Body composition is the body’s relative amount of body fat to fat-free mass.
Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) is a method for determining a number of important parameters of the composition of the human body. It has developed into an internationally applied measuring method during the last decades.
Knowing the body weight and height, the following parameters can be determined based on the measurements: fitness status, body mass index (BMI), fat mass, fat-free mass, body cell mass, extracellular mass, total body water, intracellular water, extracellular water, intracellular dry mass and extracellular dry mass.
Why are these important? Did you know that it is possible to have an unhealthy body composition even if you are in the recommended weight range for your height? Knowing only your body weight doesn’t tell much about your body composition. One can be normal or even slightly overweight with a healthy body composition and another person with an ideal weight can have the so called skinny-fat, which means that he or she has too much body fat in proportion to lean body mass. Having a lower proportion of fat mass and an appropriate muscle mass is extremely important for the metabolism and for overall health in general.
This measurement is a crucial part of a nutritional assessment. To learn the amount of lean body mass is important for being able to count the daily protein need. During weight loss it is absolutely necessary to follow how the body changes and do a check-up in every 3-4 month to make sure that fat mass and not muscle mass is lost.
Sports people, the elderly, those who want to lose weight, stay or become healthy should check their body composition from time to time.
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