Methodology
What the scale can't tell you.
Visceral fat sits around your organs rather than under your skin. It's the fat most closely tied to long-term health, and the one a bathroom scale is least able to see.
Two people, same weight, different risk.
Body weight is a single number describing a complicated thing. It cannot distinguish muscle from fat, or fat under the skin from fat packed around the organs. BMI, the number most checkups start with, has the same blind spot: it measures size, not where fat sits.
That distinction is the reason Get Right Fitness exists. Our system estimates visceral fat specifically, then classifies it into risk bands informed by age, gender and menopausal status, because the same measurement doesn't mean the same thing for everyone.
The focus on visceral fat isn't our idea. It comes from independent research, and the studies we lean on are listed further down this page.
Measurement in, classification out.
The visceral fat classification is built on simple measurements: your waist and height, along with personal factors including age, sex and menopausal status. It needs no scan and no imaging. That is the classification tested against DXA further down this page.
Imaging is optional, but it helps. The app's AI image analysis estimates body fat and waist size from photos, which helps make sure the measurements going in are the right ones.
From that estimate, the app produces two things:
- A classification. Where your current visceral fat level sits within its risk bands.
- A target. An estimate of how much must be reduced to reach a healthier level.
The second is what makes it actionable. A number without a destination is just a number.
The result
Catches serious visceral risk that BMI misses.
We compared Get Right Fitness with BMI across our own internal dataset of176 adults and 250 DXA scans. DXA confirmed serious visceral risk (High, Severe or Critical) in 100 of those scans. Get Right Fitness flagged 96 of them. BMI flagged 44.
To keep the comparison fair, BMI was credited with a flag whenever it reached obese (30 or above), its own risk category. Get Right Fitness was credited only when it flagged High Risk or above.
BMI missed 56 of the 100 serious cases, more than half. Get Right Fitness caught 52 of those 56.
- Adults in the study
- 176
- Serious-risk cases confirmed by DXA
- 100
- Flagged by Get Right Fitness
- 96%
- Flagged by BMI
- 44%
What about body fat percentage?
Body fat percentage is a tougher comparison than BMI, because it measures fat rather than weight. So we ran it against the same 250 scans and the same DXA results, using the ACE obesity thresholds (25% and up for men, 32% and up for women) on each scan's DXA-measured body fat.
Body fat percentage caught 97 of the 100 serious cases, one more than Get Right Fitness. It got there by flagging 52 of the 150 scans that had no serious visceral risk. Get Right Fitness flagged 10. To catch that one extra case, body fat percentage raised 42 more false alarms.
| Method | Caught (of 100) | False alarms (of 150) | Called at risk (true: 100) | False reassurances |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BMI 30+ | 44 | 5 | 49 | 8 |
| Body fat % (ACE) | 97 | 52 | 149 | 3 |
| Get Right Fitness | 96 | 10 | 106 | 0 |
Caught: serious cases flagged, out of the 100 DXA confirmed. False alarms: scans flagged without serious visceral risk, out of 150. A false reassurance is a scan with DXA-confirmed serious visceral risk that the method called fine: BMI under 25, body fat in the ACE "Fitness" or "Acceptable" range, or a Get Right Fitness rating of Healthy or Acceptable.
BMI rarely raises a false alarm, but it misses more than half the real cases. Body fat percentage misses almost nothing, but it called 149 of the 250 scans obese. Of the three, only Get Right Fitness caught nearly every serious case while keeping false alarms low, and its total of 106 came closest to the true 100.
Zero false reassurances.
A false reassurance is the dangerous kind of error: someone walks away believing there is nothing to address. BMI told 8 people with serious visceral risk on DXA that they were a normal weight. Get Right Fitness flagged 7 of them at High Risk or above and rated the eighth Elevated. Across every scan in the dataset, it never rated someone with serious visceral risk as Healthy or Acceptable.
Body fat percentage made the same error 3 times. Get Right Fitness made it zero times.
The pattern holds in both sexes. Among women, Get Right Fitness flagged 48 of 49 serious cases and BMI flagged 21. Among men, it flagged 48 of 51 and BMI flagged 23.
The result is a far more reliable signal than BMI, delivered without the cost, inconvenience or radiation exposure of a lab visit.
How we tested it.
Every method was scored the same way: the same 250 scans, the same DXA results as the reference, and each method's own most widely used clinical threshold.
- The reference. Each scan was a DXA measurement of visceral fat (Hologic Horizon Wi). A scan counted as serious visceral risk when DXA placed it at High Risk or above, which begins at a visceral fat area of roughly 140 cm² in men and 111 cm² in women.
- The dataset. 250 scans from 176 adults, 127 scans from women and 123 from men. DXA confirmed serious visceral risk in 100 of them.
- BMI was credited with a flag at obese (30 or above), its own risk category.
- Body fat percentage was credited at the ACE obesity thresholds: 25% and up for men, 32% and up for women. We used the body fat DXA measured, not the app's own estimate. ACE was chosen because its categories are among the most widely used in fitness practice.
- Get Right Fitness was credited only when it rated a scan High Risk or above.
The people the usual numbers cleared.
These are the scans where BMI or body fat percentage said "fine" and DXA disagreed.
One was a 56-year-old man with a BMI of 24.9, inside the normal-weight range. On BMI alone there is little reason to look further. DXA placed him at High Risk for visceral fat, and Get Right Fitness rated him higher still, at Severe Risk.
| Case | BMI | DXA | Get Right Fitness |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22.0 | High Risk | High Risk |
| 2 | 22.9 | High Risk | Severe Risk |
| 3 | 24.0 | Severe Risk | Severe Risk |
| 4 | 24.6 | Severe Risk | Severe Risk |
| 5 | 24.8 | High Risk | Elevated |
| 6 | 24.9 | Severe Risk | High Risk |
| 7 | 24.9 | High Risk | High Risk |
| 8 | 24.9 | High Risk | Severe Risk |
Body fat percentage cleared 3 men aged 56 to 69 whose DXA body fat was only 20 to 22%, inside the ACE "Fitness" and "Acceptable" ranges. DXA placed all three at High Risk for visceral fat, between 145 and 172 cm². Get Right Fitness rated two of them High Risk and the third Elevated, one level below DXA.
| Case | DXA body fat | DXA | Get Right Fitness |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22% | High Risk | High Risk |
| 2 | 22% | High Risk | High Risk |
| 3 | 20% | High Risk | Elevated |
Why visceral fat, according to independent research.
Visceral fat, rather than overall body size, is the fat most consistently linked to serious disease risk in the medical literature. The studies below are independent and peer reviewed. None of them evaluated Get Right Fitness, and none has any connection to us. They are the reason we measure what we measure.
Genetic evidence
Mendelian randomization studies use genetic variation to approximate cause and effect.
- Karlsson T, et al. Contribution of genetics to visceral adiposity and its relation to cardiovascular and metabolic disease. Nature Medicine. 2019;25:1390–1395.Genetic analysis of over 325,000 people found visceral fat causally increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol.
- Chen Q, et al. Effect of visceral adipose tissue mass on coronary artery disease and heart failure: a Mendelian randomization study. International Journal of Obesity. 2022;46:2102–2106.Genetically predicted higher visceral fat causally raised the risk of coronary artery disease, heart attack and heart failure.
- Emdin CA, et al. Genetic association of waist-to-hip ratio with cardiometabolic traits, type 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease. JAMA. 2017;317:626–634.A genetic score for central body fat distribution causally predicted type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease.
- Dale CE, et al. Causal associations of adiposity and body fat distribution with coronary heart disease, stroke subtypes, and type 2 diabetes mellitus: a Mendelian randomization analysis. Circulation. 2017;135(24):2373–2388.Genetically higher central fat, adjusted for BMI, causally raised the risk of coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It also raised ischemic stroke risk, which BMI did not.
Studies that followed people over time
- Britton KA, et al. Body fat distribution, incident cardiovascular disease, cancer, and all-cause mortality. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2013;62(10):921–925.In the Framingham Heart Study, visceral fat measured by CT predicted new cardiovascular disease and cancer, independent of BMI.
- Pischon T, et al. General and abdominal adiposity and risk of death in Europe. New England Journal of Medicine. 2008;359(20):2105–2120.In 359,387 people across Europe, waist size predicted the risk of death independent of BMI.
- Xu F, et al. Time-varying body mass index, waist circumference and all-cause mortality in US adults aged 65 or older. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2026.Following US adults aged 65 and older from 2011 to 2024, a larger waist predicted a higher risk of death even after accounting for BMI.
- Valente GV, et al. Visceral adipose tissue measured by DXA predicts metabolic syndrome in low-income community-dwelling elderly: insights from the São Paulo Aging & Health (SPAH) study. Bone. 2025;190:117308.In adults aged 65 and older, visceral fat measured by DXA predicted metabolic syndrome regardless of BMI.
How visceral fat acts on the body
- Yazdani A, et al. Inflammatory proteomic signatures of cardiometabolic traits and the contribution of visceral adipose tissue: a cross-sectional and network proteomic analysis. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2026.Using DXA-measured visceral fat, visceral fat accounted for much of the inflammatory protein signal linked to cardiometabolic traits.
- Fontana L, et al. Visceral fat adipokine secretion is associated with systemic inflammation in obese humans. Diabetes. 2007;56(4):1010–1013.In 25 people with severe obesity, the inflammatory marker IL-6 was released from visceral fat directly into the circulation that feeds the liver.
- Nielsen S, et al. Splanchnic lipolysis in human obesity. Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2004;113(11):1582–1588.Visceral fat supplied as little as 5 to 10% of the fatty acids reaching the liver in people with less of it, and over 30% in some people with more.
Consensus
- Neeland IJ, et al. Visceral and ectopic fat, atherosclerosis, and cardiometabolic disease: a position statement. Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. 2019;7(9):715–725.A position statement from the International Atherosclerosis Society and the International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk working group on visceral obesity. It is a consensus statement, not a primary study.
What these numbers are not.
Get Right Fitness is a wellness tool, not a medical device.
- It does not diagnose any condition.
- It does not replace a DXA scan, a clinician, or medical advice.
- An estimate is an estimate. It missed 4 of the 100 serious-risk cases, and we publish that so you can judge it.
- These results come from our own internal dataset, not an independent clinical trial.
- It is a single-site analysis: one practice's clients, one DXA scanner (Hologic Horizon Wi). It has not been peer reviewed or independently validated.
- DXA is the reference here, but DXA visceral fat and DXA body fat are themselves modeled estimates, not direct physical measurements.
- The ACE body fat thresholds are a widely used fitness-industry standard, not one derived from disease outcomes.
If you have a health condition, or you're making decisions about medication, pregnancy or a medical diet, talk to a qualified professional first.
Read the full Health Disclaimer.
Insight is only useful if something acts on it.
The classification isn't a report you read once. It feeds the same engine that plans your food.
As your composition changes, your targets change. As your training changes, your calories change. You don't recalculate anything. The plan moves with the body it's planning for.