HEX A DEXA

I don't know anyone who delights in finding out their body fat percentages. Especially if you're anything like me and have been making dubious life decisions like having Urban Bakery's chocolate croissants for lunch or a jumbo bag of Cheetos for dinner. (This may or may not have happened more than a few times in the last few months)

It's like putting a definite value on these bad nutrition decisions and reminding you that they carry real consequences. Like finding out the bogeyman under your bed is real. 

Well, bogeyman or not, we got them Dexa body composition scans done yesterday for our 'Before' figures, with exactly a week to go before the program starts.

Thankfully, I watched Pherform's Dexa 101 video before going, otherwise I would have probably had a (bigger) meltdown over how high the Dexa figures seem, compared to those I've obtained before during a caliper skinfold test or standing on a bioelectrical impedance scale. In a nutshell, the Dexa scan typically gives body fat percentages sitting on a significantly higher scale than the other methods. For females, a normal range is between 30-40%, while anything in the low- to mid-20s is extremely low. 

This was news to me, and being at around 23-25% body fat using the previous methods, I was still quite taken aback by the 32.4% results I got from the Dexa scan even after watching the video. So imagine if I didn't! Talk about a savage shock.

The scan itself was quite quick. 6 minutes for the full body scan and just a mere 2 minutes for the spinal scan (which we did to measure bone density - another story for another day).

(That's a picture of Rach, my partner-in-crime who went for the scan with me)

We had to lie on a table with our palms down and our big toes touching each other, quite an uncomfortable position made more comfortable with the aid of a velcro strip. During the scans, the table would move to get different body parts under the scanner.

We got the results instantly and Glen Joe of the Active Health Clinic's Institute of Human Performance (who also did our scans) analyzed the results for us right after and answered our questions. 

So, 32.4% looks something like this:

Dayum. PUDGE MUCH. 

Freakin' Dexa is so detailed with the scanning process that you can even see my muffin top peeking out of my trousers and my back folds chilling out over my bra line.   

Oh well, this just means more numbers for me to shift for my 'After' scan! Wouldn't mind edging more of me (literally) toward the Lean scale and shaving those extra jiggly bits off too.