How do I calculate my Lean Body Mass?
Calculating your Lean Body Mass is essential to achieving your fitness goals. Whether you want to lose weight, gain muscle, or improve your overall health, knowing your Lean Body Mass can help you set realistic goals and track your progress. We offer these ways to measure your Lean Body Mass.
- Circumference measurement: By measuring specific body parts, we will calculate your body fat percentage using the U.S. Navy method and, as a result, your Lean Body Mass.
- Body fat percentage: Subtract your body fat percentage from your total weight to get your Lean Body Mass. An excellent way if you already know your body fat percentage.
- Height and Weight: This approach uses height and weight to estimate body fat percentage. Accessible but in the least accurate way.
What is Lean Body Mass?
Lean Body Mass is a measure of mass that includes muscle mass and excludes fat mass. It is the mass of everything in your body, apart from the fat mass. The lean mass contains muscle, bones, tendons, organs and other essential components that many underestimate when they focus exclusively on the number on their bathroom scale.
Lean mass plays a crucial role in metabolism and physical performance, making it important for athletes or anyone looking to improve their overall health. As such, paying attention to Lean Body Mass can lead to enhanced energy levels and increased strength for any active individual.
Benefits and side effects of muscle mass
Maintaining muscle mass is an important part of staying healthy and fit as we age. People who have more mass are able to do daily activities with more ease, as it supports skeletal muscles and creates a strong foundation for movement.
Having greater muscle mass can prevent or manage conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, increase bone mass and strength, enhance balance, provide better postural support, and generally improve a person's overall quality of life.
Therefore, it is extremely important for people of all ages to be proactive when it comes to muscle mass. Not only for the purpose of aesthetics but also for one's wellbeing.
Developing and sustaining muscle mass can also help increase metabolism, providing the body with more energy throughout the day and reducing fatigue.
Research has further shown that people with greater mass tend to have fewer health problems, such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and chronic joint pain. Demonstrating the many benefits of keeping your muscles conditioned.
Is Lean Body Mass the same as Muscle Mass?
Lean Body Mass is a term often used to refer to the mass of a body that does not include fat mass, while muscle mass specifically refers to the mass of the muscles. Lean Body Mass can include muscle mass, water mass, and minerals mass, but not fat mass; in contrast, muscle mass only includes organic materials like protein and connective tissue necessary for muscle movement.
Both Lean Body Mass and muscle mass are important when looking at BMI measurements as well as overall health and fitness goals.
People who are looking to increase their overall strength or improve their appearance should focus on increasing their muscle mass rather than just trying to increase their Lean Body Mass.
How to measure circumference
To calculate body fat percentage using the U.S. Navy method, the circumference of both the neck and waist is required for men; women also need to enter the circumference of the hips.
Measure the waist horizontally around the belly button for men, women measure at their leanest point. To get a reliable result, the stomach should not be pulled inwards.
Measure the neck circumference at a point just below the larynx. Look straight ahead. Keep the tape measure as close to horizontal as anatomically possible.
For women, measure the hip horizontally at the widest point.