Hover over different parts of the InBody Result Sheet to get a brief overview of what each body composition output means. The following interpretations are demonstrated on the InBody 770 Body Composition Result Sheet but are applicable to all Result Sheets.
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Everything you need to know to interpret InBody Results and start offering your clients the insights they need to improve their health & wellness.
The InBody Result Sheet, if used properly, can be one of the most powerful tools at your disposal to guide, train, and care for your clients in ways that were never before possible. However, to unlock the power of the InBody Result Sheet, you need to become familiar with how it reports information, and even more importantly, what you can do with it.
Packed into the InBody Result Sheet is the health and fitness information that anyone who deals with the health and wellness of their clients absolutely needs if they want to be the best professional they can be.
You’ll learn what the terms on the Result Sheet mean, why they’re valuable, and the strategies you can use to implement this invaluable data into your business and with your clients.
If you have any questions at all, visit our contact page and an InBody Specialist will be happy to assist you with anything you’d like to know.
* The information provided is to be used for educational/informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Only certified medical & health professionals may diagnose patients and provide such advice.
At the top of the Result Sheet is your client’s basic body composition breakdown.
Depending on the model of InBody you’re using, the breakdown may look a little different, but all models start with the smallest units on the left and gradually get into the bigger categories until you get to the total body weight on the far right.
In this example, taken from the InBody 770 Result Sheet, you can see how weight is broken down into Fat Free Mass, Soft Lean Mass, and Total Body Water, which is broken into even smaller pieces: Total Body Water, Protein, Mineral, and Body Fat Mass.
Starting from the top, you have Total Body Water and Protein. Total Body Water can be divided into Intracellular Water and Extracellular Water. Intracellular Water is the amount of body water held within the body’s cells; Extracellular Water is the water outside the cells.
Below Total Body Water and Protein, you can find Minerals. Although this is an often underused section of the Result Sheet, it can reveal some very interesting insights. Minerals refers to the total amount of inorganic minerals that are dissolved in bone and body fluids which represents osseous and non-osseous mineral respectively.
Below Minerals is Body Fat Mass. This reports all of the body fat in the person testing, including both the surface level (subcutaneous) and internal (visceral) fat.
By adding Total Body Water, Protein, and Minerals, you get Fat Free Mass (FFM) shown in the second column from the right. FFM is the weight of everything except body fat. This includes muscle, water, bones, organs – everything that is not body fat.
Most of the time, increases in FFM reflect increases in muscle (which you can also see as an increase in Protein), and is considered a positive improvement in body composition. However, people who do not maintain normal body water ratios may have increased FFM due to swelling caused by certain health conditions.
The ECW Ratio Analysis compares the ratio of ECW to TBW. Most healthy people will have an average ratio of around 0.380, with the acceptable range being between 0.360 – 0.390. Anything beyond 0.390 may indicate swelling or excess ECW.
You’ll see minor fluctuations in your client’s ECW Ratio – that’s normal. This output is primarily used to give context to another section – the Segmental Lean Analysis.
For many people, this section of the Result Sheet is one of their favorite sections.
Why? Because it allows you to categorize different body types more easily. This section makes it simple for you to give your clients a good, general idea about their current overall body composition and what changes they need to make.
The 100% mark, as well as all the percentage marks, are all based on what is considered normal for an individual of the specific height and gender they give when they tested. It allows you to compare your client to others of the same height and gender.
While the healthy range varies as shown above, 100% designates the average for individuals with the same height and gender. So, if the weight bar extended to 130%, this would mean that the person who you are testing is 30% above average.
Similarly, if your client’s weight bar extended to 70%, this would mean that your client has 30% less mass than is considered normal for their height.
WEIGHT
Total Body Weight
SKELETAL MUSCLE MASS (SMM)
The total weight of your client’s Skeletal Muscle. These are the muscles that can be grown and developed through exercise. Unlike FFM, which includes everything that isn’t body fat, you can view an increase in SMM as actual muscle gain.
BODY FAT MASS
This is how much body fat your client has, and includes both the surface level and internal fat.
The Muscle-Fat Analysis also tells you whether your client has a healthy balance of SMM and Body Fat Mass in respect to his or her weight.
The three values presented in the Muscle-Fat Analysis are arranged in such a way as to make it simple and easy to make general observations about your client’s body composition.
You do this by forming one of the three “shapes” by connecting the endpoints of the Weight, SMM, and Body Fat Mass bars.
A C-shaped individual has a shorter bar length for SMM than for weight and Body Fat Mass. Although this is characteristic of someone who is overweight or obese, you may see this shape in someone who is normal or underweight, too.
An I-shaped individual has a “balanced” body composition, meaning their Weight, Skeletal Muscle Mass, and Body Fat Mass bars roughly form a straight line.
Although people with this body composition are often at a healthy weight or body fat percentage, they can still have health risks if they have too much body fat.
A D-shaped person has a longer SMM bar than both their weight and body fat bars. This is indicative of an “athletic” body type and is considered to be the ideal body composition shape.
If you are working with a client who has this type of body composition, they likely already have specific fitness goals in mind, and your job will be to help them reach them.
The Obesity Analysis includes the signature metric of any body composition analysis: Percent Body Fat (PBF).
It’s a deceptively simple metric – a division of body fat mass by total weight – but it is a much better indicator of the risk of obesity than BMI, which is one of the major reasons BMI is still included in the analysis – to highlight its flaws by comparing it to PBF.
On the InBody Result Sheet, you’ll see a set of ranges for BMI and PBF. 18.5 –24.99 kg/m2 is the normal range according to the World Health Organization. This normal range is presented on the Result Sheet, although the InBody device can be programmed to use a different range.
For PBF, the ranges differ for men and women, as women tend to carry more body fat than men due to their reproductive system as well as genetics. The example above is a graph that represents a female individual, and the normal range for females is set at 18-28%, with the average being 23%.
For men, the healthy range is between 10-20%
For women, the healthy range is between 18-28%
If you’d like more information on how InBody sets the PBF ranges for men and women, click here.
At the bottom of the Result Sheet is the Body Composition History, which automatically tracks some of the most important body composition metrics. This makes it really easy to identify trends over time.
Take, for example, the results above. These results represent an athletic, D-shaped individual whose goal was to gain muscle and lose body fat.
As you can see, the program this individual adopted has clearly been successful. In about two months, his weight has decreased 2 kg, yet has maintained 37.6 kg of muscle and dropped his percent body fat by 2.1%. By any measure, this would be an indication of great success!
The Body Composition History also makes it easy to raise red flags when negative changes in body composition occur, especially when they are disguised by a seemingly “positive” change of reduced body weight.
If you have a client whose graph looks similar, by testing this client’s body composition and seeing their overall trend, you would be able to see that much of this weight loss is due to the slow loss of muscle, leading to a higher Percent Body Fat.
There are many valuable outputs on the Result Sheet. However, the Segmental Lean Analysis, if used properly is arguably the most powerful section of the Result Sheet.
In order to fully understand this section, you must fully understand what it is not. The information in the Segmental Lean Analysis shows how much Fat Free Mass is contained in each segment; not how much “muscle” is in each segment.
This is an important distinction. While it is true that Skeletal Muscle gains in a body segment will be reflected as gains in the Segmental Lean Analysis chart, not every gain in Fat Free Mass can be explained by muscle. That’s because Fat Free Mass is the sum of all the non-fat components in the body. In other words, it is the sum of Total Body Water, Protein and Minerals. It is calculated by subtracting Body Fat Mass from the weight. Therefore, Fat Free Mass can be influenced both by muscle mass and body water.
In other words, if the person has edema because of injury and diseases, increase of body water affects Fat Free Mass or Segmental Lean Analysis. Therefore, by comparing Segmental Lean Analysis and ECW ratio together, InBody can identify whether the increased amount came from the muscle mass or overhydration. This makes this chart useful not just for tracking muscle, but also for injury and disease states.
The InBody divides the body into 5 body segments: the two arms, two legs, and the trunk, which can be thought of as covering the area between the neck and legs. The information for each body segment is reported as two bars.
The top bar shows how much Fat Free Mass in kg is in a given segment. Just like with the Muscle-Fat Graph, the top bar of the Segmental Lean Analysis compares the kg of Fat Free Mass against the ideal expected amount of Fat Free Mass for that person’s height and gender.
Your clients should always work to be at 100% or higher.
The bottom bar is different. The number shown by the bottom bar is the percentage and makes it easier to quickly understand see how close to (or past) 100% each bar extends.
What is this bar showing? It’s comparing your client’s Fat Free Mass against their measured body weight. This shows whether or not your client has enough Fat Free Mass to support their own body weight, where 100% = sufficient.
If you’re working with a client like this, they may benefit from exercises that target Lean Body Mass development in their legs. This will help them achieve a more balance body composition and may have other positive effects, such as body fat reduction, as well.
Any person can theoretically be underdeveloped in a body segment, and without Segmental Lean Analysis, identifying this can be difficult.
However, several groups of clients may be at more risk than others.
Here are three:
1. Sedentary adults
Sedentary adults who do not exercise commonly have below 100% Segmental Lean Mass especially in their legs, primarily due to jobs that require them to sit throughout most of the day.
2. “Skinny Fat” individuals (sarcopenic obese)
People with “skinny fat” profiles have more fat than is healthy for their bodies coupled with a low amount of Lean Body Mass. Their relatively overdeveloped fat or underdeveloped muscle mass contributes to their body weight and may result in scores below 100% for one or more body segment.
3. The elderly
The elderly are at particular risk for not having sufficiently developed Lean Body Mass due to their tendency to lose muscle as a result of increasing inactivity. This impacts their ability to care for themselves as they age and puts them at greater risk of falling and broken bones.
Upper/lower body imbalances are fairly common in today’s increasingly sedentary workforce, and you’ll likely encounter cases where the upper body is developed, but the lower body isn’t, like in the example below.
Another imbalance the Segmental Lean Analysis can reveal is the imbalance between the right and left arms and/or legs.
Although this client has a balanced upper body, there’s a significant imbalance between the right and left legs. There are many reasons why this could have occurred: For example, an injury can cause swelling and cause the LBM values to go up.
On the right-hand side of the Result Sheet are a series of additional outputs that you can mix and match to suit your business needs. Depending on which InBody unit you are using, the outputs available may vary.
You’ll learn about 4 of the most used outputs. All of these are available on the InBody 770. These are:
As you may know, there are two main types of body fat: subcutaneous and visceral. The Visceral Fat Area graph allows you to determine how much harmful visceral fat your client has.
The graph looks a bit complicated but is actually quite simple to read. The “100” on the left side of the graph represents 100 cm2 of visceral fat.
You should advise your clients to stay below this line for optimal health and to reduce health risks.
This section makes it incredibly simple to set goals for your client. It is designed to help your client reach their ideal body composition.
Depending on your client’s current Muscle-Fat balance, this section of the Result Sheet will recommend adjusting fat mass and/or muscle mass in order to reach the target weight.
If your client is overfat, the InBody will advise losing a certain number of kg of fat mass and maintaining or increasing muscle mass. The InBody will never recommend losing muscle mass.
In the above example, the person above has 7.0 kg of body fat in her trunk. For a person of their height and gender, that’s 156.1%, or 56.1% more body fat than the average person with the same height and gender. Segmental Fat Analysis is an estimated value based on other body composition results to guide your client consultations.
For research parameters, nutritional outputs and estimated parameters are provided; Intracellular Water, Extracellular Water, Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), Waist-Hip Ratio (WHR), Body Cell Mass (BCM), Skeletal Muscle Mass Index (SMI) and etc.
Intra/Extracellular Water shows the amount of water within and outside of the body cells. For healthy people, ICW:ECW ratio is normally 3:2. Thus, it is important to see ECW ratio rather than focusing on an absolute value. BMR is the number of calories you need in order to maintain their basic essential functions.
Along with BMR, BCM can be used to guide your clients’ nutritional plans. BCM is the total mass of all cellular elements in the body, which constitutes all metabolically active tissues of the body. It includes the ICW and protein, which are the main components of muscle. BCM does not include ECW, so it can be used to see muscle mass status in patients with edema.
Lastly, SMI can be obtained by dividing Appendicular Muscle Mass with Height(m)2. Using the SMI value (parameter), you can diagnose sarcopenia and monitor nutritional status.
With a range of models designed to meet the needs of facilities both large and small, InBody body composition analyzers are used in a wide range of industries from research hospitals to training facilities around the world.
Read real-life examples of how people from different industries are using the Result Sheet to positively impact their business.
Unit Model: InBody 770
Richard Isaacson, M.D. currently serves as director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic, Weill Cornell Memory Disorders Program, and Neurology Residency Training Program. The Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic is the first in the nation to focus on lifestyle intervention measures in a real-world clinical setting. Tracking body composition with InBody is now one of the key strategies in his approach to help patients improve cognitive function and brain health.
Unit Model: InBody 270
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center is ranked third in the 2016 U.S. News and World Report survey of best children’s hospitals. Cincinnati Children’s found in InBody a device that was able to provide fast, detailed body composition analysis without breaking the bank.
Unit Model: InBody 570
OPEX Fitness founder James Fitzgerald is a published researcher and the winner of the first Crossfit Games. When he looked for a valid method for measuring body composition at OPEX Fitness he decided on InBody, a DSM-BIA device used by doctors and researchers in leading facilities around the world.
Unit Model: InBody 570
Todd Durkin has won Personal Trainer of the Year (IDEA and ACE) twice and has been listed as “Top 100 Most Influential People in Health & Fitness” (Greatist) four times. For years Durkin looked for a method to test his clients consistently and accurately. After much trial and error, he found InBody.
Unit Model: InBody 570
Western Digital is a Fortune 500-listed company and is one of the largest computer data storage and hard disk drive manufacturing companies in the world. After encountering and using an InBody at an area fitness center, Senior Wellness Specialist Heather Whitaker saw the potential to bring Western Digital’s Corporate Wellness program to the next level.
Unit Model: InBody 770
Mark Fitzgerald is the strength and conditioning coach for the Anaheim Ducks and the owner of Elite Training Systems, a high-performance training center catered to athletes. Fitzgerald was looking for technology that could measure his player’s body composition in-house quickly and provide accurate, informative outputs. After referrals from trusted sources and self-experimentation, Fitzgerald found his solution in the InBody.
Unit Model: InBody 770
When tasked to find new “dynamic wellness” technology to enhance their fitness and wellness program, Employee Wellness and Fitness Services Manager Evan Thoman brought in an InBody 770 to replace their existing body composition tools: calipers and handheld BIA devices.
You can improve your business by improving your services, inspiring your current clients to stay with you and build your reputation. With InBody, you’ll not only get the best product on the market, but a dedicated partner committed to helping you reach your business goals, just as you help your clients reach theirs.
