Firstly, apologies for the non tri thread but the gatekeeper in the LR is hard on anything fitness related.

Discussion at work turned to body fat % late last week and quickly became a 6 week challenge amongst about 10 of us; mixed gender and 30 yr age range. One brought in some scales that measure all sorts of metrics. One of which was metabolic age.

At 46 I’m one of the older ones but also the only one who trains hard regularly (bike only ATM). Although the BF measure seemed higher than anticipated I still had a healthy lead. I was however curious to see the metabolic age metric. Alas it only reported a 4 year discount on actual. What was more confusing was many others reported 2-3 year discounts.

Initially thinking MA was an all over health indicator I later assumed it was about muscle mass - having done bugger all gym work for a long time and freely acknowledge that whilst athletic looking I’m prob weak Vs the younger males. However one of my female colleagues (at 37) nailed an 11 year discount. She’s neither a weights buff nor cardio queen; rather Pilates.

So what influences such a metric?