The BodyPedia Smart Body Composition Scale is designed to help you easily track a wide variety of health and fitness metrics, including weight, bodyfat, lean muscle mass, body water, bone minerals, body protein, and much more.
Earlier generations of bioelectrical impedance bodyfat scales were limited in their scope...and in their accuracy.
If you're not familiar with how these work, the essentially send a very small amount of electrical current through you body and measure the impedance (resistance) to the current. Muscle, being mostly water, offers less resistance. By using this data, these scales can give you an idea of your body composition.
According to BodyPedia itself, their "smart body analyzer" offers...
- Unmatched Accuracy: The first home scale with the same precision as the InBody370, with 97% accuracy to the gold standard evaluation of DEXA (Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry), a medical-grade device worth over $10,000!
- Advanced Measurements: It's the only scale that can measure body circumference.
- Unique Data: Offers exclusive waist-to-hip ratio metrics.
- Innovative Technology: First in its class for measuring segmental lean and fat.
- More than 40+ body data points
One of the biggest features that stands out to me about the BodyPedia is that it has handles that you hold in your hands so that you get current going directly through your UPPER body as well.
Feet-only smart scales have to extrapolate data based on lower body measurements only.
Not only is it accurate and consistent (with one major caveat that I'll tell you about in the video) in the results it delivers, it makes tracking your numbers via their app super simple...you literally just have to have your phone close by when you stand on the scale and it does everything else for you.
I've got my full video review (including a demo of it in action) here.
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Learn More About the BodyPedia Smart Body Composition Scale Here
Use code BPIM15 to get 15% off!
How Do You Use The BodyPedia Scale?
You're going to look a little bit like Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man when you're getting analyzed...
(Ok, not exactly but it's not far off...)
First, you'll tap the scale to activate it and connect it with the app on your phone via Bluetooth (you'll need this for the full report and long-term tracking).
Once your weight is tracked, you'll reach down and grab the two handles that are embedded on the sides of the unit. You just push them in and they pop out a little. Then you pull them out on the cords. It's an elegant design.
Then you grab the handles, holding the long part in your fingers and setting your thumb on the top, like a game show buzzer.
Here's the CRITICAL part...grip.
I found that for consistent results, it's important to hold the hand grips exactly the same way each time. The instructions say in your palm but I found the best grip was with the electrode on the bottom "meat" part of your fingers.
That allows for the best thumb grip.
If you actually hold the handle in your palm, your thumb won't sit right and your results will be off.
One MORE critical part...and this goes back to the Vitruvian Man position...
You must make sure that your arms are NOT touching your sides. They must be out and away from your body. Otherwise, this creates a new contact point for the electrical current to go through and throws off the results.
The app will alert you to this but it's not perfect...you do need to be aware of your limbs and if they're touching each other.
When the measurement is done, the app will let you know (it counts up to 100%) then it will calculate your results.
The handles retract into the scale. This works almost every time...sometimes you need to pull them out a little more and let the mechanism kick in before they'll retract.
Here's a sample of my results to give you an idea of what the BodyPedia tracks...
Now, fair warning, it is a LOT that it tracks... which can be both excellent and a bit overwhelming. The good thing, they do explain every measurement and what it means.
Overall, I think I turned out pretty good.
Is this body analyzer accurate and consistent?
That's the real question.
And the answer is yes, but as I mentioned above, YOU need to be consistent in your body position AND a few other things.
1. What time you do the testing. They recommend in the morning, not immediately but after you've been up and around a few minutes.
2. After going to the bathroom and before you eat a meal...so you're not weighing and tracking food and waste.
3. Nutritional state. For me, this was the tricky part. I'm currently doing my Starting Monday Diet, which basically puts you in a different nutritional and hydration state every single day. For that primary reason, I found my results could be thrown off.
Here's a good example. I took this measurement the day after the one above. The biggest difference that jumps out at me is that with only 2 lbs difference on the scale, it showed a difference in bodyfat of 15.8% on the 12th and 19.2% the day after. My water levels according to the tracking changed by 5 lbs overnight (went down).
The reason I took these measurements like this is I actually WANTED to see if I could throw off the scale and by how much.
I wanted to see how if I changed some things quite a lot, what would that do to the results.
The first measurement was on my 24 hour fasting day of the diet...after being on low carb eating for 2 days. So my body water SHOULD have actually been lower.
Because on the night of the 12th, I ate a big bowl of fruit and oatmeal...all carbs...which causes you to hold more water. But the scale showed a decrease of 5 lbs of water.
So yep, it definitely threw off the measurements.
Here's the kicker...when I compared my results to the SAME day of the diet each week, they were much more consistent.
The diet that I'm on I find generally allows me to drop a pound or so of fat a week.
So over the course of a number of weeks, I measured 3 times a week. When I compare the result of every Monday on the diet, they show accurate, consistent results. Same with every Wednesday and Friday (I measure on training days).
The results fluctuate daily because of the diet that I'm on.
But they track much better when I'm in a consistent nutritional and hydration state.
What's the bottom line?
Overall, I like this scale/body analyzer. I think it offers very valuable insights to your health and fitness and it's not super expensive, even compared to other smart scales.
The capability of using hand grips to directly track upper body data is an excellent innovation and I think they pulled off the design nicely.
There are a few potential pitfalls, which I went through above, both of which deal with consistency.
1. You MUST be consistent in your body position.
2. You MUST be consistent when you measure in terms of nutrition and hydration.
Any major differences can definitely throw off your results.
As long as you keep these things consistent, you're going to get very accurate results.
Click here to learn more about the BodyPedia Smart Body Analyzer...
Use code BPIM15 to get 15% off your purchase!
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