Bod Pod

What is my purpose? What is my quest? What is my goal?

Maybe I'm a simple person with simple reasons to live, but this is what I want:

Building lean muscle mass.

It's my goal. It's my quest. It's what keeps me going. It's my reason to get out of bed every morning.

Am I a simple person who only cares about his own physique? Probably. Does that bother me? Not at all. On the contrary, I enjoy it all the way.

Measuring progress

I track my progress to evaluate my methods. Are they working and correct, or is there something I'd be better off doing another way? To know that, I need reliable measurement methods.

The first method is the mirror.

The second is the measuring tape.

The third is some kind of reliable body composition measurement.

I can't rely on the bathroom scale alone. The scale only tells me the impact of the earth's gravity on my body, the weight my body pushes to the ground. It tells me whether I'm heavier or lighter. It gives me no information about whether that weight is fat or muscle.

My goal is to gain lean muscle mass, so:

• If I gain muscle mass, I succeed.
• If I gain body fat, I fail.
• If I lose body fat, I succeed.
• If I lose muscle mass, I fail.

The scale

The scale is only useful alongside another reliable body composition method that can tell me what the weight I'm gaining or losing actually consists of.

Caliper measurement is one option, but it's hard to do reliably, the person taking the measurement has to be experienced, and there aren't many experienced caliper measurers out there. If you find one, it's a great way to get your composition measured.

Another method is the Bod Pod, said to be one of the most accurate and exact ways to measure body composition. I've done body composition measurements nine times between 1994 and 2022 to evaluate my training results. I also take photos to document what the numbers mean, and complete it all with a tape-measure check.

I've done Bod Pod measurements at Ylab in Stockholm, Sweden, and a few years ago at Pauluns Näringscenter.

The Bod Pod measures your body's density very precisely. Body fat has a specific, measurable density, so the Bod Pod can separate the weight of your body fat from the rest of you, your fat-free mass, and calculate your composition in kilos and percentages very accurately. With that, you can evaluate your training and diet and see whether you're gaining or losing muscle, and whether you're gaining or losing fat.

Am I eating enough to build muscle, or too much so I build fat? Is my protein, carb and fat balance right? Am I training hard enough, or too hard? Am I giving my body enough time to rest and recover?

A reliable body composition measurement can answer all of that, and more.

What the result means to me

The result that matters to me is fat-free mass, my body weight without body fat. The only thing that really moves up or down in fat-free mass is lean muscle. My bones and organs don't gain or lose meaningful weight. (Yes, bone does gain a little density from heavy training, but that's negligible here, so I ignore it.)