Body Composition Scans: Are They Worth It?
What I learned from my first scan—and what these tests can and can’t tell us about our health.
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As I shared in this week’s podcast episode, Should You Get a DEXA Scan?, I recently had one done.
To be clear, it was not the medical version that your doctor orders in order to diagnose osteopenia or osteoporosis; rather it was the type that’s becoming increasingly common at fitness- and wellness-focused clinics that provide insight into body fat percentage, muscle mass, visceral fat, bone density, and even your “biological age.”
This is all part of the fitness and body recomposition work I’ve been focusing on for myself, and the series I’ve been sharing with you about strength, nutrition, menopause, optimal wellness, and aging well. For more, check out these articles and episodes:
Aside from sharing everything I’m learning and practicing with my audience, I’ve also been helping some people individually in one-on-ones — including my sister, who is two years older than I am and also in post-menopause. I’ve been helping her with body recomposition, building muscle, and dialing in her nutrition.
While I was visiting her and her family last week in Florida, I decided to surprise her with something a little different: a DEXA scan for both of us.
Not exactly the kind of surprise most people hope for — like a spa day or a massage — but hey…you know. Leveling up. I was about to turn 56, and I wanted to know more!
So I made an appointment at a place called DexaFit, and we got our scans. The scan itself took about seven minutes, and afterward we sat down with a staff member to go over the results.
But let’s back up for a moment to understand exactly what these scans are — and what they aren’t.
Diagnostic DEXA vs. Body Comp Scans
Places like this (and there are now dozens of them popping up all over) are designed for people who are interested in their health and fitness and want more quantitative information about their bodies.
What they are not are medical diagnostic centers, even though the technology is the same —DEXA stands for Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry—but the purpose is different.
In a medical setting, a DEXA scan is used to measure bone density at specific sites — usually the hip and lumbar spine. These are called site-specific scans, because they focus on the areas that best predict fracture risk. Those scans produce the T-score that physicians use to determine whether someone has osteopenia or osteoporosis.
What I had done was a total-body composition scan.
Body composition scans look at the entire body rather than focusing on just the hip or spine. They estimate things like body fat percentage, lean muscle mass, visceral fat, bone mass, and how fat and muscle are distributed throughout the body.
In other words, it’s not diagnosing anything, but it is giving you data.
And just as I advocate for getting blood work to measure things like lipids, your omega-3 index, and other biomarkers, having this kind of information can be really useful—especially if you’ve never had it before—because it gives you a baseline to work from.
Body Fat Percentage
One of the most useful numbers these scans provide is body fat percentage.
Keep in mind this is very different from BMI (Body Mass Index), which simply compares your weight to your height. BMI doesn’t tell you what your scale weight actually consists of; it doesn’t distinguish between muscle, bone, water, or fat.
Body fat percentage does. It tells you what proportion of your body weight is made up of fat tissue compared to everything else.
My Results
My body fat percentage came in average for my demographic—which, if you know me at all, you’d know that is not exactly where I aspire to be.
Rather, I aspire to optimal—not compared to anyone else, but compared to my own goals. And those goals, as I discuss here, involve body recomposition, which is far more complex than simply “losing weight.” It means reducing body fat while maintaining—or ideally increasing—muscle mass.
That’s the journey I’m on—and the one I’ve been sharing with you. This data point essentially confirmed what I already knew: that I still have some body fat to lose and muscle to gain. But it was helpful to see that reflected in the numbers.
Visceral Fat
The next data point the scan revealed was visceral fat, and this one is particularly important.
Visceral fat is the fat stored deep in the abdominal cavity, surrounding organs like the liver, pancreas, and intestines—and it’s very different from the fat stored just under the skin. It’s metabolically active and associated with increased risk for things like insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, and other metabolic disorders.
One reason this type of fat gets so much attention is that it often starts to show up around midlife—especially for women entering perimenopause and menopause. Hormonal changes can shift where the body stores fat, and what people sometimes refer to as “meno belly” (not sure how I feel about that term) is often related to increases in visceral fat.
A growing waist circumference—especially if you didn’t previously carry weight in your midsection—can be a clue. That said, the most accurate way to know how much visceral fat you have is through imaging, like a scan.
The good news is that visceral fat tends to respond well to lifestyle changes—exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management.
My Results
I was actually quite happy to see that the scan showed I had virtually no visceral fat. I wasn’t particularly worried going in, because I don’t tend to carry fat in my midsection—even during menopause—but it’s still reassuring to see the data confirm that.
Lean Muscle Mass
The next data point the scan provided was lean muscle mass.
This one matters a lot—especially as we age. I’ve talked about this in several of the episodes I mentioned above, but in short: muscle mass naturally declines over time. And that’s a problem, because muscle plays a critical role in strength, mobility, metabolic health, and bone density.
Which means we have to be intentional about maintaining it—and ideally building it.
My Results
My lean muscle mass was again average. But, I want better than that. Related to what I said above about body fat percentage, I’m continuing to focus on my body recomposition goals: reducing body fat while increasing muscle.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been working on for the last couple years, but clearly I still have more work to do. For all I know, my numbers might have been worse a year ago—but I don’t have that data. All I have is this current snapshot.
So I’m staying focused on those body recomposition goals. How? By shifting my training a bit more toward strength rather than hypertrophy—lifting heavier weights (yes, even heavier) with fewer reps.
Bone Density
Next, there’s bone density—and this one is incredibly important, especially for women. As I shared in Bone Health at Every Age (Part 1: Nutrition & Hormones), about half of women over 50 will experience an osteoporosis-related fracture in their lifetime.
That’s why understanding your bone density matters. It gives you insight into how strong—or vulnerable—your bones may be and helps you make decisions about nutrition, exercise, and other lifestyle factors that influence bone health.
In Part 2 we’ll talk more about the kinds of exercises that help build and maintain bone density, but for now I encourage you to listen to Part 1.
And most importantly, if you believe you may be at risk for osteoporosis or osteopenia—because of family history, fractures, or other risk factors—you’ll want to talk with your doctor about getting a medical, site-specific scan.
My Results
Because this wasn’t a site-specific scan, I’m not treating it as diagnostic. But seeing that my numbers were closer to the fair range did motivate me to start incorporating more exercises specifically aimed at improving bone density.
More on that in Bone Density: Part 2, so please be sure to follow Food for Thought podcast.
The report also included a lot of very specific data about exactly where I carry fat and muscle and how it’s distributed throughout my body. Interesting—but I won’t bore you with all of that. The last thing I’ll mention is something called biological age.
Biological Age
Biological age is meant to estimate how your body is functioning relative to typical aging patterns. In other words, it’s an attempt to capture how well your body is aging physiologically—not just how many years you’ve been alive chronologically.
That’s why it’s increasingly being used as a data point in longevity and health research. The idea is that two people can be the same chronological age but have very different levels of metabolic health, body composition, resilience, and disease risk depending on lifestyle, genetics, and other factors.
My Results
Mine came in younger (48) than my chronological age (56)—which, let’s be honest, is nice to hear. But I’m cautious about putting too much stock in that number.
Biological age is most meaningful when it’s based on a wide range of biomarkers—things like blood markers and even cellular indicators. When it’s calculated from body composition alone, as it was in this case, it’s really only telling part of the story.
So while it’s interesting information, it’s not something I take too literally.
So, Should You Get a Body Composition Scan?
If you’re curious about your body composition—how much fat you’re carrying, how much muscle you have, how that’s distributed, and whether you have visceral fat—it can be a useful tool. Especially if you’ve never had this kind of data before, because it gives you a baseline to work from.
But it’s important to understand what it is—and what it isn’t.
As I keep emphasizing, these scans are not medical diagnoses. They’re informational tools. They can help you see trends and track changes over time, but they don’t replace clinical tests your doctor might order.
For me, it was helpful. It confirmed some things I suspected, gave me a few new data points to think about, and helped me refine the areas I want to focus on moving forward.
In other words: useful information.
Just not the final word.
Tell me…have you gotten a scan? Are you planning on getting one? Do you have any questions I might be able to answer?
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Additional Resources
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Getting my body comp scan on Friday! Thanks for sharing all this important information Colleen!
Interesting. And I LOVE that shirt 😻