The Science of Success: How a DEXA Scan Can Transform Your 2025 Goals
We’ve all been there: it gets to the end of the year and you decide to set yourself some lofty goals for the following year. At the time it feels like a genuine commitment, but fast-forward 365 days and you realize that you didn’t really accomplish any of those goals.
Many of us fall into this trap because while it’s fun to dream about the things we want to achieve, doing the laborious work of breaking those goals down into small, achievable steps—and sticking to them—is a lot harder.
If you’re like 79% of the population, improving your health is going to feature on your latest list of New Year’s resolutions. But knowing where to start or how to achieve your fitness goals can be tricky, especially if you’re unsure of your current fitness level. As a result, you may end up setting unrealistic targets that will demoralize you when you don’t hit them.
That’s where a DEXA scan can help. A DEXA scan is a painless test that provides detailed information about bone density, body fat, and muscle mass, giving a more accurate overview of your body’s condition than outdated measurements like Body Mass Index (BMI).
To learn more about how they work, check out our blog: DEXA Body Composition Scans for Optimizing Health.
How a DEXA scan can help you achieve your New Year’s fitness resolutions
Weight Loss
If you’re looking at how to lose weight fast naturally and permanently, this is not the miracle cure you’re seeking (there isn’t one, unfortunately). But DEXA scans can give you valuable information on your body’s current composition, to help you lose weight consistently and healthily (which is more important).
Many people focus on weight loss without understanding the balance between losing fat and retaining muscle mass.
DEXA scans provide an accurate breakdown of fat mass vs lean muscle mass. This level of detail allows you to set specific goals to reduce body fat percentage while retaining muscle mass. For monitoring progress, we recommend a return scan around 3 months, as significant results often take this amount of time to appear. Returning sooner than this may lead to decreased motivation due to minimal visible changes.
In some cases, a follow-up scan at 3-6 months may be appropriate, such as if you’ve made dramatic changes to your routine—like adjusting your diet, managing stress, or intensifying your exercise regimen. Additionally, a shorter interval can be beneficial if you’re looking to understand how your body composition trends over time. However, it’s important to note that the most substantial improvements typically occur after 12 months of consistent, sustained behavior change.
Exercising More
As we mentioned earlier, not knowing your baseline fitness level or body composition can make it tricky to figure out what new routines to start to help you work towards your goals.
DEXA scans provide detailed reports about muscle imbalance or asymmetry, helping you identify opportunities for improvement. Using this information, a trained healthcare professional can put together a tailored plan to strengthen weaker areas and optimize symmetry (like focusing on lower body strength if leg muscle mass is lower for example).
Eating Healthier
Eating healthier means different things to different people, and with the proliferation of some pretty wild “healthy” dieting choices on social media, it’s hard to know what information to trust.
Everyone’s body and metabolism are different, so it’s important to create eating habits that work for you.
Getting regular DEXA scans enables you or your health provider to track body composition changes over time, and assess how your dietary choices influence fat and muscle mass. The results can help tweak or optimize your eating habits depending on your goals.
Gaining Muscle & Reducing Health Risks
Without precise data, it’s hard to measure muscle growth effectively. This is especially important for elite athletes striving to beat records and their competition. However, it’s equally valuable for anyone aiming to be fitter and healthier.
DEXA scans not only measure muscle mass in specific body regions, helping you set targeted muscle growth goals—such as increasing arm muscle mass by a specific percentage over 3 months—but also provide critical insights into your visceral adipose tissue (VAT). VAT is a type of fat stored around your organs and is a significant precursor to serious health risks, including metabolic disease, diabetes, and certain cancers.
Tracking changes in VAT is one of the most important metrics for long-term health. Regular scans allow you to monitor both muscle growth and VAT levels, empowering you to make meaningful changes to improve overall health and reduce risks.
You’ve probably heard about the SMART goals method at this point—if you haven’t, the acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
The common belief is that by breaking down your goal into this way, you’re more likely to reach it.
DEXA scans can give you the insights needed to make your fitness resolutions specific, measurable, and achievable. They also help you set realistic goals within a certain time frame. So if you’re serious about your fitness goals and you want to give yourself the best chance of success, book a DEXA scan today!
Why Tall Tree Stands Out
When you book a DEXA scan at Tall Tree, your appointment will be 45 minutes in total. This includes the scan itself, followed by a 30-35 minute discussion to review and interpret your detailed report (report example) and address any questions you may have
Our trained team of healthcare professionals can help support you in evaluating body composition, tracking bone changes over time, understanding your current fitness level, optimizing your program, and identifying disease risk factors early.
Ready to make resolutions that stick? Book your DEXA scan today and kickstart your healthiest year yet!
For more tips and resources, check out these posts:
