The New Year is around the corner and with it comes New Year’s resolutions.  Given the pandemic of obesity in the United States, many of those resolutions will center around “weight loss”.  

In the coming months, individuals will attempt to make lifestyle changes and maybe even utilize medications in their quest to lower that number on the scale.  As they progress on their journey, they will stand on the scale in the morning to track their progress and keep themselves motivated as they see the number drop.   But in the end, many individuals won’t be happy with the final results and I’m hear to tell you why.

BECAUSE IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT WEIGHT!!!  IT IS ABOUT BODY COMPOSITION!

Let me utilize an example to explain…

A 45 yo male who weighs 250lbs decides he wants to lose weight.  He decides to start on a weight loss injection and over the course of 6 months he drops 50lbs and now weighs 200lbs.  He is noticeably thinner and all of his work colleagues comment on how much thinner he looks.  But deep down he doesn’t feel any better about the way he looks when he stares into a mirror.  

Unfortunately this is an all to common scenario I’ve seen in recent years.  And the reason for this is because weight loss does not mean improved body composition. How much someone weighs is dependent on their ‘fat mass’ AND their ‘muscle mass’.  So if someone is only tracking ‘weight’ and doesn’t get body composition testing performed via a DEXA Scan (or other modality), when they lose 5lbs they won’t have any idea if they lost 5lbs of fat or if they lost 5lbs of muscle.  And looking back at our example above, the way one looks in the mirror after a 50lb weight loss can be dramatically different depending on if that 50lbs was mostly fat or if it was mostly muscle.

So anyone looking to “lose weight” should instead think about “improving body composition”.  Go get a DEXA Scan (or at least an Inbody Scan) to evaluate how many lbs of fat you have and how many lbs of muscle you have.  Then you can track results over time to make sure you are losing the lbs you actually want to lose (the FAT!).

At Marathon Direct Primary Care, we have a DEXA machine and Inbody scanner in our clinic and body composition analysis is included with membership. We also offer body composition testing to non-members. 

Once we know the results of your body composition, we can utilize that data to create a custom macronutrient (proteins, carbs, fats) and fitness plan to increase muscle mass and decrease fat mass (if necessary).  Then we perform repeat body composition testing every few weeks to track progress and make adjustments to your health plan as needed.