The Cameo Show
The Cameo Show is a podcast about sharing our life experiences and learning from each other. Through solo stories and inspiring conversations with a wide variety of guests, we explore the secrets and strategies for feeling confident, empowered and equipped to live the life we want to lead. Tune in to learn how to find joy and fulfillment in your life and to gain valuable insights from the amazing stories and lessons of our guests.
The Cameo Show
The Power of DEXA Scans with Virginia Kinkel
Unlock the transformative insights of DEXA scans and how they can elevate your wellness and fitness journey. In this episode of The Cameo Show, we sit down with Virginia Kinkel, a leading expert in body composition testing, to break down the science behind DEXA scans and their impact on long-term health.
What You’ll Learn:
- What is a DEXA scan? Understanding how it works and why it’s one of the most precise body composition tests available.
- Fat vs. muscle distribution: The significance of differentiating between fat mass, lean mass, and bone density.
- Types of fat: Exploring the differences between subcutaneous and visceral fat—and why it matters.
- Health implications for women: How body composition changes through different life stages, especially during hormonal shifts.
- Why trends matter more than daily weight fluctuations: Tracking long-term progress for sustainable health.
- DEXA scan frequency: How often you should test to get meaningful insights.
- Accessibility & cost: What to know about pricing and availability.
- Lifestyle applications: How nutrition, exercise, and daily habits can impact your body composition over time.
- The importance of bone density: Why early detection and preventative measures are crucial for lifelong health.
If you’ve ever wondered how to move beyond the scale and truly understand your body, this episode is a must-listen! Subscribe, share, and leave a review to help spread valuable information to others on their wellness journey.
More about Virginia and Bodymass Composition Testing: https://www.bodymasscompositiontesting.com/
https://www.instagram.com/bodymasscompositiontesting/
https://www.instagram.com/virginiavkinkel/
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Hello and welcome to the Cameo Show. I'm your host, cameo, and today we are thrilled to have our guest, virginia Kinkle. She and her husband own Body Mass Gym and Body Mass Composition Testing. She is a leading expert in DEXA scanning, the powerful tool that Greg and I shared that shows you your body composition where your fat mass lies, where your lean muscle mass lies, and also your bone density other important factors in understanding your overall picture of wellness as it pertains to your body. So, virginia, thank you so much for being here. We're so excited for all of your knowledge.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1:And before we jump in, greg, welcome to the show my husband and co-host. Yes, so excited to be here and I'd love to kick things off with a little dad joke. Please don't let us down. So what do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back to you, virginia?
Speaker 2:Runaway ring. I don't know what is it? A stick? Ha ha. Yeah, I need to understand the level of dad joke there.
Speaker 1:I had to like pause and think about it.
Speaker 2:That's great, I love it. That's my repertoire now. That's good.
Speaker 1:The obvious one, the obvious dad joke.
Speaker 1:All right, virginia.
Speaker 1:So, as we mentioned and how we connected in the first place, greg and I went to MI40 gym in Tampa and had DEXA scans done through your body mass composition testing business, and we understand and have shared our results to the level at which we were able and then answered some more questions that some of our listeners had sent in, and there was a lot of interest around this episode in particular.
Speaker 1:So we are so grateful for you to be here as the expert, because this is something that people are taking major seriously, maybe not just in the gym or in the bodybuilding world, but people who are looking to lose weight, who are maybe perimenopausal or menopausal women who want to understand what that means for them, or just anyone who's taking this information seriously to next level their longevity by understanding what it all looks like underneath. So, if we can just start with the basic level answer from your expert level of what is a DEXA scan and what makes it the gold standard compared to other body composition testing, the scale and all of the things that we all know as ways to measure our weight, our wellness, Well, that's a great question and even to like backtrack before totally deep diving into it, you made a really good point that we started in 2018.
Speaker 2:I've been operating DexaSkin since 2013. Historically, the type of clients that we've had are those that care about more of the aesthetic side and why they want information on. Body composition is what do I look like and how much fat mass do I have. Composition is what do I look like and how much fat mass do I have. But recently, especially in the last few years you know post-COVID and Peter Atiyah's book coming out and that kind of buzzword of longevity people are utilizing the data and information so much more to understand their health and how they can really optimize that to live a better quality life now and have that quality last longer. So it's really been neat, even in the decade or so that I've been doing this, to see how that shift has really happened. So I think that's important to note, even going into it, because that'll help touch base on some of the other stuff that I talk about.
Speaker 1:Yes, great point. Thank you for bringing that up, you're welcome. Yeah, for sure so what a DEXA is.
Speaker 2:It is if you have never even heard of it or never even looked it up like Googled what it looks like. It looks like a technical piece of x-ray equipment, which essentially it is. It's basically this long table that looks like it would be in a medical facility, where they historically have been with this arm above it, which is what measures your body composition. Now, the way the DEXA works is what happens. You lay on the table, down flat on your back. The machine starts at your head. Underneath the table, which you can't see, is a low dosage x-ray On the top arm. If you've ever gotten a DEXA, you see there's this sensor that moves back and forth. As it passes these sweeps along the length of your body, what's happening underneath the bed at the same rate. That x-ray is sending a signal up to the sensor and the sensor is determining the interference, your body laying in the way of that signal. The three types of tissue that the DEXA looks at is BMC, which stands for bone mineral content. So your skeleton, your lean mass, which is anything that is not fat mass and is not bone, and your fat mass, and each of those three types of tissue have a different density to it. So, based on the rate at which that signal is received by the sensor, the machine can determine what type of tissue it's passing through and because it's getting sweeps of your entire body, from head to toe exactly how much of that tissue there is. So that kind of answers.
Speaker 2:The question in terms of comparing it to other forms of body composition is its accuracy and its detail. It's utilizing x-ray to determine the tissue, unlike any other methods that bod pods use air displacement, hydrostatic weighing uses water displacement. Something like an in-body uses bioelectric impedance. Those types of measures don't have the detail and the accuracy that an x-ray does. Again, if you've never done a DEXA before, it seems a little daunting. All you do is you lay still on the table, takes roughly six to 10 minutes depending on how tall or how thick the person is, to run from head to toe. But what it's doing is it's looking at information on your body as a whole, but it's also breaking down what that type of tissue is and where it's distributed in your body, so we can get a better read on not just what's there but where it is and, more importantly, in the long run, how do things we're doing in the gym in our daily life nutrition-wise affect those results.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. Such an important part of that is where the mass lies, whether it's fat mass, what type of fat it is. So if we can just keep going into those details, that was such an expert level description of how it works. I know that you're going to blow us out of the water with the description of the difference in where it lies and why that's important, and then also the differences in fat mass and what that means for our overall health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Let's kind of touch base on the fat mass a little bit. So we have two different types of adipose tissue or fat tissue in our body. We have subcutaneous and we have visceral. This is the way I always describe this. My husband says it's a little cannibalistic, but I think it's an easy way to describe. It is if you had like a nice big steak on your plate. The visceral fat is the fat that's kind of marbleized in with the meat. The subcutaneous fat is kind of the trimming around the edge. That's how it is in our body. The visceral fat is the stuff that's kind of marbleized in. The subcutaneous fat is the stuff that is more surface level or like pinchable, for lack of a better word. So when we're looking at the DEXA, there are two specific areas that we really like to hone in on. One is an area that's called the android and one is an area that's called the gynoid. The android is our belly region. It is an area from the base of our ribs to the top of our pelvis where a lot of those vital organs are stored. And we are looking at the fat mass in that android region, which helps us get a read on how much fat is somebody storing around those vital organs, the stuff that has the higher correlation with diabetes, heart disease, metabolic disease, all this stuff we want to stay away from. We can get a read not just on what percent fat are you in that region, because that's helpful to know, but exactly how many pounds of Android fat mass do we have, of Android fat mass do we have? So if we have a certain percentage of Android fat mass and we are losing Android pounds at the same rate, proportionally, that we're losing lean mass, you know, maybe you're just decreasing the lean mass there a little bit, your percentage might stay the same, but if you've lost a half a pound of fat mass, you're actually making an improvement. Right, we're decreasing the pounds of fat mass in the region. We could talk about what gaining lean mass looks like separately, but that's just an example to use where the percentage could theoretically stay the same. We want to see that improve with time. But if we're losing pounds in that Android section, that tells us we have less fat stored around those organs and that correlates to better health. So that's the Android region.
Speaker 2:The gynoid region is kind of like your hips and your butt, so it's from the pelvis to the widest part of the legs and that gives us insight into our subcutaneous or surface level fat. Now this is an area that maybe, aesthetically, you might want to lose fat mass. Women tend to store more in their gynoid. Men tend to store more in their android.
Speaker 2:So again, from an aesthetic standpoint we might see that we want to lose that, but from an overall health and a correlation to overall health and quality of life, that's not as high of an indicator as that Android is. So if you have two people who come in, they're the same height, they're the same weight, they have the same amount of total lean mass, they have the same amount of total fat mass, but one person has a significantly higher android fat mass and one person has a significantly higher gynoid fat mass. We can say, even though on paper and even though body composition, total body composition wise they might be similar, they are at very different risk levels for all of the stuff that we kind of want to stay away from.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so you mentioned that men and women carry fat in different areas, men in that stomach region more so than women in the hips and butt area, and so I'm curious is that number, percentage wise, also different, like there are different ranges that are healthy for men and women overall, and maybe we should start there but then dip into those specific regions as well from a health perspective?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I love, love, love answering this question because us, as human nature, it's like tell me what to need, what I need to do and where I need to be, and I'm going to get there. And when it comes to something like body composition, what we really want to focus on is trends, and we want to see how do numbers change, ideally improve in the long run, by creating and implementing these sustainable changes. So, for most people, even though they might not like want to hear this answer because we're so like programmed to need to have like, what should my body fat percentage be? What we want to see is that these numbers are trending in a better direction at a sustainable rate on paper, from data, but also from a realistic and a sustainable standpoint in terms of what we're doing in our life.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people and I know Kim, you know, you know, this is a former bodybuilder that might come in and their results look phenomenal on paper because they've been doing their hours of cardio and they've been counting every single thing that goes into their body and they're sleeping, but they're totally stepping away from their social life. They're kind of slacking on things like work. They're not able to enjoy these like family moments, and so for me, when I look at that, sure, on paper does it look good. Are you hitting the number, the target that you want to be? No, yeah, but are you doing that in a quick way? That's not sustainable and what is the cost of doing that? So to me, longevity is not just your health, but like what is your social and your environmental health as well bodybuilding and I feel like I did it the right way and it likely was sustainable.
Speaker 1:Should I have continued to do that? Because I had a great coach and a great nutrition specialist who was leading me in the right direction with finding harmony and balance and making that sustainable. It's just life gets in the way sometimes and it doesn't always, so it wasn't this quick drop off or this quick lead in, as it can be, but it also, to your point, my happiness level was super low, so my body scan would have looked damn good and my happiness and balance level not because of bodybuilding in particular, but just because of life in general and where I was personally was not in alignment with that, and so I appreciate that you bring that up as like a full spectrum, a full composition of your life versus just your body and how that all plays together, because it's super important overall.
Speaker 2:We want to have sustainable. We want something that you can make improvements on, that you can continue to maintain, you can continue to fluctuate a little bit, you can continue to improve. But what often times has been the mindset is like I'm going to go so hard because I have this vacation in Mexico and I want to look good on the beach, and people go really hard in terms of getting results and progress, but then you go and you're off on your vacation at an all-inclusive resort and you totally undo everything that you just did. So, really, you come back after that vacation and what progress have you made? If you make small, sustainable changes over time, then you can go on that vacation and you're not swinging the pendulum 180 degrees in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2:You might take a small step back, but you're comfortable with these small steps forward. That a small step back isn't going to be detrimental. So I know that doesn't really answer the question, but that's the answer that I like to give is where we should be is what you can do in a sustainable way that allows you to start to see improvements in those areas. For some people, like you, had touched base on perimenopausal women, where we start to already see these signs of sarcopenia and loss of muscle mass. Maybe it's about improving lean mass in certain areas of your body that are a little bit lower. Maybe for somebody who has been stuck at their desk for 20 years and not prioritize their health, it's looking at that fat pounds in that Android region. It looks a little different for everybody, but it's what's? Something small that we can hone in on and start to make changes with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it kind of eliminates, like, the focus on the aesthetic part of it, which I know is still very important in some ways, depending on what your goal is, because it's all tied to exactly that. But it it eliminates that and really shifts the focus to what is it about you specifically that you're working toward, not aesthetic but overall with your health, and how can you adjust, how you measure your level of success with that versus what I look like or what the number on the scale says, or where I'm at in my age or my, my vacation journey, you know, like just a long-term, overall, sustainable plan that allows you to really see things for what they are, clearly instead of what. What's the goal? And did I hit the mark? And if I didn't, now I'm depressed, I'm guilty, I'm stressed out that sucks.
Speaker 2:We scan a lot of high-performing type A people and if they are so focused on a number, it's a pass, fail, right, like I either passed or I didn't pass, and if I didn't pass then I failed completely, when in reality there are so many other markers that are making improvements. And how do we focus on that? Maybe this one area, whether it's weight or whether it's overall body fat percentage, didn't move in the direction you wanted it to, but now we have a conversation and what does it look like to start to see that change? So I do want to say to your point that you had asked earlier about weight on a scale especially. This is especially true with women, because we have been so conditioned to think that scale goes up, we're losing progress. Scale goes down, we're making progress, we could step on that scale. And if it says X pounds, okay, step on that same scale the exact same day, looking, feeling the same way. And if it says X plus five, we failed. And if it says X minus five, we've succeeded, and that's how we've been so ingrained to think. And there are so many factors beyond that. And so for women especially, especially those who are starting to learn about and understand the value of strength training.
Speaker 2:If you do a DEXA and six months later you do a DEXA again and your weight is the exact same, your total mass has not changed at all, you are gonna look at that as a failure. I've put in six months of work and I've not made any progress. But if we start to see okay, your fat mass has gone down by eight pounds, your fat mass has gone down by eight pounds and your lean mass has gone up by eight pounds. Really, in six months you've made a 16 pound differential change. You've improved your body composition. Ideally, we do this in conjunction with things like blood work, things like other assessments to see where your performance is. And now, how does that look and how did those numbers? So who cares that the scale didn't move? These are all the improvements that you're making.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it's woven so thick through our life about the scale. It's the first thing you do when you go to the doctor. It's how you measure whether or not, I mean, I know better and I still get on the scale literally every single day.
Speaker 1:The thing that I have going for me is that I do know better, so I'm able to see like I'm not really looking for an overall number, I'm just I like to know what's happening. I like the metrics. I like to see like, oh, I'm holding water today because I did eat differently yesterday, or I don't have a DEXA scan at home, so I know that it's going to fluctuate. But a lot of people don't realize that you can fluctuate several pounds within a day just based on multiple things your hormones, how much water you consumed, how much activity you had, like all of the things. And so we have a teenage daughter and I'm not I don't mean to call her out by any means but like there's this lack of understanding that a pound of fat and a pound of muscle both way a pound, it's that one takes up less space because there's more density and one takes up more space because it's less. And so that eight and eight that you were speaking to, that 16 pound overall differential, doesn't make sense to her and to a lot of people who don't understand that.
Speaker 1:That that number on the scale, I mean I, I weigh more, weighed more when I was bodybuilding than I did in any other time in my life and I was the leanest I was ever because of the way that it was distributed throughout my body. So it's a really hard thing for people to grasp. And when we touched on that on the previous episode, when we were talking about our own results, that was one of the questions I was poorly poorly articulating that if you took two people who weigh the exact same amount on the scale, who are of the similar height, who get on the DEXA scan, that one person may be 145 pounds and 15% body fat and the other may be 60% body fat. They look a lot different. Yes, their clothes fit a lot different, but they weigh the same. So to that point of that measurement on the scale and why we have such trouble with it and the conditioning that we've received our entire life, they're not equivalent. It's not the same thing. Can you speak to that in a more intelligent, expert level way?
Speaker 2:No, I think you did a great job and I want to kind of start this off by saying to your point, like of stepping on the scale every day if you can use the number on a scale as metrics and as data and it doesn't drive how you feel about yourself on any given day, there's nothing wrong with that. I step on the scale every day and, again, I'm just like using this as information and data and to see what I need to tweak and change. But if that all of a sudden dictates my mood and my personality for the day and how I value myself, that's when the scale needs to go away. So so to your point I don't think stepping on it every day, depending on the individual, is necessarily a bad thing. It's just what are you doing with that information? Is it information or is it driving you personally? So I just wanted to say that because I think that's a really good point. Absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Actually, you said you do have your decks in front of you, right, the papers? Absolutely so. Actually you said you do have your decks in front of you, right, the papers? Yeah, so if you look on the first page, where it kind of has that like um picture of your body on the left and around your ankles, it should say um, like the date, your age, your percentile, your total mass percentage, fat. If you go to the far right it it should say fat-free pounds. Do you see that? Yeah, are you guys okay with saying what your numbers are on this?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I will preface this by saying that this was July of last year and we have not returned and, as I shared with you before, we jumped on the actual recording, last year sucked, I was injured, I drowned myself in terrible choices, and so I haven't been back. But I'm ready, like I'm ready to see where I'm healthy, and I'm ready to kind of revisit my comparison from where I was then coming off of three months off from an injury to begin with, and then finishing the year with more, but also like to to track, like it's just this metric, to make sure that I'm staying in alignment with where I want to be overall, aesthetically and health wise, from now to the end of the year. So you don't have the same excuse you were.
Speaker 2:I do.
Speaker 1:Oh, you did get injured, you're right, I did injured later in the year but I was sympathy eating.
Speaker 2:So it was kind of like when you're pregnant and I'm like I'll have one of those too.
Speaker 1:You know I was eating candy right along with you, so I'll say the same thing about my numbers. But yes, totally, totally open book here, no problem at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is something that I want to point out is so, cameo, what's your fat free pounds?
Speaker 1:My fat free pounds was one 10.
Speaker 2:Okay. And then Greg, what was yours? One, 60. Okay, so fat free pounds for those who've not done a DEXA, that's the combination of your lean and your bone. So that's kind of the good stuff, right? Those are the numbers that we'd like to see go up with time. Bone isn't going to go up significantly Lean. Ideally we'd like to see that go up with time. That is, if you were to theoretically get rid of every ounce of fat on your entire body, which is not possible, that is what you would weigh.
Speaker 2:I will say, especially as a former competitor, cameo is we scan the some of the top level bodybuilders in the world like the week of the Olympia. When the Olympia was down in Florida at the Tampa location, we were scanning Olympia level athletes, the best athletes, the best bodybuilders in the world, the week of show, where they have been grinding hard for months and months. They still have 10 to 15 pounds of fat, depending on their division, their size. So just put that with a grain of salt nobody has ever zero pounds of fat. But if you were to look at that fat-free pound, so the 110 and the 160, and then at the bottom you see the scale of BMI. So at the top part of that colorful scale it has like the BMI number ranges, but at the bottom it has pounds. So, cameo, I want you to look that 110 pounds when does that fall on the scale? For you? Is that kind of like in the middle of the green normal range?
Speaker 1:I would say it's on the low side of the normal range. The mid of my normal is probably around one 17, one 20. Okay, close, but on the lower side. And what about yours, greg?
Speaker 2:I'm confused what I'm looking for here. Yeah, okay, close, but on the lower side.
Speaker 2:And what about yours, greg? I'm confused. What I'm looking for here? Yeah, okay, so, oh, yeah, yeah, that's good. 144 to 195. So your norm range is if your weight was 144 to 195, that would put you in norm range. So, for both of you, if you were to have zero pounds of fat on your body which is not humanly possible, healthy, anything like that you would, because you have a significant amount of lean mass fall somewhere in that normal range. That would put you at normal without any fat on your body, which is not okay and which is not healthy. So all of that is to say I just you know, as I'm going over these cheats with people and the data with people, I always like to point that out because if you have muscle, you are going to have a higher BMI and your number on the BMI scale is going to put you in that overweight or going to put you in that obese category, because you have muscle and muscle has weight to it.
Speaker 2:Yes so that's what the exercise was, but all of the numbers on the paper have relevance, so I was kind of pointing out that that's awesome yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a perfect illustration and also kind of segue into the BMI conversation, because, aside from the number on the scale, BMI is also something that we are kind of conditioned to pay attention to as a measure of whether we're healthy or not, are kind of conditioned to pay attention to as a measure of whether we're healthy or not. And not only do we have a teenage daughter, but we have a younger teenage boy who's growing rapidly and changing at an insane pace and you know they're starting to have those conversations in high school about what BMI and understanding it and wanting to. You know, get the pump and put on some bulk and cut and all the things that teenage boys talk about. And there's this lack of understanding about what BMI really means to him, because on the BMI chart he's overweight, and explaining to him that that's not necessarily an accurate measure for you to go by and the, I guess more so like the psychological impact of that is huge.
Speaker 1:So I'm glad that you brought that up and that was also like me doing kind of a less than average way like level explanation of that on a previous episode about what BMI is and why it's important and why it also isn't like a huge thing that I like to even pay attention to, because it's inaccurate when you talk about the difference and where the math comes from.
Speaker 2:That same example that I was saying of, like a woman who's getting into fitness and getting into strength training. If she makes that 16 pound differential of gaining eight of lean and losing eight of fat, her BMI stays exactly the same. Her weight on the scale stays exactly the same. The doctor, looking at their data you know, at the kind of more antiquated ways and how they would measure things with BMI she's not making any progress. So the doctor is like well, I told you you need to lose weight and this is what you know. You're not doing anything that you need to and to your point, with that psychological impact, it can be very disheartening and very frustrating and not and just show such a small fraction of the picture.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I hope that helps clear that up for the listeners. We got that question a few times about. More specifically, how does BMI like? What does it really mean? And I will say we?
Speaker 2:we have people on the other end of the spectrum, people who are at the low end of normal range of BMI, who have body fat percentages that are, if you look at that kind of purple graph that has your body fat percentage, are up in the upper light purple range for their age people in the 30s, people in the 40s and their BMI is low because they do not have a significant amount of lean mass.
Speaker 2:So they're kind of like that phrase skinny fat, right when they don't weigh a lot because they don't have a significant amount of lean mass. So they're kind of like that phrase skinny fat, right when they don't weigh a lot because they don't have a lot of lean mass but their percentage of fat relative to the rest of the tissue in their body is higher. And we've gotten these kinds of messages or emails before multiple times where people say the DEXA must be wrong, the DEXA is not right. So we even get it from the other end of the spectrum. And that's a more delicate conversation now, because these are people that have been told their entire life oh, I'm normal, my weight is well within the normal range. Now this thing is telling me my body fat percentage is that high. That can't possibly be right. So it is interesting because sometimes it does go the other way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. On the next page, while we're kind of looking at these documents, there is a section that gives the enhanced analysis where it shows the distribution of tissue, be it fat or lean mass, and like, as a former bodybuilder and I know you compete actively like that's really important from a symmetrical standpoint and the things that you're really getting granular on in that moment. Can you speak to how and why that is important to someone who's just really looking for more of an overall health understanding?
Speaker 2:There's really two things that we look at with this. Number one is looking at the lean mass imbalances from the right to left side of your body as an indicator of maybe compensation or potential injury risks. So we work a lot with physical therapists for them. That's really helpful, whether it's somebody that's going to see them and we can see this lean mass imbalance, or it's somebody, you know, post-op or post-injury coming back. And how did they start to build back the muscle that is atrophied from an injury? So we see it from that perspective. In addition to that perspective, we also see it with if somebody's just starting out their fitness journey, it starts to give us a sense of their movement patterns a little bit more. A lot of people, especially when they're starting out, things that they do are bilateral, or it's stuff with a barbell or stuff with a machine where you're moving both sides simultaneously, so there can be a compensation on one side versus unilateral stuff, more dumbbell based stuff, stuff that's independent, so it gives us some insight into that. So that's one component. The other component is this starts to tell the story.
Speaker 2:I really like to think of the DEXA and every subsequent DEXA. You do as like different chapters in your story and what we do is we just kind of have the summary, but what we're doing in between is what's leading to that kind of overall result from the data or that summary. So if we, in that example that I'd used earlier, have a woman who's gained eight pounds of lean mass and lost eight pounds of fat mass, we can now see exactly where did she gain that eight pounds of lean mass and exactly where did she lose that eight pounds of fat mass, of lean mass, and exactly where did she lose that eight pounds of fat mass. So maybe she's somebody who comes in and is like you know, my arms are like really flabby. I don't like the way my arms look.
Speaker 2:Well, if we can look at, we can say, actually you've lost, you know, three tenths of a pound of fat in your left arm and two tenths of a pound of fat in your right arm, and you've gained three tenths of a pound of lean mass in your left and two tenths in your right. We can start to say what it is that you're doing. Oh, you started working with a personal trainer twice a week that focuses on upper body. That is taking you the steps that we need towards getting the results that you want. So it starts to tell us exactly what's happening with that cause and effect relationship. Where is stuff changing? If you know, cameo, you and I let's say all of our stats and all of our numbers were exactly the same and you and I followed the exact same training program, the exact same nutrition. And then, six months later, we did a DEXA, you and I would have different results because we're different people. So it starts to tell us the story of you as an individual, how your body responds to the changes that you're making.
Speaker 1:And so when someone first starts, are you honed in on that specifically, or are you more looking at like the bigger, broader numbers, and then that comes later as part of the story.
Speaker 2:So I have a client who's a lawyer and she's like I feel like DEXA is like you. Interpreting a DEXA is like a lawyer, because the answer is always it depends. So it depends on that. Conversation looks different based off of the individual kind of what their history is, what their goals are. Someone like you coming in for your first ever DEXA I would deep dive those numbers with you because you have a really strong background in fitness and understanding things like body composition and all of that.
Speaker 2:If it was somebody who's coming in who's like oh you know, my doctor said I should get a DEXA. Or I was listening to this podcast and they said that I should get a DEXA, so I'm coming to do this. Oh, you know, my doctor said I should get a Dex. Or I was listening to this podcast and they said that I should get a Dex, so I'm coming to do this. But you know, I go for a walk like twice a week with my dog and that's kind of all I do, but I just want to be healthier. Someone like that we're going to look at the much more, because some of the nuance can feel overwhelming and intimidating for sure on those read on those people and maybe they come back for their second one and they're like super into it and they want to now go into the number. So a lot of it is getting a read on the individual that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1:It depends yes, A hundred percent, kind of all the entirety of it just what the goal is, who the person is, what they're doing, what their background is. Can you speak to when you see improvements? I'm sure the answer is it depends, and rightfully so. But do you see, pending on the individual and what their level of progress or measure of progress is better progress with someone who adds activity or who hones in on the nutrition element, or a combination of both, or you know where? Where would you point someone? And what do you see as an average kind of result? Yeah, Not for the professional bodybuilder, but maybe just for the person who's starting their fitness journey or getting more involved in understanding their own wellness.
Speaker 2:Yep, so you totally hit it on the head with it depends, but I one time I heard this, and obviously this is a little bit more tailored towards the bodybuilder world, but it's like this quote that says you know, people always say it's 80% nutrition and 20% exercise, but that's not true. If you want to see progress, it's a hundred percent nutrition and a hundred percent exercise or fitness and what you're doing, and that's always stuck true with me. Now, I'm not saying everybody has to be intense and hardcore and like everything perfect, but in order to see progress or to maximize the results that you're getting, it's really I view it as like this trifecta, this triangle of three components nutrition, so quality of what you're eating, quantity of what you're eating, depending on the person. Maybe it's specifics in terms of timing of what you're eating. That's one component of it. The strength training is another huge component. Most people who are coming to get a DEXA understand the value of strength training. They may not be implementing it yet, but consistently getting the strength training.
Speaker 2:And then the third piece that I like to include is lifestyle, and I think this is the most overlooked piece, because we hear so often about like, okay, well, I'm doing my nutrition. Okay, well, I'm doing my workouts. The lifestyle is much more comprehensive For me. I view the lifestyle piece as daily activity outside of your workout. So not the you know 30, 60 minutes you spend in the gym. But how active are you outside of that? Are you doing your hour long spin class in the morning and then sitting at a computer all day and then sitting at a couch all night? Or are you somebody that's getting up, that's moving around, that's active throughout the day?
Speaker 2:Rest and recovery we see this with a lot of people, like I had said earlier, those like type A, really intense people that are maybe over-exercising or overworking.
Speaker 2:Are you giving your body the rest and the recovery that it needs, not just in sleep at night and getting quality sleep, but also taking breaks from your workout? And then the third component of that is stress, and that's, for a lot of people, one of the hardest things to manage, because stress plays a huge role in body composition. You could be hitting your nutrition spot on and you could be hitting your exercise spot on, but we often see, especially in that Android, that belly region, that visceral region, we can see that number go up, even if people on paper are doing what they're supposed to do with their nutrition and with their exercise. So that to me is having the trifecta of the nutrition, the strength training, fitness side and that lifestyle component. If all three of those pieces of the triangle are working together, we we've got it down. But if any of those are missing, it's going to be a lot harder to get to that goal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great answer.
Speaker 2:Excellent yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and with regard to in that Android area and in, I guess slowing or lack of progress based on stress is that that's hormonally based right, cortisol level spike.
Speaker 2:And the interesting thing I know you had kind of mentioned this in one of your previous episodes that I was listening to yeah, what we start to see with the DEXA is it provides data that you may not know until it's too late, right? So you might be a 60-year-old male who's been a lawyer of this, like you know, my typical client but like a lawyer who's been sitting at their desk for 40 years, super engrossed in what you're doing, very successful at what you're doing, but not paying attention to your overall health, your overall well-being, nutrition, fitness, any of those three pieces of the triangle that I was talking about until it becomes a problem on the other side. And then it's like, oh, wow, now I need to undo this 40 years of damage. If you're right out of law school and you're doing a DEXA in your mid-20s and you're doing one again in your late 20s and your early 30s and you start to see these numbers trending in a direction we don't want them to go, you're at an advantage because now you can see those Android numbers starting to creep up.
Speaker 2:Okay, now I've got to make an intervention now, because this is only going on this upward trajectory. How do I start to prioritize this type of stuff now, and now I have data to work with it, so I can say, okay, I am going to, instead of drive to work, I'm going to ride my bike to work, or whatever that might look like. How does making one small change start to impact you in the long run, before it's too late?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. That's a great segue into the question of, beyond tracking weight gain or muscle gain, the other data that shows how it impacts our overall health. So bone density is one of those things that I know we can touch on because it's important and can indicate many things for both men and women. But what are other things that you can track with regard to potential red flags in your health with the DEXA scan?
Speaker 2:Yep. So what I like going back to it depends, but it's a little bit different. But some of the key points that I like to look at for overall health for people is what their total lean mass is. There's this number that again in Outlive that book by Peter Attia that he's really like references is a number called your ALMI, your appendicular lean mass index. So that's basically how much muscle you have in your arms and your legs and how that correlates to overall longevity. The DEXA doesn't give you your ALMI number but it can be calculated based off of numbers from the DEXA. But similarly to that, I like to look at overall total lean mass and see that go up. So as I'm going over these reports with people, I write like a big up arrow next to the total lean mass. So again, kimmy, I think you said yours was like probably around 103 ish, cause you had 110, 105.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Yep and then yours. I'm guessing Greg is like 151, 152. Right on the number 151.9.
Speaker 2:You've done this before, yeah, so those numbers I always like to point to and like, put an arrow of like we want to see this go up, or, if it's someone who has a decent amount of lean mass, stay the same or go up.
Speaker 2:That's a big one.
Speaker 2:The Android fat mass. So when you look on that second page and we of on the left-hand side, you see like arms, right arm, left arm, arms, difference legs, blah, blah, blah. As you go to the bottom you should see where it says Android, and then you should take that over to I believe it's the second to last column or third to last column where it says fat pounds in the Android and that number is what we want to see go down. So I'll like literally circle that Android fat pounds number and that go down, and then, especially for women, then I go to the last page and I look at bone density and, depending on where they're at in the spectrum and we can kind of talk about this a little bit more but is, how do we start to make these daily habits and interventions to start to improve bone density? So those are the three things what's your lean mass, what's the fat mass in your belly and what's your bone density, and those are the numbers that I really like to focus on and try to see improvements over time.
Speaker 1:And tracking those for progress with regard to overall wellness, longevity, is because they indicate your I'm not sure what the correlation is or if you do if there is a direct correlation but to your, your likelihood of some type of cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, cancer, like all of the things that you want to stay away from. And so that's why they track those things very specifically and that's why, aside from the aesthetic, like we were talking about at the beginning, and aside from just you know what it measures from a data standpoint, why it's important in the real world, not just the psychological, like all of it, it all plays into that major understanding of your body so that it's not too late. If you start early and you do it regularly, you don't catch yourself later in life going, well, shit. Well, now what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there are certain indicators that we can see. When we have young people that are scanning where we're like. Okay, this might not be something that I look at that's a red flag now but based off of your age and based off of where you're at, we want to see these numbers trend in a direction, in a positive direction, and if they're not, then it's okay. What's maybe a deeper intervention and maybe it is going to your MD and getting certain things tested. It's also personal for the individual. For me, my bone density is fine, right, nobody would look at me and think it's a problem, but my mom now has osteopenia but was in osteoporosis and she's made improvements to get to osteopenia. My grandmother has osteoporosis and so for me, my genetics are leading me down that path. So if I can have this data early on and start to see how things are impacting and changing, I can make interventions.
Speaker 2:I have a three-year-old and an 18-month-old and I've done DEXAs leading up to having kids.
Speaker 2:I've done them because I like to run experiments on myself one week postpartum and like regularly postpartum, to see those changes. But the biggest thing that I noticed, from pre-kid DEXAs to postpartum baby number one to like just before getting pregnant with the number two to postpartum. With the number two is these decreases in my bone density because of the hormonal changes and even my thought was okay, well, like once I'm done nursing, my hormones balance out a little bit more, it'll go back up. It hasn't for me. So now I'm adding more high impact stuff. I don't run, I'm not a jumper or anything, but I've started to add that to my training because maintaining good bone density is important, because I know what my genetics are and I know my trajectory if I don't make this intervention now and I know my numbers have started to go down postpartum. So like, if I want to wait till I'm 60, it's probably going to be a big problem, but I can do it now in my late 30s. So hopefully I don't get to that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's exactly why we did these scans in the first place, along with the blood work that we do now on a on an annual basis and likely to increase that to take a proactive approach to trying to understand that. And so it's beyond just knowing what you weigh or what your BMI is, or if you're healthy or not. It's about being able to see, potentially, things down the road that could be of issue for you in a proactive way, instead of sit back and wait until it happens. Go to the doctor.
Speaker 2:They tell you what's wrong with you.
Speaker 1:here's some medicine to fix and now what you know. So, and the fact that it's available and the fact that it is, comparatively speaking, in a lot of cases, extremely economical to do this even if it's just once a year to begin this type of tracking is not talked about nearly enough or widely enough. So, again, thank you for being here, because I know that this adds value to people's lives who don't even know that this type of thing is available. So all of the details that we're talking about are are incredible and I love it, and I could talk to you all day and just let you talk, because tell me all the things, but to someone who just wants to understand what it is or just learn that it's even available, the high level is so important and so valuable that God, somebody scream it from the mountaintop because this should be a normal part from the jump. This should be what's woven throughout how we understand what's healthy for us and what's not, versus the other things that we've been taught our entire life.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think what's neat, kind of what I had said earlier is our client has kind of changed over the years, but the consumer and the client are becoming more educated.
Speaker 2:I think there's easier access to quality information as well as poor information. But things like social media, things like podcasts, things like audio books, all this stuff it becomes a lot more readily available to consume information and I think that for me, that's very rewarding because you start to see, okay, people are now aware, there are more people who are more aware of needing to take charge of their health, but it still is so underutilized and you know, it's not part of the norm process of, okay, I go to a doctor and they tell me I need to get a DEXA scan to understand my body composition. That doesn't happen at all. There are a few doctors that we work with and I think even like, the medical community is shifting, which is really neat to see. So there are some that do that and don't let me discredit those ones, because there are some great ones out there but it's not common practice and I'm like looking forward to the day where this becomes common practice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and to your point, with access to information.
Speaker 1:You know you're probably not quite there yet, but I'm in my early forties, so I am now more interested in the conversation around my hormones and perimenopausal information and menopause, which forever has been something that's just you don't really talk about it, it's just through it and nobody really knows what it is.
Speaker 1:It's a top flashes and a change in attitude, you know, and it's like well, hang on, it's so much more than that. And then that starts to like spark curiosity and me in particular, around like, well gosh, if I knew more information about that type of thing and my hormones when I was younger, how much different would my twenties have been, when I wasn't necessarily focused on perimenopause but I was having a conversation about how this impacts me beyond birth control. So, like, all of these things are becoming something that's more at the forefront of people wanting to know this information about their own bodies, where before you you didn't have access to it. So this, I hope, will continue to be the trend. Yes, if people, more people, knew that this was available to them in a way that was a wealth of knowledge and an easy way to do it and an economical way to do it. I feel like it would be something that there would be way more locations and way more a lot of growth. But you're seeing that, you're you have three locations, definitely trending positively.
Speaker 2:So we have three locations right now. Arlington, virginia, so just outside of DC, is our original location. We opened that in 2018. We opened our Tampa, florida, location inside MI40 gym in 2021. And then we opened our Chapel Hill, north Carolina, location in October of 2022. So those are our three current locations. We are this hasn't like officially been announced, but it's in the process of being announced opening our fourth location in Royal Oak, michigan, inside Black Mamba Barbell, so a suburb of Detroit. We have kind of our soft launch going on right now, but everything should be up and running by the end of April 2025, probably early May 2025. So our goal is to continue to expand and grow in markets that want this information and it's necessary which to me, is every market. For us, it's more kind of like finding the right places to partner with. Our goal is to continue to keep educating people, keep growing, keep helping people understand what's going on with their health in a preventative way, so that they can have better quality of life and live longer, healthier lives.
Speaker 1:Yes, awesome. How often should someone have a DEXA scan? Yeah, it depends. It probably depends.
Speaker 2:So I'll say this a little bit more a specific route and then kind of the general route. So the important thing that we want to measure over time with the DEXA is change. So if you are doing something very specific to make a change to your nutrition, a change to your workouts, a change to your lifestyle, you'd want your workouts, a change to your lifestyle. You'd want to scan at that point of change. So let's say, you know, I've never really worked out before, but I decide I want to start training for a marathon. I should do a DEXA at the start of training so I get an idea of my baseline, of where that is. Okay, now I spend the next six months training for a marathon and then at the end of that training do a DEX again. So I can now have this cause and effect relationship of like, okay, training for a marathon, this is what it does to my body composition. So we can get a real read of that cause and effect, of what's happening. If we aren't so specified with that. And you know, over the course of a year we decided oh, it's New Year's, I'm going to go hard, I'm going to lift five days a week and I'm going to track all my macros. But then, you know, I got sick for a week so I kind of fell off. But then I decided, okay, I'm going to start training for this 5k race and I did that. But you know, I felt like I wasn't paying attention to my nutrition so I was hardcore.
Speaker 2:There's so many variables that go in that we know point A, we know point B, but if in between looks like this, we can't really start to draw that relationship. So is that bad? No, not necessarily, but it doesn't give us as much information as we may need to really start to understand how does your body respond to different changes that you may use to implement. So that's kind of the specific is when you're changing something in your program. But other than that, we recommend quarterly, so roughly every three months, for just overall general health. The reason why we do this was exactly the point I made earlier. If we wait too long, there's probably too many variables coming into play, so it's harder to know exactly what caused this outcome If we do it too much shorter. You know we have a couple of people who scan monthly, but for the average person there's not going to be enough change that occurs over the course of a month to make it economical or worthwhile.
Speaker 1:And speaking of economical, do you mind sharing what the pricing is, or just an average idea, so that people have an idea of what this would cost them to proactively approach?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's $109 if you do a single DEXA scan with us. We also offer a two-pack for $189. So it's a little less per DEXA and that has a three-month window. So the idea of if you're scanning quarterly, you can do one at the start and do one three months later, that becomes a little more cost effective. We do take HSA and FSA. So instead of spending all that extra HSA money on Band-Aids on Amazon or whatever you can buy on that Amazon cart with it, use it on a DEXA scan. Use it on something that's really truly going to be beneficial for you. But yes, we do 109, single 189 if you do a two-pack. We also offer a resting metabolic rate test or an RMR test. This is really insightful for people who are tracking their nutrition, whether they're tracking overall calories or macros, to give you a solid read on what your metabolism is. If you guys look on that second page of your DEXA, there is a number that should say like BMR estimate or something like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it says RMR.
Speaker 2:It says RMR, yeah, yeah, that is a formula that's used based off of being a male or female, your age, your height, your weight with your body composition. That may be accurate. That may not be accurate. If you're somebody who is trying to really hone in on your nutrition and want to utilize nutrition as a tool to drive progress and results with your DEXA, we want to know what your actual RMR is, not what a calculation tells you. So we do that testing as well. A single RMR test if you were to just do that, is 109. But again, if you were to, we call it a combo appointment but pair a DEXA skin with a resting metabolic rate test appointment, that's 189.
Speaker 2:So if anyone is just starting out, wanting to get information on their overall health, we recommend starting there, doing the combo appointment of a DEXA and an RMR. Now you've got this information, now you can take it. You can start to implement change. Three months later, come back and do a DEXA. Three months after that, come back and do a DEXA, the RMR. That won't change drastically in a short period of time. So really there's no need to do an RMR any more frequent than a year. We usually say annually if you'd like, but for some people might even be able to go longer if you're not making any kind of huge body composition changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so glad that you brought that up, because the RMR is not something that we did when we did our first DEXA scan. But when we go back, I definitely want to do both of them because we have all of you know, we have aura rings, we have our watches, we have all these things that tell us what our resting metabolic rate is and explaining that to our daughter. It's how many calories you burn without literally doing anything. It's just what your body is doing to keep yourself alive, and knowing that is important if you're trying to pay attention and understand nutrition and partner that with how many calories you're burning, which also is not likely to be accurate with our rings and our trackers, but just as a general overall idea so that you know again, kind of blanket statement and it depends and all of the things. But like calories in, calories out, just as a simple math equation to have a grasp of what that looks like. All calories are not created equal. We could probably talk about that for three days.
Speaker 1:So I you know, without getting into the nitty gritty of that, but I I just I'm glad that you brought that up as something else that you offer, because I think that that's an important part of this obviously as well.
Speaker 2:Especially if you are trying to like be really diligent about making progress. Why wouldn't you want accurate information to go off of? If you're going off of inaccurate information, even if you're putting in all that effort and that work, you might be like running into a brick wall. We want something that's going to be really specific and accurate for the individual.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. So I feel very fortunate that we live so close to Tampa where we can just drive up there, have lunch and do the Texas game.
Speaker 2:you know, make it a little date, but what about people that live?
Speaker 1:you know, outside of this, this area, do you have?
Speaker 2:many clients that fly into Tampa or fly into these locations yeah great question.
Speaker 2:We. We've got quite a few people that actually come in from out of town at all of our locations. You know, we've got some states that are close by right, like our Arlington location. People come from West Virginia, people come from Pennsylvania, all over Maryland, virginia, but especially in Tampa. Maybe it's because people are trying to like escape to warmer weather and it's like a vacation destination. We have people who come from Europe, people who come from we're like I'm in town. This type of testing is significantly more expensive wherever I live, so I'm here, I'd like to do it. We have a lot of bodybuilders who come in, especially at MI40 is a big bodybuilding gym that are coming into town to train there, who utilize the Dexa.
Speaker 1:That's a great question and to your point I mean. A lot of people fly into Tampa to vacation all over the state of Florida. So if you're listening and you come to Florida to vacation, you don't have an excuse. You can fly into Tampa and you can hit your DEXA scan before you go, enjoy yourself and worry about it and then go on your way and it's you know what.
Speaker 2:So one of my college roommates. She lives outside of DC, um, so probably like an hour from our Arlington Virginia location, but she was talking to me that her and some of the other like her mom friends in her neighborhood wanted to do a wellness day where they go to DC, where they, you know, go to a gym and do a workout, they come to body mass, they do a Dexa skin, they go and they get like a healthy lunch and they like do a walking tour around the city. And I was like what a cool concept to do kind of like this one day wellness retreat for yourself, like I just I just thought that that was really, really neat. So you know, you can totally make any excuse or any reason to do that, like by yourself, with a significant other, with your friends.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. When you make it a priority. That's kind of like the reverse of a bachelorette party. It's kind of like, you know, like let's, let's do something that's advantageous.
Speaker 2:My husband and I, on our wedding morning or the day before our wedding, we had everyone come to our gym and we did a group training session for them. So I'm sure I'm going to love being guests. That's awesome, thanks for the invite I'm going to work out beforehand. That's amazing Time for burpees. I love you guys.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Well, thank you so very much for all of the knowledge that you have just dropped on everyone, and I encourage all of our listeners to send in a text or an email with any further questions, because I would love to have you back and I'm sure that there will be some that pop up that we didn't cover, that maybe I didn't think of, or that you didn't think of, that are even more in depth. So we really appreciate you spending the time with us and going over this information. Can you tell everyone where to find more about you and body mass competition, competition composition, so that they can do a little more research on their own?
Speaker 2:Yep absolutely so. The easiest place to go is our website. It's just body mass Yep, absolutely so. The easiest place to go is our website. It's just bodymasscompositiontestingcom. When you go there, you'll be able to select our locations, learn a little bit more about the services we offer, book your appointments. Everything's really straightforward on there. We have a chat box on the website, so if any questions come up that you want answered, you can just ask the chat box and it's a live person on the other end answering those for you. So I'll be. I'll be the one answering this for you. Um, so our website's the easiest place to go to get booked.
Speaker 2:If you want a little more information about um, body mass as a whole, we're not so social media savvy, but if you go to body mass composition testings Instagram page, we post a decent amount there, but a lot of people will collaborate on different reels and posts where you can see the process of going through a DEXA scan. So that's really helpful to be able to kind of understand a little bit more about what the process looks like and the information you get. And then my personal Instagram is Virginia V Kinkle and I share a lot about my own personal fitness journey on there, not just from competing, but right now I'm focused more on doing blood work to your point and kind of getting for me, getting my cholesterol numbers a little bit more in check. I post a lot about doing DEXAs at various points and understanding what's happening with my body composition or my bone density or my fat mass and why. So I like to post kind of all things health, fitness, wellness on there.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I will link all three of those in the show notes so that it's easy access for everyone, and I'm so glad that we connected. I'm so grateful for you and for the fact that you're right down the street, like Greg said, and I hope we stay in touch. This has been wonderful, absolutely.
Speaker 2:No, I'm so thankful for you guys and for just having a platform to be able to share this knowledge and try to get it out to the world more.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, thank you. That's the goal. That's the goal. So thank you so much for joining us on the Cameo Show. We have new episodes every Wednesday where we talk about health and wellness, but we talk about all of the things that we're going through in life, the things that make us normal, the things that maybe we're afraid to seek out on our own, the things that help each other grow. So we hope you'll join us again. Thank you so much, until next time.
