RENPHO Body Fat Scale: Normal Mode or Athlete Mode, Which Is Right for You?

If you already own a RENPHO Smart Body Fat Scale, you will remember needing to provide your height, weight, age and gender at the beginning in order to customize the calculation of 13 body composition indexes to your body type. However, there is also a less well-known feature called Athlete Mode that factors in whether you live a highly active lifestyle.

What is Athlete Mode?

Athletic users have a body composition that needs to be calculated differently than the average person. This mode simply informs the scale to lower fat mass measurements and increase muscle mass measurement values to match the characteristic lifestyle and body composition of an athlete. In essence, Athlete Mode recalibrates the body composition calculations of the RENPHO Smart Body Fat Scale to provide more accuracy for those living a very active lifestyle.

Who Should Use Athlete Mode?

It is only recommended for users who fit the following requirements:

1) Aged 18 or above

2) Takes part in more than 6 hours of intense aerobic exercise weekly

3) Has a resting heartbeat below 60 beats per minute.

Can a ‘Regular’ Person Use Athlete Mode?

We don’t recommend using Athlete Mode unless you meet the above requirements. Don’t worry, enabling Athlete Mode does not modify the RENPHO app experience in any way, so you won’t miss out.

In fact, the default body composition calculation model encapsulates a broad spectrum of lifestyles and fitness levels (i.e. dieters, weight losers/gainers, fitizens) already. Athlete Mode is only intended for a small number of users.

Will It Drive Me to Lose Weight Faster?

The short answer is no.

Just like inputting the incorrect height, weight, age and gender; if you select Athlete Mode incorrectly, the 13 body composition indexes will simply misrepresent what’s generally going on within your body.

This is because Athlete Mode is intended to recalibrate body composition calculations to reflect your athletic body type. A non-athlete would be receiving inaccurate body assessments.

Can It Be Turned On and Off?

Athlete Mode can be enabled from your profile settings. When you turn Athlete Mode on or off and save the setting successfully, the new body composition calculation will count towards your new weighing. Please note that the status will only be applied for new measurements.

If you would like to find out how to enable Athlete Mode, check out our previous article:

If you would like to find out how to enable Athlete Mode, check out our previous article: What is RENPHO Athlete Mode? Should You Turn It On? which dives into more details not covered here.

Is a Change in Muscle Mass and Body Fat Day to Day Accurate?

Regardless of the mode you choose the changes in your data should not fluctuate wildly on a daily basis, but there may be an incremental percentage shifts between your measurements based on the time of weighing and other external factors.