What to Expect From a Body Scan and Why It’s More Than Just a Number on the Scale
When it comes to your health, weight is just one piece of the puzzle. Whether you’re starting a fitness plan, fine-tuning your nutrition, or optimizing your hormones, a body composition scan offers a deeper look into your progress and helps you set more personalized goals.
What Is a Body Composition Scan
Unlike a regular scale, a body composition scan shows you what your weight is made of. It breaks it down into:
- Body fat mass
- Skeletal muscle mass
- Water balance
- Visceral fat (the kind that surrounds your organs)
- Basal metabolic rate (how many calories your body burns at rest)
What to Expect During the Scan
You’ll remove your shoes and socks.
You’ll step onto the machine and hold onto the hand electrodes.
The scan takes about 30 to 60 seconds.
No pain, pokes, or pressure—just a few seconds of stillness.
We recommend doing your scan fasted or a few hours after eating and staying well-hydrated for the most accurate results.
Why It’s So Insightful
It moves beyond the scale.
You could gain five pounds of muscle and lose five pounds of fat, and the scale wouldn’t change. But your scan would show meaningful progress where it counts.
It helps tailor your plan.
Are you under-eating for your muscle mass? Holding onto inflammation? Not recovering well from workouts? The scan gives clues that we use to adjust nutrition, training, and even hormone support.
It tracks visceral fat.
Excess visceral fat is linked to insulin resistance, heart disease, and inflammation. Reducing it can be a key marker of metabolic healing, even if your weight stays the same.
It shows how well you’re aging.
Muscle mass is one of the best predictors of healthy aging. We use your scans to assess muscle loss risk, build strength-based programs, and protect your long-term vitality.
It builds motivation
Seeing tangible improvements in your muscle-to-fat ratio, water balance, and metabolic rate helps you stay focused even if your weight plateaus.
A Foundation for Personalized Wellness
Whether you’re starting a medical weight loss program and want to preserve muscle, healing from burnout and looking to rebuild metabolic strength, managing autoimmunity and monitoring inflammation and fluid retention, or simply trying to feel more confident in your body, a body scan gives us data that empowers better decisions, not just for a season, but for the long term.
Ready to See What You’re Made Of?
We recommend doing a scan every four to eight weeks as you move through your wellness plan.
The more we know, the more we can support you with real, sustainable progress.
Book your scan or ask us about incorporating it into your next visit.
—Susan and Balanced Health Team
