Here’s what you need to know…
- Whilst it can feel uncomfortable stepping on to a scale or in front of a mirror, it’s important to record your progress at regular intervals throughout the duration of your fat loss program.
- Bathroom scales, skin-fold callipers and photographs are cheap and effective means of measuring your results. Use all three to get a complete picture of your progress.
- Measures such as body weight and body fat percentages are not a reflection of your self worth. They are simply tools used to measure the effectiveness of your program and your compliance to it.
Recording your progress at regular intervals throughout your fat loss program enables you to evaluate it’s effectiveness, your adherence to it and ultimately attain better results through self-corrected behaviour. In my experience, taking measurements (whether they be weight, skin-folds or photographs) provides a valuable opportunity to not only measure a client’s progress but to also to hold those clients accountable for their results. Sticking to a training and nutrition plan long term is difficult and there will plenty of occasions where short term desires will come into conflict with long-term goals. When such situations arise it can be beneficial to have an extra layer of accountability to stay on track. After all, you can lie to your coach, you can lie to yourself but you cannot, lie to the scales.
There are plenty of ways to measure your progress, the most accurate being a Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan. Unfortunately, at £30,000.00 a pop, they are outside of the realms of affordability and convenience for most people. To help you stay on track and save a pretty penny or two I have described three cheaper and far more convenient alternatives below;
1. Bathroom Scales
Weight scales are affordable and easy to use which is why they are the most common way to measure and record bodyweight. Simply step on the scale with both feet and you will be given an accurate measure of your weight in Kilograms or Pounds. This can then be recorded and used to measure your progress over the coming weeks. The main disadvantage of weight scales is that they only measure ‘weight’ and are unable to detect any changes in body composition (the ratio between body fat and lean body mass) that may occur throughout the duration of your program.
Modern digital scales have tried to circumvent this problem by incorporating a variety of settings which, in addition to weight, can measure body fat, BMI, lean mass, muscle mass and water retention. Personally, I have found the accuracy of these measures to be somewhat inconsistent so I tend to only use scales only to measure weight. However, for someone that doesn’t have access to skin fold callipers these settings might be a useful measure of progress. Digital scales are also easy to integrate with smartphones apps such as My Fitness Pal which can record your weight in conjunction with other data such as calorie intake. Combined, this information can be used to draw conclusions about how well your diet is or isn’t working.
2. Skinfold Callipers
Subcutaneous fat is found just beneath the skin and can be measured using skin-fold calipers to give a rough estimate of your overall body composition. Getting an objective measure of body composition is extremely useful for fat loss purposes as it allows you to measure lean mass and fat mass independently from one another. This allows you not only to determine how much weight loss is attributable to fat loss but it also enables you to evaluate how effective your program is at preserving muscle mass. Maintaining (and ideally increasing) your current levels of muscle mass should be a major consideration in the design of your fat loss program. Skeletal muscle accounts for almost 2/3 of the energy expended through basal metabolic rate, so any decrease in lean mass will directly affect the rate at which your body burns fat. Being able to identify any changes in lean mass means that you take steps to mitigate the risk of further losses – usually increasing protein intake or reducing the amount of steady state cardio you perform each week.
Whilst generally reliable, skin fold measurements and body fat estimates are not 100% accurate and can be affected by a number of different variables. The quality of the callipers, the number of sites being measured and the skill of the person taking the measurements can all affect the accuracy of your results. For best results work with a skilled professional that takes measurements from at least 7 different sites using Harpenden callipers.
3. Photographs
Recording a 5 mmol change in your levels of subscapular body fat is all well and good but for the majority of people, such numbers will have little relevance and it’s hard to visualise these changes into something meaningful. Taking pictures and comparing them at regular intervals throughout your program will give these numbers much greater context and will provide you with a much more visual record of your progress. Having visual proof of the changes in your appearance will validate the effectiveness of your program, increase your adherence to it and perpetuate a cycle of confidence and success that will generate even better results.
I recommend taking pictures every 2-4 weeks as this is usually enough time for changes in body composition to become apparent. It’s important to aim for consistency with your pictures so be sure to take pictures in the same spot, with the same lighting the same distance away from the camera. This will help you achieve greater levels of contrast between pictures, highlighting your progress and making for impressive transformation pictures at the end of your program.
Final Thoughts
Using any individual measure is perfectly fine but I recommend using all three measures for a complete picture of your progress. It’s important that you take your measurements first thing in the morning, before consuming any food or drink. This can help reduce fluctuations in water retention due to a high carbohydrate or sodium consumption. Many women also experience increases in water retention just before their period, which usually occurs as a result of hormone changes associated with the menstrual cycle. This can also impact results.
Finally, I’d just like to say that whilst setting clear and realistically achievable goals is an important part of any fat loss program it can be counter-productive to place too much emphasis on achieving specific outcomes which are outside of your control. With that in mind, It’s important to recognise that measures such as body weight and body fat percentages are not a reflection of your self-worth. They are simply tools used to measure the effectiveness of your program and your compliance to it. If you get positive results, well done – keep doing what you’re doing. If you don’t get positive results then don’t take it personally, simply reappraise your approach and try harder to stick to it.
Remember, what get’s measured gets improved.
