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Tanita Ironman InnerScan
By Mark Steckel
12/8/2005 |
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Before entering University, I had a summer job working as a fitness instructor at a club that focused on one-on-one training of clients. Understand, this is well before the day of the modern Personal Trainer, so it was a new concept. The majority of our clients were overweight and their goal was to lose excess pounds. Their initial work-up included a relatively new test for Percentage Body Fat which involved running a low-level electrical signal through the body. The impedance, or resistance, of this current is measured, and because the signal passes faster through lean muscle than fat (muscle contains 70-75% of the body's water, and fat has almost no water content) one can calculate a Percentage Body Fat. This was an invaluable tool in training individuals who were focused on weight loss, because our approach was one of aerobic exercise combined with resistance, or weight training.
Those clients who were WEIGHT conscious often complained after just a few weeks that they were gaining weight! I had to explain that muscle weights more than fat, and as you build muscle your metabolism will increase and in the long run that will help burn even more fat. But in the meantime, they should stay off the scale and rely more on a full length mirror or the fit of their pants to determine their progress. Eventually, as they were re-tested for Percentage Body Fat, they could quantify their gains, but it was very difficult for many of them to break the habit of relying on weight to gauge their progress.
Today, modern technology has made measuring your body composition much more simple and affordable. Tanita has taken Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) and added it to your everyday bathroom scale, giving the average person the ability to compare weight versus body fat regularly at home. BIA is most consistent and reliable if you are properly hydrated and if you wait 3 hours after eating or exercise before taking a measurement. When these factors are recognized and BIA is practiced consistently, the results correlate well with other more complicated and expensive methods of measurement.
Tanita has created an Ironman™ line of InnerScan Monitors with the athlete in mind. These monitors can measure weight, percentage body fat, total body water (%), muscle mass, as well as Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). For those of you not familiar with the term, BMR is a measure of the number of calories your body burns just staying alive. In other words, it's the number of calories you burn if you sat on the couch all day and didn't move. Obviously, once you start exercising, that number goes up, but it can give you an idea of what you need daily just to support your basic functions. The monitors also take into account whether you are an athlete training regularly or not.
The unit is simple to use. You need to program in a few numbers before you get started, and these are saved as Users 1, 2, 3 and 4. Each time you go to use the monitor, you tap a button with your toe to select your User number, and then step on the scale. Within seconds it displays your weight and then Percentage Body Fat, along with the other measurements. You can even call up the previous readings if you want to make a comparison. Don't want to check your body fat today? No problem. Just tap the centre button and the scale measure weight only.
I loved the ability of this scale to measure body fat. And I'm not too concerned if it's 100% accurate or not, because I'm just interested in trends. Off-season versus racing form, that kind of thing. For me, the scale could become a good little motivator that helped keep me from getting too far 'off-season' over the holidays. But that's also my one concern about a monitor like this. I'd hate to see someone with an eating disorder use it as a tool which only weakened their self image. The monitor comes with information about what healthy body fat levels are for men and women and I hope that would serve to educate everyone that certain levels of fat in the body are necessary for good health.
One other point that needs to be addressed concerns women. Because BIA relies on levels of water in the body to calculate percentage body fat, women need to be aware that those levels will change due to hormonal fluctuations. With that in mind, it is recommended that women record a daily measurement for the first month of use so that they can visualize how their levels will fluctuate as their cycle changes. That way, they can better understand their average body fat levels over the long term.
Overall, this is a great scale that fills a void in the home market. And when one considers that prices range from US$99.99 to $129.99, they are very reasonably priced compared to their non-body fat monitoring cousins.
For more information, visit www.tanita.com
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