Hello, hello, and welcome, Justin and Alex, to the Rev Up Health Podcast. We're so glad to have you. Thank you for having us.
How BodyMetrics Came to Be
Let's start by talking about BodyMetrics and how you got into this business. That takes us back about 10 years. I was a client of BodyMetrics at our founding location in California. As someone who has struggled my whole life with obesity and trying to get healthy, I found them to be something unique — a way to customize my approach to healthy weight loss. Then in 2020, Justin came into the picture and found a lot of value in using BodyMetrics as well. We were both customers back in California, and when Justin relocated to the Midwest, he wanted something like this out here — so he opened a location so we could use it ourselves and bring it to the Kansas City area.
The Testing They Offer
Tell us about the testing you do. We offer a customized approach to learning how your body works. Generally, we know how metabolism works — how the body burns fat and carbohydrates or glycogen — but everybody has a unique variable to it. These medical-grade tests help us narrow that down as accurately as possible, so you're not guessing. There are generic tests that estimate resting metabolic rate or cardio zones — like the old chart on a treadmill based on your age — but our tests get you as zoned into your specific needs as possible.
We offer VO2 max testing, resting metabolic rate testing, and a 3D body scan that measures your body surface area head to toe using 600 digital images — very accurate compared to a tape measure and much quicker. And probably our most common test is our body composition test, which is similar to a DEXA and almost as accurate, second only to DEXA by a minimal amount.
We've both gone through your testing and loved the information. The body contouring pictures are eye-opening — looking at that on paper or a screen versus in a mirror is totally different. You come to BodyMetrics for the data so you can use it as guidance for whatever you're doing for health and fitness. Our body composition test is a seca scan, and I really like how the data is laid out — colorful, easy to read, and visually appealing. I prefer it over a Bod Pod or InBody.
I actually like the bioelectrical impedance breakdown even more than a DEXA personally. DEXA scans are more tuned to the integrity of bone, whereas this gives a person a number they can trend. That's what we push to patients — this shows a snapshot right now, but your activities and lifestyle changes will change those numbers, and you can follow that trend, which is very motivating.
It picks up on things you can't see in the mirror or that go beyond the scale. DEXA is an excellent tool for bone density, but if someone is coming to us worried about bone loss risk, that's out of our scope and appropriate for their physician. Bone density is the one thing we don't measure, but everything else we can tell — visceral fat, hydration, body fat percentage, and muscle mass, including where that muscle is distributed. So we can identify imbalances between your left and right leg or arm.
Who Comes In
What's the range of clients — people just wanting information versus athletes tuning up? We see a wide range: people just wanting to know, athletes honing in on how to strengthen one side or rehabilitate post-injury, runners, cyclists, the general public, folks on a weight-loss journey, and folks on a journey to gain muscle mass and build a foundation for longevity as they age.
We focus a lot on the muscle component for our patients, because maintaining muscle mass is so important — you two aren't old enough to worry about it yet, but at my age you start to. My physician has been telling me for years to worry about muscle mass in perimenopause, which can start up to 17 years before your last period. I've had a considerable amount of muscle, and the challenge now is keeping it up so I go into menopause with my strongest defense being my muscle mass. Muscle starts to dwindle at 30 years old, so it's important to maintain and build — you can build it at any age — and good to measure.
Body Composition and Endurance
Justin, from an athletic standpoint, what trends do you follow with body composition? I'm an endurance athlete — I do triathlons, including full and half Iron Mans. I just finished Iron Man Florida about three months ago. We scanned before we left and once we got home post-race, and there was about a 20-pound shift between pre and post in a week — a lot of that was inflammation and fluid moving into the interstitial space to rehabilitate my muscles. It's great to track those differences even locally, like after a half or full marathon. If you're not fueling well enough during an event and you get into your muscle glycogen stores without replenishing in the appropriate time frame, you'll notice a lowering of muscle as your body uses those stores. It takes a while to replenish and rebuild post-race if you're not fueling appropriately.
That helps you recover better than people without that data — and it's a clue toward overtraining or chronic fatigue. I'll praise Mark: he's one of our few endurance athletes who also maintains a great amount of muscle, which is a good reason for endurance athletes to track body composition. They come for VO2 max, but body comp gives insight — you may be running four hours at a time, but your tank is really low, because your body can only store so much glycogen if you only have so much muscle. It helps them dial in their nutrition.
That's a great reframe, especially in perimenopause, where women may struggle with weight gain, start improving, and their body composition changes but the weight doesn't. It's what makes up the weight that's actually changing, and seeing that on the body composition is so beneficial. People get discouraged looking at the big number instead of what makes up the number — it's a conditioning we have to reprogram, and the data really helps.
Resting Metabolic Rate
You also measure resting metabolic rate — how? The machine has you breathe in and out of a tube for about 10 to 15 minutes, taking the fat and carbohydrate molecules off your exhaled breath to calculate how many calories you need at rest. The way I describe it: if you sat home and did absolutely nothing but watch Netflix all day, you'd still need to eat at least your RMR. Mine is about 1,900, so even doing nothing I need 1,800 to 1,900 solid nutritional calories — and then anything beyond that for running, training, work, and day-to-day life increases it.
That leads to a common misconception — people underestimate their RMR and fuel way under it. We see a lot of people struggling to lose weight, and once they slowly get back to their RMR, they start seeing results and the weight comes off, because when you're not eating enough, your body compensates and thinks it's being starved, so it stores everything.
One thing that stood out when I did the RMR test is how still you have to hold to measure those expired metabolites — literally still for about 10 minutes. It's physically the easiest test but mentally the most challenging, the complete opposite of the VO2 max, which takes so much effort. And this is the guy who can't sit still, so no surprise that was the hardest part for him. You have to get out of your head, which is why we ask people to mentally drop in and surrender to the discomfort — we turn on calming music, nice scenery, a comfortable chair with heat and a blanket. Justin always tells people to stay away from funny cat videos so they don't laugh and throw off the data.
The seca body scan calculates your BMR/RMR based on the generic formula we're accustomed to, and a very common pairing is to also do the actual resting metabolic rate test. One of our associates came in and hers was 400 higher because she was breastfeeding — something the formula doesn't take into account. She'll come back about 6 to 8 weeks after she stops to get a new measurement. That's how much more precise a medical-grade test can be. The formula is estimated up to 10% off — 400 calories is on the higher end, but on par with other breastfeeding clients in their fourth trimester. Usually it's within a hundred, and the general formula is usually lower than the actual. RMR depends on age, gender, height, and weight, and other metabolic issues change it too, but it's good to know your baseline. And the formula doesn't account for muscle, which eats up way more calories — again, the total weight isn't as important as what makes it up.
VO2 Max — The New Gold Standard
Speaking of endurance and longevity markers, the most understated but most important in my eyes is VO2 max. Can you explain what it is for the lay public? For the test, we start you at a slow walk and increase it — like a one-rep max, but for the runner — and get a lot of great data on your cardiovascular and respiratory system. It's the new gold standard for showing longevity of life and how well all your systems run together. You wear a heart rate monitor and breathe in and out of a mask while we speed you up every minute until your body is burning 100% carbohydrates — right when you're exhausted. That lets us understand your respiratory exchange rate and your overall VO2 max number, which is how many milliliters of oxygen per kilogram you breathe in and out per minute.
It's a great cardiorespiratory biomarker. One thing we tell patients, young or old, is that your VO2 max will slowly and steadily decline unless you do something about it. I ask people: you're 30, 40, or 50 now — when you turn 80, what do you want to do? Because what you want to do determines what your VO2 max needs to be — whether it's going up and down stairs, going on a hike, or getting up and down off the floor with your grandkids. Maintaining those levels is important, and it's a lot of work — a lot more work the later you start, but not impossible, and it can be maintained over time.
We were both paramedics in another life, so we've worked with a lot of patients and are good at guessing ages. The clients who don't look their age — who are living independently at 80, without hip fractures or a long list of medications and comorbidities — have three things we notice: a healthy VO2 max for their age, low visceral fat (not just body fat percentage — subcutaneous fat has some function, but low visceral fat means a smaller waist), and high muscle mass. Those are the people aging gracefully, living independently, at low risk for falls, with less chronic disease.
Using VO2 Max in Training
Justin, how did you use VO2 max training for your Iron Mans? We do it about every six months, and it changes depending on my training block. I use it to understand my heart rate zones — where zone 2 is versus zone 4 and zone 5. Zone 2 really builds that aerobic base.
There's controversy on how to build VO2 max. It depends on volume and intensity. If you have plenty of time to actively move in zone 2, you can build your aerobic base. But when someone is limited to the recommended bare minimum of 150 minutes a week, how do you spend it? A lot of people come in sedentary, so you start with zone 2 and move up, then sprinkle in some HIIT to build that VO2 max.
I can speak to the person who hates cardio, because we're exact opposites — I need to work out more, and he works out at an Iron Man level (20 hours a week leading up to races, which could lead to overtraining if his nutrition isn't on point). For me, the VO2 max helped me realize it doesn't take much to get in two hours of zone 2 training a week. Zone 2 is way less intense than I thought — when I was trying to increase my cardio, I thought I had to go so hard in a spin class, and it burned me out mentally. It turned out I just needed bursts of that; a light jog or even walking would have gotten me to that hour and 50 minutes. Instead of going zero to 100, we say start somewhere sustainable. But if people have no concept of what zone 2 actually is, they overshoot it, burn out, and stop. It's all about being consistent — with volume, time, and consistency, you can really increase your VO2 max. And zone 2 isn't just running and walking; you can use a bike or other options to build that base.
Accommodating Everyone
We try to be as inclusive and accommodating as possible. For limited-mobility clients, we have a stationary bike, so we can do a VO2 max on a stationary Peloton rather than the treadmill — some people just prefer that. And by special request, cyclists can bring their own bike; we have a trainer for that. The treadmill can be intimidating the first time. When I was a client seven years ago, I didn't know exactly what VO2 max was, but one great thing I learned is that it tells me at every heart rate how many fat and carb calories I burn. As an endurance athlete, I know how many carbohydrates I need at mile 26. For someone on a weight-loss journey, focusing at a lower heart rate like 100 or 110 tells you how many fat calories you burn per hour. Paired with the RMR and body comp, it really helps you hone in depending on your goals. And for longer endurance events, it's important to know where you need to get those calories in — there's a wall out there, and you can hit it quick and struggle to get back over it.
Client Stories
Any personal client stories about transforming their health span? I love working with clients trying to lose weight — I have a lifetime of experience with that, having started dieting at nine, and only in the last few years have I gotten to a healthy place, a lot of it through BodyMetrics. Coming to us is a very vulnerable experience; everybody has some internal conflict with their body, no matter how objectively in shape. What I love is when people lose the weight they've been trying to lose but maintain their muscle — it's not worth losing 20 pounds if 50% of it was muscle. Seeing them understand that value is really cool.
Then there are the anomalies — clients doing what you're told not to do, and it's working for them. That taught us to be as open-minded as possible. People come with the wackiest diets, medical adjuncts, and fitness programs, and we're here to support them and test whether their body actually likes it. We've developed a philosophy that everything works for somebody, but nothing works for everybody — and the only way to know is with the data. That's so true, and something we use in our practice: everybody is different, and just because it works for someone else doesn't mean it'll work for you. Everybody's a snowflake.
Two examples pop to mind: one gentleman who's also an Iron Man eats no carbs — a straight carnivore — and we can't get him to fully max out on a VO2, he's gone almost 25-plus minutes, because his body is really good at fueling via fat. And another very in-shape gentleman who works out five or six times a week in HIIT and spin classes came back with a fair VO2. When we talked about zones, he realized he was always training in zone 4. He started training in zone 2, building that aerobic base, and watching his retest move in the direction he wanted was really nice.
How to Reach Them
If someone wants to do VO2 max, RMR, or body comp testing, how do they reach you? Our website is bodymetrics.com, where you can schedule an appointment. We're located in the 95th and Metcalf area in Overland Park in the Kansas City metro. Give us a call or text and we're happy to help anyone along their journey. We're available by appointment, and we have a pre-appointment protocol to follow for the most accurate results — no drop-ins, because people usually come with coffee in hand having worked out that morning, and we can't get accurate data that way. We're open Monday through Saturday — follow us on Instagram, and we'll put all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for this lovely conversation. Have a healthy day.