Our Oxiline MD Pro scale reports a lot of numbers — weight, body water, muscle mass, body fat percentage, BMI, “obesity rating,” and more. It’s easy to fixate on the number that flashes biggest or that you’re most used to seeing (usually weight or BMI), and some of these readings are misleading.
We want to redirect your attention, and help you use this information in the best way.
Things to Completely Disregard: Ignore the BMI, ideal weight, and obesity rating fields. All of these are based exclusively on a ratio of your weight to your height, with some adjustment for age. They do not take your muscle mass into account at all. This means there is no difference between someone who is carrying a lot of muscle and someone who is carrying a lot of fat. Two people with the same BMI can have completely different body compositions and completely different health profiles. These indicators can cause a lot of complicated feelings for people, even though they are based on garbage metrics. It is VERY important not to get wrapped up in these, and we do wish we could simply turn them off on the app.
Things to Pay Attention to: The metrics that actually tell you what your body is made of, including:
- Body Fat Mass / Percentage
- Muscle Mass / Muscle Rate
- Bone Mass
Another helpful metric is the basal metabolic rate (BMR), which tells you how many calories you need to consume in order to maintain basic body functions. If you are looking to change your muscle to fat ratio, this is crucial to know.
Your Initial Set Up
- Download the companion app and pair the scale via Bluetooth.
- Create your profile with accurate height, age, sex, and activity level — the scale uses these to calculate your composition estimates, so accuracy here matters.
- Most users find that they need to exit or close the app and reopen it after sign up in order for it to connect to the scale for their first reading.
- Step on barefoot, standing still, with even weight on both feet. Bioelectrical impedance sensors need skin contact to read your body’s electrical signal.
- Hold the handle with your thumbs on the sensors out away from your body a few inches, and hold still until you see the animation of the electric impulses stop. At that point, your reading is complete, and the numbers and details are in your phone.
For the most consistent readings:
- Weigh in at the same time of day, not directly after eating or drinking, and before you jump in the sauna.
- Try to weigh in under similar hydration conditions each time (body water shifts readings).
- Don’t weigh in right after intense exercise — sweat and fluid shifts can skew results.
- Focus on the weekly or monthly trend, not any single day’s reading. Day-to-day swings of a percentage point or two are normal.
Body Fat Mass
This is the portion of your total body weight made up of fat tissue, including both essential fat (needed for hormone function and organ protection) and stored fat.
General healthy ranges (these vary by age, sex, and individual goals — think of them as a reference point, not a target):
How to think about fat mass
Watch the trend line over weeks and months. A gradual downward trend (if that’s your goal) or a stable number while muscle mass rises is a much better signal of progress than the scale weight alone. Remember, essential fat what is required to stay alive and breathing. Lower fat is not necessarily better for you, and falling below that number can be harmful to your health.
You may also want to keep an eye on visceral fat versus subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat is that which is stored around your organs, and it can be good to keep this number low. High levels of visceral fat have been linked to several health risks.
The scale also tells you where on your body your fat is stored. While there is a lot of variance, in general, carrying more of your stored fat in your torso has been linked to increase risk for diabetes. Understanding how your body stores fat can help you become aware of some underlying risks you may have, but this is not a firm determiner of future health.
Muscle Mass
This reflects the weight of muscle tissue in your body — including skeletal muscle (the muscle attached to your bones that you build through training). Skeletal muscle typically makes up 30–40% of total body mass, and it’s the component most responsive to strength training and protein intake.
How to think about muscle mass
Rising or stable muscle mass while body fat percentage is stable or drops is the sign of healthy composition change. You may get heavier overall, but gaining muscle mass is almost never a bad thing.
Why we’re steering you away from BMI
BMI was designed as a population-level statistical tool, not an individual diagnostic measure.
It doesn’t distinguish muscle from fat, so muscular or athletic people are frequently misclassified as “overweight” or “obese.”
It doesn’t account for where fat is distributed on the body, which matters more for health risk than total body weight.
The “obesity rating” the scale generates is calculated directly from BMI, so it carries the same limitations forward.
Body fat percentage and muscle mass give you a far more accurate, individualized picture — and they’re the numbers that actually move in response to the things you’re doing (training, nutrition, recovery).
How to use BMR
Your BMR, or basal metabolic rate, is the number of calories that you need to maintain basic functions like respiration and heart beat. This of this as your “never go lower” number. If you are tracking calories for any reason, make this the baseline, and add calories needed for all your activities (including just walking around and being upright). For many athletes, this number is higher than they realize! And remember, macros are more meaningful than basic kCal numbers.