Research

Energy balance

Resting Energy Expenditure can be accurately reconstructed from detailed body composition analysis using MRI or CT-derived organ masses multiplied by constant organ tissue-respiration rates.

For young, healthy adults, you can accurately predict your resting metabolism if you know your exact organ masses (via MRI/CT). However, this is currently impractical for most people. For general use, knowing your trunk lean mass is a better predictor than total body weight or simple muscle mass.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Calculating REE from the sum of individual OM multiplied by a constant organ tissue-respiration rate showed a high correlation between calculated and measured REE, with only small and non-significant differences of 83–96 kJ d–1.
Manfred J. Müller et al. · Obesity Reviews · 2002

Why this rating

Based on high correlation (r=0.92) in multiple studies, though accuracy decreases in older adults.

Source

Metabolically active components of fat‐free mass and resting energy expenditure in humans: recent lessons from imaging technologies

Manfred J. Müller et al. · Obesity Reviews · 2002

DOI 10.1046/j.1467-789x.2002.00057.x

narrative_reviewCited 239×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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