Update BMI to match rest of advanced training metrics

8264025 7 days ago

Garmin needs to upgrade body-composition tracking. BMI is outdated and inaccurate for anyone with real muscle or who trains seriously. It lumps fit people into “overweight” categories and doesn’t reflect actual health or physique.

Solution: Allow DEXA scan data import into Garmin Connect.

Garmin already tracks advanced metrics like HRV, VO₂ max, training load, and recovery. But body-fat tracking still relies on BMI or impedance-based scales, which swing wildly and don't reflect true composition.

A DEXA API or upload option would give users:

Verified body-fat percentage

Lean mass & fat-mass trends

Bone density data

True health insights instead of generic BMI labels

More accurate pairing with HRV, VO₂ max, sleep, and training metrics

Garmin Connect leads in performance analytics — time to do the same with body composition.

Top Replies

trux 6 days ago +1

I do not think there is enough of people having access to the DEXA dual x-ray absorptiometry scan, in order to motivate Garmin to develop an interface for it, but you can use body fat% instead of BMI, if…

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0 trux 6 days ago

I do not think there is enough of people having access to the DEXA dual x-ray absorptiometry scan, in order to motivate Garmin to develop an interface for it, but you can use body fat% instead of BMI, if you want. There are several ways to do it:

use Garmin Index scale
import the fat% with a simple CSV file - see the example below
use a 3rd party scale linked to MyFitnessPal and link MyFitnessPal to Garmin Connect for the automated syncing
use a 3rd party app for syncing a 3rd part scale to Garmin Connect (I do not remember which one does it, but there are some available on the web)
if those options still do not satisfy you, suggest an improvement to Garmin at Share Ideas | Garmin (though most likely nothing will happen anyway)
you can also hire a 3rd party developer to create an app for transferring body fat% and other values from DEXA scan to Garmin Connect, though as far as I know Garmin currently uses only body fat% for some of their algorithms.

You can import the Body Fat % with a simple CSV file in Garmin Connect Web at https://connect.garmin.com/modern/import-data.

This is a sample CSV file:

Body
Date,Weight,BMI,Fat
"2022-11-03","71.6","22.6","14.4"

There can be multiple lines of data, but the first 2 header lines appear just once. Use a plain-text editor such as Notepad for creating the file. Do not use any rich-text editors like Word or Wordpad. And avoid Excel.