Yesterday, I visited an acquaintance who offers to do a BIA for me. Nope, its not the elder cousin of MIA, an airline like SIA or even a secret intelligence agency like CIA. What is BIA? As usual, Mr Google's friend, Ms Wiki give these answers...
"BIA[1] actually determines the electrical impedance, or opposition to the flow of an electric current through body tissues which can then be used to calculate an estimate of total body water (TBW). TBW can be used to estimate fat-free body mass and, by difference with body weight, body fat"
Basically, I am trying to measure my bodyfat level.
The procedures is straighforward enough. Just that it requires me to remove... my socks (hehe) prior to testing. I just need to stand barefooted on the machine and after a few minutes it calculates the amount of electric that goes through my body, and voila, the result is out. The result? Not flattering at all. More like flattening.
Even if my friend commented that the result could be skewed as I am a bit dehydrated, but i'll take it as I DO need to do something about it. The evaluation is that I am overweight AND sarcopenic. Sarcopenia is "..(from the Greek meaning "poverty of flesh") is the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength associated with senescence". That means I am losing muscle and unfortunately pack in lots and lots of fat due to inactivity (mostly) and aging (nak senangkan hati la tu). Read more about sarcopenia here and here
BIA is not the 'gold standard' but it makes assessment easier and the recent developments have made it to be more acceptable. But the bottom line is, I need to make some progress before my next BIA next month :(
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