By Guy Lawrence
A big thanks to the guys at MeasureUp in Sydney for helping me get an extremely accurate reading of my body fat, muscle mass, bone density and overall weight. It’s a very cool machine and a fantastic place to start if you are serious about tracking yourself whilst on any kind of health journey.
In this video (length 3:04sec)
- What is a Dexa scan?
- Why it is a non-intrusive way of measuring body fat
- Get accurate measurements for muscle mass & bone density
- And much more…
The Dexa scan results
The first thing I asked Luke (who is also a gun CrossFitter & coach at CrossFit Active in North Sydney) is how accurate are they? He said accurate enough for the Wallabies rugby union team and Hugh Jackman (would be interesting to see Wolverine’s x-ray) to be using it… Sold! That was enough for me…
At the end of the consultation they also give you a very groovy looking report with several scans and x-rays of your body, with my body fat being in orange and muscle mass in red. I’ll let you guess what the blue is!
Body fat & muscle mass
Body Composition Results
Bone Density
My existing baseline weight
I had been doing CrossFit at Bare in Bondi-Junction for 4 weeks by the time I had the Dexa scan. I had weighed myself on a scale in a chemist the week I had started and I was exactly 90kg.
So allowing for different scale calibration I could have potentially put on a 1kg of muscle mass in the 3 weeks from weigh-ins.
I love the fact that my BMI is 25.4 too. This means according to BMI statistics I am in the overweight category. If you are using BMI as a way of measuring your health/weight, scrap it! If you are going to do any kind of weight measuring, do it properly.
The reality is, the weighing scales only tell a small part of the story. Personally, if you are reading this forget about your weight. You need to be concerned about what actually makes up your weight. If you don’t want to have a DEXA scan, then use your clothes as guide, not the scales. Try something on that’s a little bit too tight and hang it up somewhere you can see it everyday. Start your weight loss plan then try it on a month later. If it fits or there’s a bit of extra room… excellent! Always remember when it comes to weight loss, body fat is the goal with muscle retention/gain, not weight loss.
Would love to hear your thoughts, weight loss goals, what you are using to measure progress etc… Cheers, Guy
Big thanks to Dily Funkypants for being my fill in cameraman with 15 minutes notice, then hoping on the back of the motorbike as we tore through the city to make it on time!
My CrossFit Journey Part II transcript
Guy: Hi, this is Guy of 180 Nutrition and today I’m in the city of Sydney at a company called MeasureUp. What I’ve decided to do whilst I’m on my CrossFit journey is get a baseline of my body composition. And today who’ll be taking me through it is Luke. Luke happens to be a fellow CrossFitter at CrossFit Active, and Luke, can you describe to the people watching this what exactly I’m about to undertake.
Luke: So what we are conducting today is what is called a Dexa scan. Dexa stands for Dual, energy, x-ray, absorptiometry. Basically it’s a low energy x-ray that’s going to measure your lean mass, fat mass and also your bone density. It’s going to tell us how muscle you’ve got in your body and how much fat you’ve got in your body. So down the track we can compare results.
Guy: I feel for anyone that it is basically a great place to start…
Guy: So… The conclusion. We have the results here, so over to Luke.
Luke: Results wise your body composition. 12.4% is body fat. Recommended for your age is between 8%-20%. So you are well within that range and towards the bottom end of it which is a good thing. Your total body weight is of 91kg and of that 91kg, your bone is 4kg, the amount of fat you have is 11.2kg. Might sound like a lot but that’s actually not much for a male. Under 15kg is really good and between 10kg & 15kg is what we are looking for.
Guy: It can even break down each individual limb.
Luke: yeah, you can actually see in the trunk and in the legs, and in the arms. You can see exactly how much fat is in those areas, which is useful to see where the fat has come off when in the future.
Guy: Well, I’ll be keen to see where I am in say 3 months time after a couple of more months of CrossFit.
Luke: Excellent
Guy: Thanks Luke, appreciate it!
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