01 Aug BMI vs. Lean-Tissue Mass
How often do you check your BMI?
Do you use it to determine how healthy you are? Having a quick “health” measuring stick is useful, but it’s not as accurate as you might think. To get an accurate idea of your health, you need a tool that is just as sophisticated as your own body.
A BMI is an easy way to tell yourself whether or not you’re fat or skinny. Simply plug in your height and weight into an online calculator and you’ll be assigned a number that puts you on a scale of healthy to morbidly obese. Many doctors abide by this scale and advise their patients to aim for a lower number, but this system is inherently flawed.
The main problem is that the BMI scale doesn’t distinguish between fat and muscle.
That means that an incredibly unhealthy person with very little muscle tone can measure within the healthy range, even though that person clearly needs to gain more weight and muscle. Basically, a person can achieve a “normal” BMI by starving themselves, losing all their muscle mass, and depleting their body’s healthy fat stores. It encourages destructive eating habits like food calorie restriction and potentially even eating disorders. It also means that a muscular person can measure as overweight or even obese just because muscle weighs so much more than fat. Is this any way to base your health?
Instead, our doctors use impressive technology that determines your lean muscle mass. By figuring out how much lean muscle you have, we can get an accurate depiction of your health instead of an arbitrary measurement of your weight. We use this to set realistic goals and track them to your advantage. Be sure to come in for follow-up body scans or continue using your Synergy Scale to make sure that you’re gaining lean muscle and losing fat!
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