Opinions wanted on regular DEXA scans
I’ve gone a bit too deep on a rabbit hole after an offhand comment about protein intake and how much protein I should actually be consuming. It turns out that the 1.6g/kg of body weight is fairly arbitrary and body weight itself is not a particularly good point to use for an estimate if you are overweight. With that in mind I have been wondering about getting a DEXA body composition scan. It would be useful, I think, because it can also tell me about visceral fat which is an area I am particularly concerned about.
It turns out that it’s pretty cheap to get done; about $45 if you sign up for quarterly scans with a company called BodySpec. Their whole thing is making things cheaper by having repeat visits; a quantity discount, if you will.
Before I decide to do this (and while I wait to hear back about if I can get one done for free with my health plan), I just wanted to get people’s opinions on them. Have you had one or a series done? And more importantly, how has it empowered you to improve your health?
In all honesty I’m not sure the results will encourage me to make any particular change in my lifestyle or routine that I wouldn’t have been able to figure out without it.
Then it’s probably not worth it. It’s definitely not worth it to calculate the correct amount of protein to eat. Nutrition is always a sliding scale anyway. Until you get quite deep into either athletics training or general strength training (like at least 1-2 years of consistent training), it’s not going to matter much.
I would only consider it if it would be motivation for lifestyle changes / body recomp. But even then, unless you’re seriously a fairly advance lifter or athlete, the scale will tell you that just fine - muscle weighs more than fat, but not to the extent that it matters until a lot of muscle growth has occurred.
I get regular scans. Even cheaper here, CAD$20/scan. I find it to be pretty useful. There’s the sort of gamification of health which is useful in terms of motivation, it is nice to see my visceral fat dropping off, but also there have been some tangible benefits that I don’t know I would have seen without them. My original workout and diet plan was losing weight but also proportionally losing muscle at the same time. I feel like the scan feedback helps me calibrate my protein intake and workouts so that I’m building lean mass efficiently while keeping my fat in a good place.