What body composition is
Your weight is the sum of very different things: fat mass, skeletal muscle mass, water, bone and viscera. Two people at 75 kilos can have opposite compositions and opposite metabolic prognoses. Body composition analysis separates that total into its parts.
The practical use is simple: it lets you know whether the kilo you lost this month came from fat or from muscle. Without that information, any eating plan is steering blind.
How the analysis is done
The procedure itself takes around 30 seconds. You stand barefoot on the platform, hold the hand electrodes, and the device passes an imperceptible electrical current at several frequencies.
What determines reliability is not the measurement but the preparation. A 4-hour fast including water is required, with no exercise, alcohol or caffeine for the preceding 24 hours, an empty bladder, no metal objects and light clothing. Any of those factors shifts the result enough to invalidate comparison with the previous measurement.
One absolute contraindication is worth remembering: people with a pacemaker or another implanted electronic device, and pregnant women, must not undergo bioimpedance assessment.
Which parameters matter
- Skeletal muscle mass by segment. Detects asymmetries and lets you track whether you are preserving muscle during weight loss.
- Visceral fat mass. The fat surrounding organs. Far more associated with metabolic risk than subcutaneous fat.
- Intracellular and extracellular water. Their ratio indicates cellular status and inflammation. Excess extracellular water suggests retention or inflammation.
- Phase angle. An indicator of cell membrane integrity. Covered in this article.
- Hand grip strength. Not given by bioimpedance but by the dynamometer, and it completes the picture: having muscle is not the same as it working.
Where to have it in Panama
In Panama City I perform the analysis with seca mBCA Alpha, including height measurement with a medical-precision stadiometer, hand dynamometry, a one-to-one interpretation session and the PDF report. Detail on the body composition assessment page.