Forma
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Body fat and lean mass

Reading body composition.

Your weight says how heavy you are. Body fat and lean mass say what the weight is made of. The Body row on Progress opens this screen. It shows readings from Apple Health, clinic scans you add, and an estimate from your tape measurements. It also shows the goal your body fat points to.

When to use it

  • You are losing weight and want to know whether you are losing fat or muscle.
  • You have had a clinic scan, such as a DEXA, and want the result to shape your plan.
  • You want to see why your goal is cut, hold or eat up, and how it was worked out.
  • Your smart scale disagrees with your clinic scans, and you want to know which to trust.

Step by step

  1. On Progress, tap the Body row.
  2. If you have a scan result you want to keep, tap Add a clinic scan and enter it.
  3. Tap Why this goal to see your body fat range and how your goal follows from it.

Good to know

  • Until you have any measurement, you choose your goal yourself in Settings.

How your goal is decided. When you have body fat readings, the goal is decided from your body fat against a range that depends on your sex:

SexEat up (gain)HoldCut
Womenunder 18%18 to 23%over 23%
Menunder 10%10 to 15%over 15%

Eat up means the plan targets a surplus, Hold means maintenance, and Cut means a deficit. Tap Why this goal to see your own numbers instead of these general bands.

What two readings can tell you. Between two readings, Forma works out how your lean mass and your fat changed, and can cross-check that against your training:

  • If lean mass goes up while fat goes down, that reads as Recomposition: you added muscle and lost fat in the same period.
  • If the change is under about 0.7 kg of lean mass or 1 fat point, the read is Holding. These devices cannot resolve changes smaller than that.
  • The other verdicts are Fat down, Fat up and Lean mass down.
  • Forma also checks the change against your lifts: it compares your estimated one-rep maxes on lifts you did in both periods. Early strength gains often come from practice rather than muscle, so a falling strength trend is the strongest independent confirmation.

A scale or a clinic scan is preferred. The tape estimate is only a second opinion.

A clinic scan you add yourself is never overwritten by automatic readings. Later readings from a scale or Apple Health replace earlier non-clinic entries for the same day, so your scans stay put.

Apple Health can send body fat and lean mass readings from your smart scale into Forma. If more than one automatic reading lands on the same day, the one taken latest wins.

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