Most people get an InBody scan, glance at the weight and body fat number, and never look at it again. Here's what every number means, which ones matter, and how to tell whether your training is working.
An InBody printout has a lot on it. Most of it is detail. These are the numbers that tell you whether your training and eating are working, in the order worth reading them.
The muscle attached to your skeleton: the muscle you can train and build. It's the single most useful number on the sheet for anyone lifting, losing weight or over 40.
What to watch: holding steady or rising while you lose fat. A drop of more than a pound or two during weight loss is the signal to raise protein or training volume.
How much of you is fat, in pounds and as a percentage of your weight. Percent body fat can fall just because you gained muscle, so read both.
What to watch: fat mass falling over weeks, not days.
Everything: muscle, fat, water, bone, food. On its own it can't tell you what changed.
What to watch: only alongside muscle and fat. A scale that hasn't moved can still be a good month if fat went down and muscle went up.
Lean mass in each arm, each leg and your trunk, often shown against what's expected for your height and weight.
What to watch: big left-right differences, which can come from old injuries or one-sided habits and are worth training around.
An estimate of fat stored around your organs. InBody's own guidance treats a level below 10 as normal for adults; check the range printed on your sheet.
What to watch: a downward trend as training and eating stay consistent.
Extracellular water compared with total body water. InBody materials describe roughly 0.36 to 0.39 as the typical range. Readings can shift with recent training, salty meals, travel or poor sleep.
What to watch: consistency between scans. If it's well above the printed range, mention it to your doctor.
A single 0 to 100 score from InBody's own formula, based mostly on muscle and fat. It's useful for your own trend and less useful for comparing with other people.
What to watch: the direction it moves, not the grade.
One scan is a snapshot. Two or more under the same conditions are a trend, and the trend is what your program should respond to: if muscle drops, protein and training go up; if fat stalls, the plan changes.
Already have a scan? Send a photo and get a free plain-English breakdown and next steps within one business day.
Get a free InBody reviewDEXA is a more detailed lab-style scan. InBody is quicker, cheaper and easy to repeat. Many people use InBody to track the trend and DEXA occasionally as a baseline.
Many supplement stores such as GNC and Vitamin Shoppe, and some gyms and clinics, offer scans for a small fee. Call ahead, since availability and price vary.
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