I Paid for This?

Two weeks ago I turned 36. A couple days later I went in an had a DEXA scan done. If you haven't heard of these they are a CT scan that is normally used for bone density. It helps check for osteoporosis. Besides seeing your bones it can also differentiate your muscle and fat. It gives very accurate results of your fat and lean mass. Athletes use it to see exact areas of their body to work on to improve their performance. It is becoming more common for regular people to use it so they can also see what is going on inside. 

Before I go further I want to explain how I got here. Several weeks ago I was flipping though Netflix and stumbled on a documentary called My Big Fat Body. It follows a comedian named Frank Payne. In the movie one of the things he does is the DEXA scan. I thought it was an interesting look at the body. I do not really recommend the movie. He goes on this journey learning about how unhealthy he is and he looses 60 lbs for the movie. It sounds great till you look him up and see that he put all the weight back on after the movie and died two years later. Though I guess that in itself is a wake up call. I looked up getting a DEXA scan but it looked pretty pricey at $150-$300. Not in my price range. Shortly before my birthday, while scrolling through facebook, a company called Valley Radiologists advertised for a $45 scan. I decided I wanted to try it and signed up. 

You can do a search for other images of these. Because of the way my fat rolls laid I felt that some of the image was immodest. Most pictures you can't see anything but on mine you could so I added the black lines. 

If you zoom in on the picture you can see that they break down each part of your body. One of my arms did not fit on the table so they just duplicated that number. You can see that each leg has different numbers. I have always had trouble when people ask what shape I am; apple, pear, hourglass. This has details that show that it my hips really are much bigger then my hips, well by the numbers at least. 

This is a second picture everyone receives to help understand everything. 

The other number I was interested in when I got this scan was visceral fat. As I understand it most fat is on the outside of your body but visceral fat is the fat around your organs. It is this fat that causes the real trouble squishing and constricting your organs. My est visceral fat area is 261, although it is not the top of the graph it is very very high. 

Sometimes when I think about the scan I am like "Did I really pay someone to tell me how fat I am?" Other times I am happy that I did get it to really see what is going on. One thing that really got me with this is amount of muscle you can't see. If you look at others scans, even overweight, you can see a defined muscle through the center. I am so covered in fat that the muscle isn't seen through it. Yikes!