Guide to Choosing a Smart Body Scale for Your Fitness Goals

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or striving to reduce your body fat for a lean form, you need to keep track of your fitness progress. One way to assess how close you are to reaching your fitness goals is through a smart body fat scale.

Choosing the  best body fat scale  can easily overwhelm you, with a wide range of options today.  Ahead, we’ve put together a quick guide to help narrow down your choices to the most suitable scale for your needs. 

Why Do You Need A Smart Body Scale?

Your body composition, the proportion of fat mass and fat-free mass, is a better indicator of effective exercise and diet routines than your weight.  You can improve your body composition through weight training or workouts such as resistance training and cardio combined with healthy lifestyle habits. 

A smart body scale can help monitor the changes in your body composition. Apart from this, having a digital body scale also brings you these benefits: 

• Knowing your progress can motivate and push you to achieve your goals. 
• You can calculate your body fat without going to the gym, saving you time and effort. 
• It gives you more control over your lifestyle habits. 

• By knowing your body composition, you learn your risk factors for developing health conditions such as heart failure and diabetes. 
• The scale allows multiple users, enabling other members of your family to use the device to track their fitness journeys as well.

How to Select the Right Body Scale

Deciding on which device to choose largely depends on your unique needs. When you’re on the lookout for a new scale, however, here are the three key factors to consider:    

#1. Body Metrics 

The best body composition scales give you insights into how your workout is impacting the different parts of your body. This way, you’re able to focus on areas that need working to reach a healthy ratio of fat to muscle. 

Smart scales offer body composition data to help you with your fitness goals, whether you want to build strength or muscle or reduce body fat.  

Your smart body scale should offer comprehensive health metrics to let you know where you are in terms of your fitness and health goals. These metrics include: 

• Body Weight - A scale lets you keep track of weight changes, which is good if you’re trying to shed some extra pounds or maintain your weight.   

• Body mass index (BMI) - the measurement of your weight in relation to your height. It indicates if you’re in a healthy weight range.

• Body Fat Percentage - shows you how much of your body weight comprises fat. A lower body fat percentage translates to a higher lean muscle mass percentage.

• Body Water Percentage - Body water accounts for the biggest share in your body weight. You need to maintain healthy water levels  for your body to properly function.   

• Skeletal Muscle - Around 30% to 40% of your total body mass is made up of skeletal muscles such as hamstring and shoulder muscles. Your skeletal muscles support your body movements and functions.    

• Fat-free Body Weight - shows you the percentage of your body weight free from fat.   

• Subcutaneous fat -  the fat stored underneath your skin. Excess subcutaneous fat increases risks of health concerns such as sleep apnea and fatty liver disease.  

• Visceral fat - the fat near your organs such as your intestines, liver and stomach. Too much visceral fat could also lead to serious health issues. 

• Metabolic age - the amount of calories your body burns at rest.

• Muscle Mass - refers to the amount of soft muscle tissue in your body. Maintaining a healthy muscle mass percentage lowers your risk of muscle loss due to age. 

• Bone Mass - indicates bone size and strength. Loss of bone strength makes you prone to osteoporosis.  

• Protein - fuels your energy, prevents muscle loss and aids in carrying oxygen throughout your body. 

•  Basal metabolic rate (BMR) - the number of calories you need to maintain your weight.  

#2. App Connectivity 

Most smart scales today are Bluetooth- or Wi-Fi-enabled, allowing you to easily connect, synchronize and transfer your data to your existing fitness apps. This feature makes it faster for you to save your body metrics for better monitoring. 

You can use the data to create a suitable workout plan based on your progress and goals. It’s best to select a scale that is compatible with the apps that you use.

#3 Consistency

When monitoring your fitness progress, precision matters. Your best bet is to go for a smart scale that gives you consistent and reliable results. Additionally, if you're trying to lose weight, you may want to weigh yourself at exactly the same time, wearing the same type of clothes and not drinking anything beforehand.

Conclusion

A smart scale helps you maximise your fitness potential and hit your targets over time. Consider the three factors above and other essentials then match them with your specific needs and preferences when looking for a perfect body scale for you. 

Choose a device such as our Smart Body Fat Scale to get comprehensive insights that matter to your fitness goals.