What’s the Healthiest Body Composition?

mdickens.me

Last time, I found that the healthiest BMI range for all-cause mortality is 20–22. But BMI doesn’t tell the whole story. Most obviously, it doesn’t account for body fat vs. lean mass. All else equal, you’d rather have more muscle1 and less fat. Technically we want to look at lean mass, not muscle mass. Lean mass refers to any body mass that isn’t fat, which includes muscles, bones, organs, etc. But the main way to gain lean mass is by building muscle. Resistance training does also increase bone mass, but much more slowly than muscle mass. I don’t know of any way to increase your organ mass, and even if you could, I don’t know that you would want to. ↩