Getting a Dexa Scan for a healthier me

I had been fasting for about twelve hours and I was standing in a waiting room doing math on how soon I could eat. This was back in January, when I was away for a few days visiting friends, and instead of doing normal trip things I decided that was the perfect moment to go get a DEXA scan.

My three words for this year are happy, healthy and successful, in that order. Getting a DEXA scan felt like the fastest way to find out where I was actually starting from instead of guessing off my bathroom scale.

What a DEXA scan is actually like

A DEXA scan measures what your body is made of: bone density, lean muscle and fat. It's the more specific, way more accurate version of the one number a home scale gives you.

The test itself is nothing. You lie on a table with your palms against your thighs, they strap your legs together so you stay put, and the arm slides over you for about six minutes. Completely painless. The only hard part is holding still, so you end up lying there trying not to breathe too hard while quietly overthinking your entire existence.

I wanted a baseline, so I did it before I changed anything about how I eat. I'm going back soon to see what the last few months actually did.

Also, to be clear: there's a small amount of X-ray involved, so check the website of wherever you go and talk to your doctor if you have one. I'm just the girl who thought it looked fun.

The resting metabolic rate test, or: the scuba mask

Then they strapped me into something that looked like scuba gear, and I would like it on record that I know exactly how I looked.

The second test was an RMR test, which stands for resting metabolic rate. It's how many calories your body burns doing absolutely nothing at all. My favorite hobby is rotting on the couch with a rom-com and all five animals on top of me, so I had high hopes for this one.

You breathe into a tube for around fifteen minutes while it measures the oxygen going in and the carbon dioxide coming out, and somehow that's enough to work out your metabolism. She said I could be on my phone as long as I didn't do anything exciting, which for me meant I got bored and took a small nap. Best test I've ever taken.

The reason I paired it with the DEXA was to find out whether I was eating enough to build muscle. I lift three days a week in my garage and leg day is genuinely my favorite thing, but I had a suspicion I wasn't feeding any of it properly.

The 3D body scan (I was a rotisserie chicken)

This one wasn't on the plan. They offered it while I was there and I said sure, why not, I want to be a rotisserie chicken.

You stand on a plate with your arms and legs out and rotate slowly while infrared cameras map your measurements in inches, your posture, and how you balance your weight, down to whether your hips and shoulders sit level. Then it builds a little 3D avatar of you, which is humbling in a video game character kind of way. Spinning slowly while keeping a straight face is harder than it looks, and I nearly fell off climbing down.

What my results said

Two things surprised me.

First, the visceral fat, which is the kind that sits around your organs, came back at 0.00 lb. Not detectable. The woman running the test basically told me whatever I'm doing, keep doing it. I'm not claiming a true zero is possible, just that the machine couldn't find any, and I took that win straight to the car.

Honestly I think that's part luck and part the fact that I eat gluten-free and dairy-free, so most of the fried stuff is off the table for me anyway.

Second, my resting metabolic rate came back at 1,613 calories, and the report flagged it as running about 20% faster than predicted for someone my size. So if I stayed in bed all day, my body would still burn around 1,600 calories just keeping me alive. I've known my metabolism was fast since I was a kid. I was a toothpick who could put away a whole fast-food meal, and my poor parents got so many jokes about whether they were feeding me.

And then the actually useful part. Depending on how many days I train, I need somewhere between 1,900 and 2,300 calories a day just to maintain. I was nowhere near that. Which explains a solid year of leg days where I kept walking out of the garage thinking, okay, so why is nothing changing?

So that was the real takeaway, and it wasn't the one I expected. I didn't need to train harder. I needed to eat.

The whole thing took a morning, the people were lovely, and afterward we went straight to Japanese barbecue because we'd been fasting since dinner the night before. I got kimchi on my sleeve, my jacket and my camera, because that is who I am as a person.

If you're new around here, here's the short version of me. And if you want the messy version of this day, scuba mask included, the whole thing is on my YouTube.

Please don't take my numbers as a target, because we're all built completely differently and I am very much still figuring this out. But if you've ever had one of these scans, come tell me on Instagram or TikTok how yours went, and if you're just curious, go do it. It's weirdly fun. 😝