Numbers On The Scale Don't Tell The Whole Story

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Every Monday, the WCCO Morning Show helps you kick off your work week on a healthful note. For this week's Get Movin' Monday, we want you to shun those numbers on the scale.

Chris Clark of Tiger Athletics says it's more important to track your body composition, and not put so much stock into how much you weigh.

The body composition scales are tipping in the fitness world away from what we weigh and toward what we are.

"We try to tell people we don't care what you have. We care how much muscle you have and how much body fat percentage you have," Clark said.

Finding out that number is what's important. Tiger Athletics is using a machine called the InBody 520 to analyze people's makeup and track their progress.

"It sends a small electrical current through your body," Clark said. "Electricity flows freely through water, and we know muscle likes water. So it flows freely through muscle; the more muscle you have, the freer it flows. Electricity doesn't travel through fat really well. And then also through organs, it has a different wavelength for that as well."

Pro athletes like the Minnesota Vikings' Chad Greenway use the device.

"It's a good barometer just to get a glimpse of what I'm doing with my workouts. Obviously, it's important for me to track it day-to-day to see where I'm improving or maybe where I'm lacking," Greenway said.

Within the data that comes from that scale, you will find lean muscle, body fat and water percentages. You'll also see where in your body you're carrying what.

"The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn," Clark said. "You have to know how much body fat you have, and this specifically is accurate within one percent."

Katherine Urness recently underwent spine surgery and has been using the machine to track her progress during recovery. She said it was important to lose fat because she had been sedentary for so many months and recently turned 50.

She said that she had to rewire her thinking to focus less on the number of pounds and more on percentages.

"Chris tells us constantly, it doesn't matter what you weigh, it matters how your body is made up," she said.

The scale will also tell you your base metabolism rate, which is the amount of calories you burn in a day so you can plan your nutrition and activities around that.

Anyone can get on the InBody 520 at Tiger.