#077 - How DEXA Can Help You Achieve Your Goals - Jason Belvill

Why do so many people struggle to stick to a healthy lifestyle?

Health-related goals are largely the product of long term modifications to how we live. And we generally don’t see an immediate payoff from these individual choices, at least not in the moment.

To paraphrase James Clear, it is only after your efforts have compounded over time that you start to see the payoff of these behaviors, for better or for worse.

But therein lies the problem - we are short-term creatures, and most of us aren’t able to easily identify these subtle benefits and costs when we are actually making these countless health-related choices every day.

So how do we overcome this?

Well, one tried and tested method is to track progress over time. This enables us to continuously see what’s working - and what isn’t working - and helps keep us accountable and committed to the behaviors that support what we are trying to achieve.

This is true of pretty much any health- or fitness-related objective that you could imagine, but it has particularly obvious application to body composition goals.

But for this sort of tracking to be really effective, ideally you would want the most accurate data, right? And with respect to body composition, not all methods are created equal. The scale, in particular, is a fairly limited and sometimes misleading tool.

And that brings me to our guest. On this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Jason Belvill. Jason is the CEO and Co-founder of BodySpec, a company that offers DEXA scans on the West Coast.

DEXA (dual energy x-ray absorptiometry), as you probably know, has been demonstrated to be one of the most reliable ways to estimate body composition, and offers a number of advantages over other methods.

For one thing, the scan is able to differentiate between fat, bone, and fat-free mass. This means that it not only can distinguish between fat and lean tissue, unlike a scale, but it is also not subject to errors associated with variations in bone density. DEXA can also provide measurements for specific areas of the body, meaning that it can highlight differences in where fat is distributed.

So what’s special about BodySpec? Well, BodySpec offers the least expensive DEXA scans available in the country as far as I know ($45 per scan, compared to as much as $100 or more at other providers). They also perform RMR (resting metabolic rate) tests and VO2 max tests at some locations, so you can gain a lot of insight into your body and your performance if you pay them a visit.

But what truly sets BodySpec apart is that they are mobile. BodySpec has a fleet of DEXA scan trucks that can be booked at gyms, offices, and events throughout the west coast. So you can go to their storefront, or they can come to you.

Services like BodySpec make it extra easy to quantify your body fat, muscle, and bone density, and then track over time how your training and diet regimen is affecting all different regions of the body. To learn more about the merits of DEXA, and why you might want to get a DEXA scan yourself, check out the interview!