What our most consistent InBody scanner taught us about tracking progress — the healthy way.
Erika might be the most consistent InBody scanner at Destination CrossFit. Every week, same routine, without fail. She jokes she’s earned a sticker for it. (We’re seriously considering it.)
But the reason her story is worth telling isn’t the streak. It’s what the InBody did for her relationship with her own body.
From a number on a scale to the whole picture
Like a lot of us who came up in the diet-culture years, Erika learned young to fear the scale — to treat a single number as a verdict. At one point in her life, that fixation became genuinely unhealthy. So it means something when she says the InBody is the tool that finally got her out of her own head.
Here’s how she describes the difference: a home scale that claims to measure body fat is like looking at a house through its windows. You get a rough impression. The InBody is like having a sensor inside every room. It measures your lean muscle mass, your body fat, your visceral fat (the fat stored around your organs), and even your hydration — the water inside and outside your cells — then rolls the whole readout into a single InBody score you can watch over time.
That’s a lot more than “how much do I weigh,” and it changes the questions you ask. When Erika’s weight dips on a given week, she doesn’t spiral. She checks her muscle mass and her trend line and asks: Am I fueling enough? Am I sleeping? Am I lifting heavy enough to hold onto my muscle? The number stops being a judgment and starts being information.
Why we stopped being scared of the scale — and started measuring more
For a long time, we didn’t even want a scale in the gym. The one we had mostly got used for weighing random equipment. What changed our minds wasn’t weight. It was muscle.
So many people walk in the door wanting to lose weight, then get frustrated in the first few weeks when the scale creeps up. But that early bump is often muscle — your metabolism waking up, your body composition shifting toward something that burns fuel more efficiently. If all you’re watching is one number, you miss the real story. The InBody tells it.
It runs on bioimpedance — safe, fast, and close to accurate. Not quite a medical-grade DEXA scan, but a whole lot more information than any bathroom scale, and quick enough to do right before your workout.
The details that make it click
Because the InBody is so granular, it catches things you’d never see otherwise. Erika noticed she carries about a third of a pound more muscle in her right arm than her left — which explained exactly why her right side kept going on overhead press while her left tapped out. Now she trains with that balance in mind, right down to which arm carries the groceries.
It also gives you a calculated resting metabolic rate: roughly how many calories your body burns just existing. Because a bioimpedance estimate can vary by a meaningful margin from scan to scan, it’s worth pairing that calculated number with a measured metabolic rate from our Pnoe test — you’ll see how close the estimate is for your body, which is useful when you’re building a real plan with a coach.
The principle: one data point is noise, the trend is the truth
A single reading on a single morning can be thrown off by water, food, sleep, or stress — and since the scan itself can wobble a little from one day to the next, no single number is gospel. So we don’t catastrophize over one funky reading. As Erika puts it: don’t catastrophize — just measure again another day. The magic isn’t in any one number. It’s in watching the line over weeks and months, and letting the trend tell you what to adjust.
How to use your InBody (it’s already included)
If you’re a member, the InBody is yours to use as often as you like — it’s built into your membership, and it lives one click away inside your Wodify app, with results that sync automatically. A few tips for clean data:
- Scan before eating and before training when you can.
- Keep your conditions consistent — same time of day, same routine, every time.
- Don’t react to a single reading. Watch the trend across weeks.
- First time scanning? Book a few minutes with a coach so we can walk through your numbers together.
Two years ago we added grip strength to our scanner, too — one of the strongest longevity markers we know of. The ability to hold a firm grip as you age is what lets you carry your own groceries up the stairs and pull yourself up off the floor for decades to come.
Come look at your numbers with us
Whether you’re chasing a specific goal or just curious where you stand, your InBody is here for you. Come find a coach and let’s read your numbers together — not to judge, but to celebrate you walking in the door and help you feel your best for the other 23 hours of your day.
Not a member yet? You can still book an InBody scan, or come see the whole thing in person: wwdcf.com/free-consultation/
This episode is part of our ongoing series on what’s already included in your membership at Destination CrossFit. Catch the full conversation with Erika on the Actually Doing Things podcast.
