- Withings BodyFit scale finally lands in the UK and Europe after its launch in the United States
- Its body composition scanning feature is said to be ‘DEXA level’, implying pinpoint accuracy.
- The scale is also supposedly ideal for GLP-1 drug users who prioritize maintaining muscle while losing fat.
Health technology company Withings has announced it is launching the Withings BodyFit smart scale in the UK and Europe, priced at £229.95. The smart scale, which is said to be a “segmental body composition scale”, will calculate the proportion of fat, muscle and bone using a technique called bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy (BIS).
Similar to biometric impedance analysis used by the best smart scales, BIS technology sends a harmless electrical current through your body, which moves through fat, muscle, and bone at different speeds. Using this information, Withings BodyFit can calculate how much of each material is in your body. Intelligent.
Withings BodyFit uses a retractable handle for more points of contact, which is said to provide body composition measurement as accurate as a medical-grade DEXA scan, calculating fat mass with up to 99% accuracy and muscle mass with up to 98% accuracy. The scale provides fitness goals, calorie tracking, cardiovascular information, nutrition tracking and more. It’s essentially a stand-up fitness tracker that takes you on a ‘personalized health and body composition journey’ with tips accessible in the Withings app.
The GLP-1 connection
The interesting thing is that Withings recommends its scale to a group of people who are more concerned about maintaining muscle mass, and no, these are not bodybuilders. These are GLP-1 users, who take medications such as Wegovy (the most common GLP-1 in the UK, equivalent to the more famous Ozempic in the US) to help drastically slow weight loss. Wegovy contains the same active ingredient as Ozempic (semaglutide), which stabilizes blood sugar and sends signals to the brain that it is full.
With muscle analysis based on six “zones” of your body, Withings says: “For GLP-1 users, Withings BodyFit provides accurate, actionable information to ensure weight loss targets fat while actively protecting crucial muscle mass.”
The idea is that while you take these medications and lose weight dramatically, you can maintain your body’s functionality by doing exercises that prioritize maintaining and gaining muscle mass, and verify that you’re on the right track with the scale’s advanced muscle scanning technology.
muscle and fat
Building and maintaining muscle is an important part of any healthy weight loss process. While some people will welcome the help of GLP-1 medications, especially those who can’t burn calories with intense exercise due to joint problems or disability, others will want to do it the way it’s always been done: sweat it out.
Muscle weighs more than fat, so a reliable smart scale like BodyFit can help shift the goals of weight loss (and gain) success from a simple number on a scale to fine-tuning your body’s fat and muscle percentages.
While those details can, in some extreme cases, create obsessive behavior, for most people it will make getting healthier easier in the long run, since it’s more about having some functional muscle than how much you weigh.
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