HOW OLD IS YOUR BODY? FIND OUT AT BEE-FIT

It is becoming better understood that body weight alone is not a fair assessment of your health; you can be of “healthy” weight and still have an unhealthy level of visceral fat; you can be “obese” and yet be an olympic athlete.  If you go by the out-dated BMI measurements, you’re not going to get the full story – or even, in some cases, the right story.

Working with our members over the past 12 years, we regularly hear about frustrating weight-loss plateaus and members judging their progress by what they see on the scales rather than by what they see in the mirror or what they feel in their general well-being.  We have always been keen to stress the importance of fat-loss over weight-loss but we humans like to see measurable results! That’s why Bee-Fit has invested in a medical device-standard body composition machine that uses bioimpedance analysis – it’s basically one of the most accurate ways to analyse your body without cutting you in half and taking a proper look and it will tell you how old is your body!

Bee-Fit’s Tanita body composition machine measures:

•weight

•body fat %

•body fat mass

•muscle %

•muscle mass

•visceral fat

•hydration

•basal metabolic rate

•metabolic age (your body’s “age”)

•bone mineral mass

Tanita calibrates its results against the gold standard tests for all of the measurements and is between 1-2% accuracy of what is possible without, as I said before, surgical intervention!  Importantly though, although accuracy is of course important, it provides an extremely useful baseline for progress. When your weight loss plateaus but you continue to see your fat mass reduce and your muscle mass increase, you know you’re on track and you’re less likely to fall off the fitness horse and undo all your good work. Or, if you still have a long way to go in your fitness journey and the weight loss has slowed, seeing continued progress in increased muscle mass and decreased fat is going to be highly motivating.

Knowing your hydration level is also very useful and people often underestimate the importance to health of drinking enough water, especially if they train regularly. The Tanita measures both intra and extra cellular water.

Meanwhile, if you see a sudden dip in your bone mineral mass, you know it’s time to seek medical advice.

The machine gives your personal reading and then compares it to healthy averages set by the World Health Organisation. You can find out about how to understand your measurements here.

Many of our Bee-Fit members are using the machine every 4-6 weeks. Even those who found the initial measurements a bit daunting have found it a hugely motivational tool and are throwing themselves into all aspects of their training down here at the gym – which is why we made the investment!

So down here at Bee-Fit, it’s goodbye to the scales and hello to full body composition analysis.

Want to know how old your body is and how to make it younger? Come and see us at Bee-Fit.

More articles on fitness by Bee-Fit