What is Lean Body Mass or LBM?

Answer:
Lean body mass, or LBM, is your body's

composition minus the fat. It comprises the bones, organs, muscle, and skin.

Lean body mass can be determined by any number of methods. Most require some type of specialized equipment and some are more accurate than others. Hydrostatic weighing, or underwater weighing, requires that the subject be submerged in water in order to calculate their LBM. There is also the BOD POD. This is an egg shaped, computerized chamber that looks like something out of The Jetsons.

There are more simple methods of determining a person's LBM. The most simple, and most widely used, is the skin caliper test that pinches the skin and measures the LBM by subtracting the depth of the dermis.