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.
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.
T he InBody 770 Result Sheet starts 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. You can see how weight is broken down into Lean Body Mass and Total Body Water, which is broken into even smaller pieces: Intracellular Water, Extracellular Water, Dry Lean Mass, and Body Fat Mass.
Starting from the top, you have 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. Added together, these make up Total Body Water.
Breaking It DownBoth of these sections are useful in their own right, but monitoring Extracellular Water in particular can provide deep insights.
If you notice an increase in ECW, but not ICW, this could be due to acute inflammation from overtraining.
Below ICW and ECW is Dry Lean Mass (DLM). This is the weight of the protein and mineral content in the body. Although this is an often underused section of the Result Sheet, it can reveal some very interesting insights.
Breaking It DownBecause muscle is made up of mostly protein and DLM by definition excludes body water, if you see your client’s DLM increase, then generally this is seen as a sign they have gained muscle.
Below DLM is Body Fat Mass. This reports all of the body fat in the person testing, including both the surface level (subcutaneous) and internal (visceral).
By adding ICW, ECW, and DLM together, you get the total Lean Body Mass (LBM), shown in the second column from the right. LBM is the weight of everything in the body that is not body fat. This includes muscle, water, bones, organs – everything that is not Body Fat.
Most of the time, increases in LBM reflect increases in muscle (which you can also see as an increase in DLM), and is considered a positive improvement in body composition. However, people who do not maintain normal body water ratios may have increased LBM due to swelling caused by strenuous exercise or activity.
Read 'Body Composition 101: The Beginner's Guide'
Read 'Unpacking Body Composition Lingo'
Read 'Your Body and You: A Guide To Body Water'
ECW/TBW is a measure of compartmental fluid distribution and shows, as a ratio, how much of your client’s total body water is extracellular. Multiple InBody Tests will show your client’s normal fluid status and help determine any imbalances. As a general guide, check to see if their ECW/TBW is below 0.390.
You’ll see minor fluctuations in your client’s ECW/TBW – that’s normal. This output is primarily used to give context to another section – the Segmental Lean Analysis.
This graph lets you quickly understand if your client has occasional inflammation or swelling in their body, resulting from strenuous exercise or activity.
You can also use this to give context to LBM. High LBM and a high ECW/TBW ratio usually indicate the presence of excess body water — not just muscle.
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 percentages above the bar graphs allow you to compare your client to others of the same height and gender. While the healthy range varies based on the parameter, the 100% mark indicates the healthy average for the individual’s height and gender. So, if the weight bar increased to 130%, this would mean that the client is 30% above average.
Similarly, if your client’s weight bar extended to 70%, this would mean that they have 30% less mass than is considered the healthy average for their height.
This graph lets you show your client how their body composition compares against people of the same height and gender.
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 LBM, 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 combines 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 Muscle-Fat Analysis graph allows you to get a rough understanding of your client’s overall body composition in one quick glance. By looking at the lengths of each bar and how they compare to each other, you can better understand how to help your client reach their goals.
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 within the healthy range or underweight, too.
You would want to advise a client with a Muscle-Fat Analysis graph that looks like this to reduce their Body Fat Mass (which would also lower their Weight) and increase their Skeletal Muscle Mass. Ultimately, the client should get their BFM as close to the recommended range as possible and SMM close to or above the recommended range.
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, there are still areas in which they can focus on maintaining or improving overall health.
Breaking It DownIf you are working with a client who has an I-shaped body composition, you should find out their overall health goals before making any recommendations.
Typically, I-shaped people don’t have body compositions that put them at health risks, and so they are in a good position to focus on gaining muscle mass or reducing body fat to improve their overall physique.
A D-shaped person has a longer SMM bar than their Weight and Body Fat Mass bars. Usually, this is indicative of an “athletic” body type and considered to be the ideal body composition shape, but if the Weight and Body Fat Mass bars are above the recommended ranges, then they should reduce their fat mass to get to the ideal range.
If you are working with a client who has this type of body composition, they likely already have specific fitness goals in mind that you can help them achieve.
Your client may want to improve their strength and shape. In this case, you would want to monitor their SMM bar and Body Fat Mass bars to make sure that SMM increases without a significant increase in Body Fat Mass.
Others may want to lose body fat and become leaner. For a client with this goal, you would want to monitor their Body Fat Mass while taking care to prevent the loss of SMM. If SMM losses become too significant, make the necessary adjustments.
Read 'Why Building Lean Mass Is Important For Everyone (yes even you)'
Read '5 Things You Didn’t Know About Muscle and Fat'
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%.
You can show your client their body fat percentage to help them understand their health and fitness better. BMI should not be used. According to the WHO, BMI is a population-level measure of obesity, and a rough guide for individuals.
For men, the healthy range is between 10-20%
For women, the healthy range is between 18-28%
InBody calculates the recommended Percent Body Fat ranges for men and women based on ACSM and ACE guidelines.
Read 'Why You Need To Know Your Body Fat Percentage'
Read 'BMI’s Fat Secret'
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 a little over two months, his weight has only increased 2 pounds, yet has gained almost 8 pounds of muscle and dropped his percentage body fat by 2.6%. By any measure, this would be an indication of great success!
If your client’s results look like the above example, the current exercise and/or diet regimen they’ve adopted would appear to be effective. Little modifications to diet or exercise are likely needed, but you should continue to monitor trends carefully.
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 percentage body fat.
A graph like this can be a real eye-opener for a client because it shows that negative changes in body composition can occur if his or her weight remains the same or even decreases for the wrong reason.
This person needs to be guided towards a solution that helps them retain their muscle mass with some combination of nutrition and strength training.
Read 'Why Tracking Changes in Body Composition Leads To Results'
Read 'How To Set a Body Composition Goal That’s Right For You'
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 Lean Body Mass is contained in each segment; not how much “muscle” is in each segment.
This is an important distinction, which you can learn more about in our blog post “Lean Body Mass vs. Skeletal Muscle Mass: What’s The Difference?”
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 Lean Body Mass can be explained by muscle. That’s because Lean Body Mass also accounts for body water. 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 Lean Body Mass in pounds is in a given segment. Just like with the Muscle-Fat Graph, the top bar of the Segmental Lean Analysis compares the pounds of Lean Body Mass against the average expected amount of Lean Body Mass for that person’s height.
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 Lean Body Mass against their measured body weight. This shows whether or not your client has enough Lean Body Mass to support their own body weight, where 100% = sufficient.
In the above example, the 3 upper body segments are over 100%, but the lower body segments are not.
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.
Identifying an underdeveloped body segment can be difficult without Segmental Lean Analysis. While any person can theoretically have an underdeveloped body segment, some groups of clients may be at more risk than others.
Here are a few groups who may have an elevated risk of having underdeveloped body segments:
1. Sedentary adults
Sedentary adults who do not exercise, commonly have below-average Segmental Lean Mass, usually in the legs, which may be due to having jobs that require them to sit throughout most of the day.
2. “Skinny Fat” individuals (sarcopenic obese)
People who are “skinny fat” have too much body fat and not enough muscle mass recommended for optimal health. This imbalance between fat and muscle mass can result in a body weight that is in the healthy range and may lead the client to believe that they do not need to make any changes. This client may have one or more segments below 100%.
3. The elderly
It Is common for the elderly to have low Lean Body Mass due to their tendency to lose muscle as a result of decreased activity. This impacts their ability to stay mobile as they age and puts them at greater risk of falling and breaking 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.
Breaking It DownIf your client looks like this, they need to increase the LBM in their lower legs. Even though the upper body is sufficiently developed, the lower body is still at risk of injury due to the low amount of Lean Body Mass. This client, despite a well-developed upper body, needs to increase the muscle mass in their lower body for more balance .
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.
If you are working with a client whose body composition looks like this, it is helpful to establish their baseline to determine the cause of the imbalance.
Read 'Lean Body Mass vs. Skeletal Muscle Mass: What’s the Difference?'
Read 'Does Muscle Turn Into Fat?'
O n 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:
VISCERAL FAT AREAAs 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 the visceral fat area.
You should advise your clients to stay at or below this line to maintain a healthy fat balance.
Research has found that visceral fat is particularly influenced by cardiovascular exercise. Encouraging your client to engage in more cardiovascular exercise may improve his or her health by promoting loss of visceral fat.
* Visceral Fat Level on InBody 570 Result Sheet
This section makes it incredibly simple to set goals for your client. It is designed to help your client reach their ideal body composition, which is defined as the average PBF for their gender (15% for men, 23% for women).
Depending on your client’s current Muscle-Fat balance, this section of the Result Sheet will recommend adjusting Body Fat Mass and/or LBM in order to reach the target PBF.
This section makes it incredibly simple to set goals for your client. It is designed to help your client achieve the average recommended PBF for their gender (15% for men, 23% for women).
These recommendations are meant to be general guidelines for helping individuals achieve optimal health. However, your clients may have their own set of goals, and these should be discussed prior to planning a routine for meeting those goals.
In the above example, the person above has 3.3 pounds of body fat in their left arm. For a person of their height and gender, that’s 158.9%, or 58.9% more body fat than the average person with the same height and gender.
This section can be used to track your client’s improvements in body composition and changes in body fat, over time. While studies have shown that you can’t “spot target” body fat with exercise, you can use this section to encourage your clients and give them a more detailed account of the improvements they are making.
The Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR, is the number of calories your client needs in order to maintain their basic essential functions. This value allows you to guide your clients’ nutritional plans, which is essential to helping them reach their body composition goals.
Your clients might not fully understand what the BMR is, and they may think that their BMR is the number of calories they should eat in a day – This is NOT the case!
BMR does not take into account any calories needed to perform daily activities, and so your client’s actual caloric need for the day is likely much higher than their BMR.
Read 'How To Use BMR To Hack Your Diet '
Read 'Your Metabolism and Your Body Composition'
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