Aug 30, 2026 · 27 min · 14 segments
In this episode of the RD Exam Ready Podcast, Zak Kaesberg breaks down the different tools used to measure body composition and the key concepts you need to know for the RD Exam. You’ll review body…
Before we talk about each of our measurement tools, I want to introduce the concept a little bit.
A two-compartment model would comprise two compartments, fat mass and non-fat mass, or fat-free mass as we call it.
And then your non-fat mass would include things like your muscle, your bone, your blood.
The gold standard method that we're gonna talk about a little bit today is called a three compartment model.
And a three compartment model is going to pick up your fat mass, your bone mass, and your muscle mass.
So it's going to separate that bone and that muscle out so you can see the differences of those, which is really important when it comes to body composition.
Another thing to understand is as many of these different tools have a certain level of error that you might see.
They might have predictive equations and different standards that they base their numbers off of to help practitioners to get the best estimation of fat mass and fat-free mass, but none of them are going to be exact.
There's also a few factors that can contribute to the amount of error that we might see in different types of tools.
Before we talk about each of our measurement tools, I want to introduce the concept a little bit.
A two-compartment model would comprise two compartments, fat mass and non-fat mass, or fat-free mass as we call it.
And then your non-fat mass would include things like your muscle, your bone, your blood.
The gold standard method that we're gonna talk about a little bit today is called a three compartment model.
And a three compartment model is going to pick up your fat mass, your bone mass, and your muscle mass.
So it's going to separate that bone and that muscle out so you can see the differences of those, which is really important when it comes to body composition.
Another thing to understand is as many of these different tools have a certain level of error that you might see.
They might have predictive equations and different standards that they base their numbers off of to help practitioners to get the best estimation of fat mass and fat-free mass, but none of them are going to be exact.
There's also a few factors that can contribute to the amount of error that we might see in different types of tools.
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