Measurement
You already know your weight.This is what it’s made of.
A five-minute scan that estimates how much of your weight is fat and how much is lean tissue, muscle included — and then, across several visits, shows which way each is going.
- Five minutes on the platform
- Nothing invasive, no radiation
- You keep the report
- Optional — your care never depends on it
Step on a scale and it will tell you, to one decimal place, how hard gravity is pulling on everything you are made of at once. Muscle and fat. Bone and blood. This morning’s coffee.
Your scale is not wrong. It is answering a narrower question than the one you are asking it.
Your weight is one number covering several different tissues, and it moves for reasons that have nothing to do with most of them. What it cannot do is tell them apart — how much of this is fat, where that fat is sitting, how much muscle is underneath it, and which way each of those is going. Two people at the same weight can differ by twenty pounds of fat mass. Which of the two you are is not a question a scale was built to answer.
A scale can tell you that you weigh the same as you did last month. It cannot tell you that you are not the same.
One thing to say before the rest of this page. Your first scan comes with your first visit, at no charge. After that it is an uninsured service — OHIP is not billed for it, and the clinic is paid for it directly. Better you know that going in than find it at the bottom.
What it reads
Six answers,where there was one.
Five of these are estimates worked out from an electrical reading. One — your waist — is measured with a tape. The page is careful about which is which, and so is the report.
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Fat mass
estimated, in pounds and as a share of your weight
How much of your weight is fat tissue, worked out separately from the rest of you instead of bundled in with it as one figure.
Two people at the same weight can differ by twenty pounds of it. Which of the two you are is not something a scale can separate — and when the aim is to lose one tissue and keep another, that separation is the entire question.
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Visceral fat
estimated, as a volume in litres
An indicator of the fat stored deep around the abdominal organs, as distinct from the fat under the skin.
In large population studies, fat in that compartment lines up more closely with blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol than fat under the skin does — and it does so even after weight and waist are accounted for. Be careful with this one, though: the figure is built mostly from your waist measurement and your sex, with the electrical reading contributing only a little. It is an indicator of something real. It is not a picture of your organs, and we do not read it as one.
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Skeletal muscle mass
estimated, in pounds and as a height-adjusted index
The muscle you move with — arms, legs and torso — given as a weight and as an index that can be read against published thresholds.
During any substantial weight loss, some of what leaves is lean tissue rather than fat. In one 72-week trial where people were scanned at the start and again at the end, about three-quarters of the weight lost was fat and about a quarter was lean tissue — and the participants in that same trial who had dietitian-led diet and activity support but no medication lost it in much the same proportion. This is not peculiar to any one treatment. Whether it is happening to you is a measurable question rather than a matter of opinion.
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Body water
estimated, total and split inside and outside the cells
How much water you are carrying, and how it is distributed.
It accounts for a good deal of what a bathroom scale does between Monday and Thursday. It is also the least settled part of the report — prediction errors for total body water run to several per cent — so we read it for direction and for large shifts, not for precision.
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Energy expenditure
calculated, in calories per day
What your body spends at rest, and an estimate of what it spends across a day at your activity level.
It is worked out from your estimated muscle mass rather than from a formula based on age and weight alone, which gives nutrition advice a starting point drawn from your own body. It is a calculation, not a measurement: the laboratory way to establish this is to analyse your breath, and that is not what happens here.
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Waist circumference
measured with a tape, by hand, at the same visit
The oldest measurement on the page, and still in routine use.
An international consensus statement recommends treating it as a vital sign, alongside height and weight. It is free, you can repeat it at home, and in a large comparison against imaging it held up at least as well as an office scan for judging fat around the organs. What a tape cannot tell you is anything at all about muscle. That is the part the scan is for.
What you are handed
A report,not a percentage.
Every figure sits against a range calculated for one particular body — its height, its age, its sex — and is read through with you by the physician treating you. This is the document, laid out the way you will be handed it. The figures in it are invented.
Weight
Above range
Reference range 122.6 to 165.7. This reading: Above range.
- BMI:
- 31.7 kg/m²
The scale weighs everything at once — fat, muscle, bone, and the water held in all of them. Paired with height it gives BMI, which is a useful place to start and a poor place to stop. Every other figure on this report exists because this one cannot be taken apart.
Body Mass Index - BMI
Above range
Reference range 18.5 to 25. This reading: Above range.
- Weight:
- 214.9 lbs
- Height:
- 5 ft 9 in
Weight divided by height squared. It is a screening number for populations rather than a measure of one person’s health, and an international commission said so plainly in 2025. It says nothing about how much of the weight is fat, where that fat sits, or how much muscle is underneath it.
Fat Mass Percentage - FM %
Above range
Reference range below 25.5 %. This reading: Above range.
- Fat Mass:
- 68.3 lbs
- Fat Mass Index (FMI):
- 10.1 kg/m²
The share of body weight estimated to be fat tissue. Read alongside muscle mass rather than on its own: two people at the same weight can differ by twenty pounds of it, and the difference is invisible to a scale. The range shown is calculated from this individual’s height, age and sex.
Skeletal Muscle Index - SMI
Normal
Reference range 8 and above. This reading: Normal.
- Skeletal Muscle Mass:
- 66.8 lbs
Muscle mass adjusted for height, the way BMI adjusts weight for height. It is the one figure on this report a bathroom scale cannot approximate, and the one most worth watching while weight is coming off — during any substantial loss, some of what leaves is lean tissue rather than fat.
See the rest of the report Four more measurements, and the composition chart
Visceral Adipose Tissue - VAT
Above range
Reference range below 2.9. This reading: Above range.
- Waist Circumference:
- 41 in
An indicator for the fat stored deep around the abdominal organs rather than under the skin. It is the softest number on the report: it is derived largely from the waist measurement and sex, with the electrical reading contributing little. Read the direction it moves, not the figure.
Waist Circumference - WC
Above range
Reference range below 35.4 in. This reading: Above range.
- Visceral Adipose Tissue:
- 4.6 Liters
Taken by hand with a tape at the same visit — the only figure here that is measured rather than estimated. An international consensus statement recommends treating it as a vital sign alongside height and weight. The threshold shown is not universal; it varies by sex and ancestry.
Energy expenditure - REE / TEE
Resting Energy Expenditure - REE
Total Energy Expenditure - TEE
- PAL:
- 1.4
What the body spends at rest, and across a whole day once movement is added — the second is the first multiplied by an activity level. Both are calculated from the estimated muscle mass rather than measured. The laboratory way to establish this is to analyse expired breath, which is not what happens here.
Water Ratio - ECW / TBW
Above range
Reference range 40.4 to 44.1 %. This reading: Above range.
- TBW:
- 48.5 Liters (49.8 %)
- ECW:
- 21.7 Liters (22.3 %)
Water outside the cells as a share of total body water — a reading on hydration. It moves with what you have had to drink, so a single result near a boundary means very little on its own. It is also the least settled part of the report, and we read it for direction and for large shifts rather than for precision.
Body Composition Chart - BCC
Fat mass up the side, skeletal muscle across the bottom, so the two are read together rather than one at a time. Where the point sits matters more than either figure alone: the same weight can put two people in quite different places, and it is movement across this field over months — not the position on any one day — that says whether a plan is doing what it was meant to.
Illustrative reproduction of a body-composition report · goalsclinic.ca/body-composition
The one-page version we hand you with your printout: How to read your report (PDF, one page).
How much to trust it
Checked against what,and how close did it come?
A fair question, and the honest answer is more useful than an adjective. Here is what this kind of analyser has been checked against, and how close it came.
It has been checked against MRI and against laboratory methods.
The calculations were built by measuring people with whole-body MRI, with a four-compartment laboratory model, and with dilution methods — the reference techniques research uses when it has to be right. A single whole-body muscle reading typically landed within about ten per cent of the MRI figure, and fat-free mass within a few kilograms of the laboratory model.
How it holds up at larger body sizes.
One study of 226 people spanning a BMI of 18 to 56 tested this kind of analyser against a DXA scan. Its body-fat reading matched almost exactly on average, and it did not drift as body size rose — where a different manufacturer’s device measured alongside it in the same study did. The general warning you may read about impedance at higher weights largely comes from those other machines, running other formulas, and a formula belongs to the device more than to the population.
Consistent is not the same as correct — and small changes are noise.
Repeat the reading and you get very nearly the same answer. That reproducibility is what makes a trend readable. It does not make the figure right. The clinical guidance for this technique puts its precision at roughly one and a half to two kilograms, so a change smaller than that is inside the margin of error. We will say so rather than let it look like progress.
Where it earns its keep
One reading is a snapshot.The direction is the finding.
The same worked example, followed through eight readings across a little over a year — an early repeat a fortnight in, then roughly every two months. The horizontal axis is time, so the gaps you see are the gaps there were.
| Reading | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day | 0 | 14 | 74 | 135 | 196 | 258 | 319 | 380 |
| Fat | 82.4 | 81.1 | 78.6 | 75.2 | 76.9 | 72 | 69.8 | 68.3 |
| Muscle | 66.1 | 66.5 | 67.2 | 66.4 | 65.8 | 66.9 | 67.4 | 66.8 |
Two lines from one body over the same year. Fat mass down fourteen pounds; muscle finishing a little above where it started. The contrast is the whole of the point, and it is the one thing a bathroom scale cannot produce — it would have shown a single number falling and left you to guess what was leaving.
Now look at reading five. Both lines moved the wrong way — fat up nearly two pounds, muscle down half a pound. On a real record that reading arrives eventually, and it usually means very little: roughly a large glass of water beforehand is enough to shift the body-fat figure by about a percentage point, which is close to the smallest change the method can actually resolve.
It is drawn here rather than tidied away, because it is the entire argument for reading a line instead of a dot. It is also why the preparation further down is not busywork, and why we would rather you had no scan at all than one you over-read.
What changes because of it
A measurement earns its placeby changing what happens next.
Otherwise it is a fact about you sitting in a folder. These are the four situations where the numbers most often move a decision.
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The scale has not moved in a month
What shows upFat mass down, muscle steady, waist smaller.
We change nothing. Canada’s obesity guideline notes plainly that some people see changes in how fat is distributed before any meaningful change in weight, and an international consensus statement reports the same for waist measurements — improvements arriving with or without weight loss. Body weight is simply the wrong instrument for seeing that.
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You are losing weight quickly
What shows upHow much of what is leaving is fat, and how much is lean tissue.
If the muscle line is falling alongside the fat, that is a conversation about protein and resistance training, and sometimes about how fast the weight is coming off. It is rarely a reason to stop a treatment that is working, and it is a poor thing to find out about a year late.
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Your weight looks unremarkable and your bloodwork does not
What shows upWaist measured directly, and a separate indicator for fat around the organs.
It widens the assessment. Someone whose weight sits in the ordinary range can still carry enough body fat to show up in blood sugar and cholesterol, and studies have found that pattern repeatedly. Weight on its own will not surface it.
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You want a nutrition target with something behind it
What shows upEnergy expenditure calculated from your estimated muscle mass.
Intake advice can start from your own body rather than from a formula fitted to people your age and weight. Protein targets stay individual — they depend on your kidney function among other things — which is a conversation with your care team, not a number off a website.
A fair question
Should you have another?
Your first one is not really a decision — it comes with your first visit. What follows is: whether to repeat it, and how often.
Often the answer is not yet. A single reading on its own is the weakest thing this measurement produces; the second is where it starts being worth something, because two readings make a direction. Waiting until there is one costs you nothing.
It is most useful part-way through a change — when weight is moving and the question is what is moving with it — or when weight is not moving and the question is whether anything else is.
And if you want one measurement and no fee at all, use a tape measure. Waist circumference is free, you can repeat it at home, and an international consensus statement recommends treating it as a vital sign. It will tell you nothing about muscle. That is the part it cannot do.
When we would not
- Not done if you have an electronic implant
- A pacemaker, a defibrillator, any other electronic implant, or an active prosthesis. The same applies if you are connected to equipment such as an infusion pump or a heart or lung support device. This is the manufacturer’s own instruction, and we follow it.
- A conversation first if you are pregnant, or have an irregular heart rhythm
- Neither rules the scan out. Both are on the manufacturer’s list of situations to discuss with your physician beforehand, and in pregnancy there is a second reason to be careful: the method assumes a steady balance of body water, and pregnancy changes that, so the result would not mean what it normally means.
- You need to be able to stand for it
- You stand on the platform unaided and hold a handle in each hand, so all four contact points are reached. There is a minimum height for the equipment to read at all.
- When the reading would not tell us much
- Significant fluid retention or swelling, dialysis, a limb amputation, or extensive tattooing on the arms or legs. We ask about these first. If one applies, we will say the scan is not going to tell us much rather than take payment for it.
On the day
Five minutes,shoes off.
You stand on a platform and hold a pair of handles, arms slightly away from your sides. The measurement itself takes well under a minute; the whole scan is about five. Your waist is measured with a tape at the same visit, because it answers a related question a second way and costs nothing to do.
It happens in a room with the door closed. You stay in your clothes apart from shoes and socks. Nobody reads a number out loud, you can decline any part of it without explaining, and if you would rather not see the figures at all we can send them to your chart and go through them when you are ready.
Results go into your chart — seen by you and your care team, and nobody else. This website collects no health information.
Before you come
- In the morning if you can, before breakfast and before anything to drink.
- Empty your bladder first.
- Not straight from the gym — exercise beforehand shifts the reading more than anything else on this list.
- No alcohol the day before.
- The same time of day at every visit, so today can be compared with next time.
None of this is fussiness. In one study, a large glass of water — about 600 mL — drunk twenty minutes before the reading moved the estimated body-fat figure by roughly a percentage point, which is close to the smallest change worth calling real. Preparation is what turns a run of readings into a line worth reading.
Before you decide
What it is not.
Most of these work against us. They are here anyway, in the body of the page rather than in fine print, because a measurement is only worth what its limits are honest about.
- It estimates. It does not see inside you.
- No image is taken. A very small electrical current passes through the body, the machine reads how different tissues slow and delay it, and a formula turns that into pounds of fat and muscle. It is a good estimate resting on a real measurement. It is still an estimate, and we will keep using that word.
- A number from another machine is not the same number.
- The formulas are specific to the equipment. Your figure here, set beside a figure from a gym scale, a home scale or another clinic, is not a comparison — the only one that means anything is you now against you later, on the same machine, prepared the same way.
- It is not a diagnosis.
- It can help confirm that a body is carrying excess fat. It cannot tell you whether that fat is affecting your health — the 2025 international commission on clinical obesity is explicit that this takes a second, clinical step. That step is your history, your examination and your bloodwork, all of which are covered by OHIP and none of which this replaces.
- Nobody has shown that having one makes you healthier.
- We went looking and did not find one. No trial we could find shows that having a body-composition scan, on its own, changes anyone’s health — and in two trials where people were given daily feedback with no clinician acting on it, the feedback added nothing. What the scan does is answer a question your weight cannot. It is information for a decision, not a treatment.
- It is not a verdict on you.
- It describes tissue. That is the whole of what it describes. Nobody here will use these figures to tell you how you are doing as a person, and weight is not a behaviour to be graded in the first place.
Common questions
The things people askat the desk.
Does it hurt, and is it safe?
No, and yes. You stand still for under a minute while a very small electrical current — far below anything you can feel — passes through the body. Nothing is injected, nothing is swallowed, and there is no X-ray and no radiation of any kind. That last part is why it can be repeated as often as it is actually useful.
Do I have to undress?
No. Shoes and socks off, and you stand on the platform in ordinary clothes. Heavy items come out of your pockets, because they are weight the reading would otherwise attribute to you.
How long does the appointment take?
The scan takes about five minutes, and the measurement itself well under one. Around fifteen covers the whole visit — arriving, the waist measurement, the scan, and going through what came back.
Is this covered by OHIP?
Partly. Your first scan comes with your first visit at no charge. Any after that are an uninsured service, charged separately. Your assessment, your prescriptions and your follow-up are covered by OHIP either way.
Do I get to keep the report?
Yes. It is part of your health record, it goes into your chart, and you can ask for a copy at any time — on the day, or whenever you want it.
How often is it worth repeating?
That is decided with you and it depends on what is being followed. What can be said generally is that a repeat too soon mostly reports how much water you were carrying, and tells you very little about fat or muscle.
What if the number is unwelcome?
Sometimes it is. A low muscle reading or a high fat reading is a finding, and a finding is something that can be worked with — it changes what we suggest about protein, resistance training and how quickly weight should come off. It does not change how you are treated in this clinic, and it does not go anywhere except your chart.
What if I would rather not have one?
Then say so and we will skip it. Nothing about your care changes, and having the first one commits you to nothing. It is a measurement offered because some people find it useful, not a step in the treatment.
What it costs
Your appointments, your assessment and your treatment plan are covered by OHIP. Your first scan comes with your first visit, at no charge and whether or not you ever buy another. If you buy none after that, your care is exactly the same — the same appointment, the same medication, the same place in the schedule.
A scan that shows muscle, fat and water — about five minutes, and nothing invasive. Your first scan is included with your first visit; a four-scan pack tracks what changes over the following year.
Ask at your visit — or call 226-270-8618
After the first, a four-scan pack or one at a time at $65 per scan · plus HST. Scans are also part of GOALS+, the optional membership, which is not open yet. Nothing on this page requires any of it.
Sources for the claims on this page
- Rubino F, et al. Definition and diagnostic criteria of clinical obesity. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, 2025;13(3):221–262.
- Ross R, et al. Waist circumference as a vital sign in clinical practice: a consensus statement from the IAS and ICCR Working Group on Visceral Obesity. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 2020;16(3):177–189.
- Wharton S, et al. Obesity in adults: a clinical practice guideline. CMAJ, 2020;192(31):E875–E891.
- Fox CS, et al. Abdominal visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue compartments: association with metabolic risk factors in the Framingham Heart Study. Circulation, 2007;116(1):39–48.
- Bosy-Westphal A, et al. Quantification of whole-body and segmental skeletal muscle mass using phase-sensitive 8-electrode medical bioelectrical impedance devices. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2017;71(9):1061–1067.
- Kyle UG, et al. Bioelectrical impedance analysis, part II: utilization in clinical practice. Clinical Nutrition, 2004;23(6):1430–1453.
- Bosy-Westphal A, et al. What makes a BIA equation unique? Validity of eight-electrode multifrequency BIA to estimate body composition in a healthy adult population. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2013;67(Suppl 1):S14–S21.
- Donini LM, et al. Definition and diagnostic criteria for sarcopenic obesity: ESPEN and EASO consensus statement. Obesity Facts, 2022;15(3):321–335.
- Lahav Y, Goldstein N, Gepner Y. Comparison of body composition assessment across body mass index categories by two multifrequency bioelectrical impedance analysis devices and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry in clinical settings. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2021;75(8):1275–1282.
- Dixon CB, et al. The effect of acute fluid consumption on measures of impedance and percent body fat estimated using segmental bioelectrical impedance analysis. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2009;63(9):1115–1122.
- Look M, et al. Body composition changes during weight reduction in the SURMOUNT-1 study. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 2025;27(5):2720–2729.
Related reading: Beyond BMI — why body composition tells the real story, in the GOALS Journal.
OHIP-covered Obesity & Lifestyle Medicine