muscle and gained body fat. You haven’t, your hydration levels and food intake are simply skewing the data. To rectify this do another scan at the same time of day as your first or your norm.
    
2. You are jumping between scanning before and after exercise. If you have done a body scan after exercise then your muscle mass will read higher and therefore your BF% will read lower. If you then swap to scanning before exercise then you will see a drop in muscle and increase in fat by comparison. Therefore it's really important to always scan before you train and keep this consistent.
    
3. You have eaten less before your second scan compared to your first. Any food within the digestive system is likely to scan as muscle so if you had a large meal before scan number 1 but have fasted before scan number 2 then you are likely to appear to have lost muscle.
   
   Actual muscle loss
    
4. Your goal is weight loss and you are eating and training for significant weight loss. Research suggests that anyone losing >10% of their body weight should expect 20% of this loss to come from fat free mass (aka muscle). If this is your goal then its important to choose weight as the primary measure of success and not get too bogged down with muscle and BF% in the early stages. During the weight loss process you will lose fat, muscle and water and this can mean more anomalies in BF% and muscle results even though you may be making fantastic progress. When weight loss is the goal its still important to be proactive with muscle, whilst losing  some muscle may be inevitable we can keep this to a minimum by strength and resistance training and eating adequate protein to protect as much muscle as possible.
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5. You have dropped into an extreme calorie deficit and have increase exercise particularly non-weight bearing or cardio exercise. Large calorie deficits (generally described as lower than 20% under maintenance) may increase risk of muscle loss during a weight loss process. Strength and resistance training is considered to be more protective against muscle loss whilst in a calorie deficit compared to cardio and non-weight bearing so a combination of these factors could promote a higher degree of muscle loss. 

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What to do 

The first plan of attack should be to consider when you have scanned and the conditions of your body scan. If you have changed when you have done your body scan, eaten more or less or scanned at a different time around exercise then this is the first thing to change and try to do another scan which is more comparable to baseline. This will give a better more accurate representation of your results. 

If you have lost weight and some of it is muscle then take a closer look at how much of that loss is muscle. If you have lost 4kg and 0.5kg for example is muscle then there is no need to panic. Carry on and keep focused and when you have achieved your weight loss goal then the focus can switch to tweaking composition. 

If you know that you are doing “the right things” by training well and eating well then simply dismiss the disappointing body scan and move on. Look for trends in data over time rather than being highly reactive over one measure. Once you have 6, 10, 20 or 50 weeks of measurements the one that looked a bit off won’t matter one bit and if you were being scientific about this data collection then any anomalies would be disregarded and not included in your average anyway. 

If your muscle is trending downwards over multiple weeks or months then its time to have a look at your habits and check in with how extreme your calorie deficit may be (if you’re tracking this), how much protein you’re eating and what time of exercise you are doing. Reach out to your coach or drop me a message and we can look into this but if its just a one off then bin the sheet, move on and check in with how things are going at your next measure. 

Hope this helps and if you’d like to know more about optimising your nutrition then why not book a discovery call to chat about whether coaching could work for you. 

https://calendly.com/fitismnutrition/fitism-nutrition-discovery-call

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