Everyone wants to be fit and healthy. In the fast culture, we rely on fast foods too much. While they save time and make our lives easier at the moment, they have long-lasting adverse effects on our bodies. We do so many things to get to our ideal body goals. Having body goals and working towards them is all well and good, but most people don?t exactly know what their problem areas are.
When you know about your body, when you understand where your focus needs to be, you can make informed decisions. Only then can you take some proper steps towards getting your body healthy. Body composition is currently the next big thing in health and fitness and for a good reason too.
Knowing your body and its ideal weight is more than just knowing your BMI (Body Mass Index). There are many methods and devices, currently available, that are used to determine body composition. Having a clear idea of your body composition is the first serious step towards improving it. Your body composition test results can help you understand your weight and how much unhealthy fat you carry and help improve your overall health. You can also achieve your fitness goals with a technical and proper approach.
What exactly is body composition?
It is a method of describing what our bodies are made of, the proportion of fat and fat-free mass in your body. When you have a clear understanding of your body composition, it will help you to improve your health more efficiently. Like anything else, when you go about it correctly, it will change your life for the better. Weighing yourself on a scale or calculating your BMI (Body Mass Index) simply doesn?t cut it anymore because we do not have a way to differentiate between body fat, lean body mass, muscle, or body water.
There are many ways like the basic skinfold calipers, then there is hydrostatic weighing, then there is Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry aka DEXA, and also Bioelectric Impedance Analysis aka BIA. Some methods are quick and easy, but they will provide you just the basic information like the skinfold caliper and the hydrostatic weighing. If that?s all you need to know, then great. There are other methods that are lengthy and require the assistance of a trained technician to administer a test like DEXA and BIA. For obvious reasons, these methods are expensive, but they let you understand a lot more about your body in detail.
Take action
Only when you are obese and develop weight-related health issues is not when you should start caring about the fat in your body. Find out your body composition and make lifestyle changes to treat the problem areas. Some methods just tell you about the percentage of body fat you have, while others give you a detailed report on various areas of the concentration, use the information about yourself. Understanding your body composition makes sure that you feed your fitness goals with meaningful and accurate data and make changes that actually help.
