The Definitive Guide to Body Composition
With so many people choosing to track health data nowadays, I get a lot of questions about the best way to measure body composition. Today I’m going to cover some of the most common methods, their pros and cons, and also tackle the question of whether there is an “ideal” body composition. When it comes to fitness, body composition refers to the relative quantities of fat, muscle, bone, and water in your body. These are measured by weight or as a percentage of your total body weight. Clinically, body composition differentiates between fat mass or adipose tissue, muscle, bone/bone mineral content, and residual mass (organs, connective tissue). For the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on “body composition” as it’s used for fitness and general health, not medically. Body composition is not the same as body weight and height. Two people of the same height and weight can have vastly different body compositions. One might be a very lean, muscular fitness competitor, while the oth