HOW TO MEASURE YOUR PROGRESS IN 2019 

Here we are now, a few weeks into 2019. Hopefully you’re making some sustainable, positive health and lifestyle changes…if that’s your jam of course. In this blog post I want to discuss how you might go about measuring your progress, be it for weight loss or perhaps muscle gain or maybe improving health.

THE WEIGHING SCALES

A lot of you reading this are no doubt familiar with the weighing scales and many of us unfortunately have quite a negative relationship with it. We can literally let a number on a screen dictate how we feel about ourselves that day – that ain’t right. If you choose to use weight on the scales to help you track your progress (and I’ll discuss how best to do this below) then it should be giving you objective feedback. You’re the same person you were five seconds before you stepped up on the scales as you are five seconds after stepping off it. Remember that. There are several issues with using the scales as a gauge of progress, on its own that is.

1) The scales doesn’t tell the whole story

What if you’ve just started an exercise program for the first time or after a long layoff? You could well be building some muscle at a nice rate as well as losing some body fat. If you gain 0.5kg of muscle mass and lose 0.5kg of body fat you’re going to be the same weight right? Yet your body composition (the ratio of fat vs non-fat tissue in the body) will be much much better. Honestly this isn’t likely to occur for someone who doesn’t fit into that sort of newbie category but these are also the people who are least likely to know this can occur.

2) The scales can be crazy erratic in how much it fluctuates on a daily basis

If you ever get into the habit of weighing yourself every day you’ll see this. The scales weight can literally go up and down and up and down and there are many good reasons for this. If you don’t know about these reasons however you might be pulling your hair out wondering WTF is going on!? Because the scales doesn’t differentiate between ‘types’ of weight obviously, one of the main things to influence it’s fluctuations is water weight and water retention. Some examples are:

Increased carbohydrate intake – the storage form of carbohydrates called ‘glycogen’ takes with it 3-4 grams of water when it gets stored in your muscles and liver. So if your glycogen stores aren’t full all of the time – which is likely if you’re dieting and training but you go and have an unusually high carb day and you fill those stores right up then you can appear a lot heavier on the scales. The amount of difference this can make will depend on the size of the person but it could certainly account for 1-2 kg or so.

Increased sodium intake – eating a lot more sodium/salt than usual in a meal can increase water retention in the body.

Stress & cortisol – elevated stress levels of any sort will increase cortisol production in the body which can also cause increased water retention and a ‘masking’ of fat-loss efforts. What do people do here then if they see they’re not losing weight? They eat less and train more, maybe they start to use more stimulants to compensate for the lack of energy from this, maybe their sleep suffers then too as a result – all of this increases their stress and just makes the issue even worse. That’s why stress management is so important when it comes to making progress.

Menstrual cycle in women – in normally cycling women you can experience increases in water retention due to the hormonal changes throughout the month. You’ll see the worst of this in the fourth week of the cycle where you get PMS going on but it can also occur to a lesser extent in the second week too. The first week of the cycle just after you get your period is when you’ll be lightest and represents your ‘truest’ weight. These changes can easily account for increases of 1-3kg of scale weight.

Imagine this scenario then. You go out for a meal on a Friday night, you eat more carbs than usual and more salt because restaurant foods tend to be higher in salt and carbohydrates to make them tastier. Imagine also you’re a woman and your period is coming up in a few days and the next morning the increased PMS water retention is going to be apparent. That situation is almost a perfect storm for gaining a tonne of water weight. If you don’t know about all these factors you might step on the scales the next day – see you’ve gained 3kg and freak out, thinking you completely fucked your diet somehow from that one meal out – which leads you to take action by dieting and training harder next week but that’s not the case – you did nothing wrong you just experienced some temporary gain in water weight.

3) How to use the scales
Okay so how do we use the scales to minimise the amount of angst around it and to make sure it’s giving us a clear picture of progress? Two options. i) You weigh yourself very frequently under the same conditions e.g first thing in the morning after you go to the bathroom, every day. ii) very infrequently e.g once every 2-4 weeks. Anything in between that is just too unreliable and you risk comparing a ‘light’ day in week 1 to a ‘heavy’ day in week 2 and thinking you’re going wrong somewhere which might not be the case at all. With these options then – weigh yourself each day for the week, get the average weight for that week and then compare that average to the last week you recorded e.g last week or the one week last month you recorded. And ideally you won’t only use the scales as a measurement of progress.

4) How much weight to lose/gain?
This can vary a bit but on average about 0.5-1% of your bodyweight per week to lose is a good shout. If you have a lot of weight to lose you could maybe push that up to 2%. This is better than looking at in terms of just a certain amount of weight each week because losing 1kg per week for someone who is 65kg is going to be a lot more significant than for someone who is 120kg. So for someone 120kg, 0.5-2% of your body weight is 120 x 0.005 to 120 x 0.02 = 0.6kg to 2.4kg per week.

For weight gain in terms of muscle mass (this doesn’t include people who are very underweight) then for male beginners to weight training you could be looking at gaining 1-1.5% of your body weight per month. For intermediate trainees (1+ year of proper training) you could be looking at 0.5-1% per month and for advanced trainees (3+ proper years of training) only about 0.25-0.5%. For females these rates are about half. So before you think that gaining a kg per week because you’re ‘bulking’ is productive – do the math here, bro.

Remember these are just average numbers though – as an individual you might be to the left or right of that average number.

USING BODY MEASUREMENTS

Another good way to measure progress here is to use a tailor’s measure (soft measuring tape) and keep track of your measurements. This can be useful because it will show changes in body composition that the scales won’t. If certain areas are shrinking/growing on a regular basis then you can be fairly sure you’re on the right track. I don’t have exact numbers here to look out for but as with weight loss the more you have to lose the bigger drops you’ll likely see in measurements. I would suggest measuring several body parts i.e. not just waist because it won’t necessarily all come off there each week right? Things like waist, hips, thighs, chest, upper arm, neck are all good. Get the total of all of these and then see how that total changes week to week or month to month. These measurements can be taken on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis but no more frequently than that. And remember that muscle gain is much slower than fat loss so in this case I would suggest monthly measurements at the most.

USING PROGRESS PHOTOS

Photos are awesome because they don’t lie and you’ll really see the standout changes if they’re there! The only thing with photos is that it takes some time for the changes to become apparent so for these every 2,4 or even 6 weeks is enough in terms of frequency. Try keep it to the same conditions of course. Lighting, time of day etc.

USING CLOTHING

This is another great one that won’t lead you astray like some of the others can. If you have a specific piece of clothing you can use to gauge your progress this works really well. Be it a dress, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, whatever – it can be a really motivating one if say you’re not seeing as significant changes in weight or measurements (though you would expect these two to go hand in hand). I really like this one because you can FEEL it.

HOW YOU FEEL

This is probably my favourite one. It’s very subjective sure but it’s arguably the most important – what’s the point in losing weight if it doesn’t help you feel more fantastic or improve your health and quality of life? Things to keep an eye out for here are – improvements in your energy levels, sleep quality, mood, training performance, digestion, bowel movements and so on. These one’s you’ll feel for sure and it feels great! This and to look better naked is what we’re after at the end of the day so set yourself up to track some of these ones too! Give yourself a rating/10 for each point on a weekly basis and see how it’s shifting for the better. There are also ‘hard’ measurements of your health improving too which could be things like your cholesterol levels lowering for example that can be determined by blood tests.

SCANS, CALLIPERS & BOD PODS

Lastly there are a whole host of fancy (and not so fancy) tests you can do to help determine how you’re progressing. Things like DEXA scans, skin fold calliper tests, fancy weighing scales that give you feedback on body composition and other sorts of body scanners.

My take on these is that they’re fine but the ones that are actually quite accessible for most people shouldn’t be taken at face value. For example when it comes to calliper testing performed in many gyms if you’re told that “hey you’re 12% body fat great job” does that absolute number really matter? Like would you rather look and feel fantastic or be an arbitrary body fat percentage that may or may not be accurate? These can be a nice way to compare progress – “oh I’ve lost 1% body fat since last time” rather than taking the absolute numbers to mean much – “oh I’m 12% body fat , cool”.

Also with most of these they’re not well supported to be accurate and/or can be cheated. Even a DEXA scan which is pretty high level and going to be very inaccessible for most people can be ‘cheated’ in terms of measures of lean body mass by manipulating carbohydrate and water intake. So while these can be handy additions to tracking progress don’t let them be the be all and end all.

ARE YOUR HABITS IMPROVING?

All of the above are measures of progress ‘outcomes’ when in fact for a lot of people what’s going to create that change in outcome is going to be changes in behaviours. The things you do on a daily basis that create that desired outcome. Eating right, sleeping well, getting your workouts in, managing your stress. All of that stuff is what really matters here and they can be tracked too. You ate 30 servings of veg last week but you ate 35 servings this week? Awesome – that’s a major improvement right. Last week you slept only 6hrs per night but this week you got a couple of nights of 8hrs? Brilliant! Run with that and see can you build on it. All these little things will accumulate and can help keep you motivated when you can see you’re doing a little bit better each week and if you do that then you can almost assume that you’ll see changes in the other progress markers discussed above!

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

To summarise then. There are many ways you can track or measure your progress this year. My advice is to pick a few of the above (but not necessarily all of them) so that you can have multiple gauges to reflect on each week or month. If all you’ve picked is weight changes well now I hope you can see why that could be problematic or unreliable for informing your future decisions or representing how well what you’re doing is working. Pick a few and use them the ways I’ve described above and you’ll be on the right track!

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By Brian Ó hÁonghusa, BSc (Hons) Human Nutrition, ANutr, PN1, PN2

This is a reply to the article posted by BBC titled Coconut Oil ‘as unhealthy as beef fat and butter’ -> that article can be found here

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Oh great..the media has picked out one food or group of foods and proclaimed them to be dangerous to your health..again!

I wonder if you were stranded on a desert island and all you had to eat was coconut products would they be bad then? No, they’d be keeping you alive. So in that context they’re okay right? That’s what always gets missed, context. There are no real ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods in the context of your whole diet and lifestyle and it’s ignorant and misleading to label any as such – it’s scare mongering. If you exercise regularly, eat pretty well most of the time, lots of fruits and vegetables, aren’t overweight and have a handle on your stress levels and sleep do you really think including coconut oil (or any food for that matter) is going to be very detrimental?

On the other hand coconut oil is not a panacea of health as you might be lead to believe either. No food is,in isolation. That’s why eating a variety of whole foods is a good thing.
I should probably point out here as well that there is nothing inherently wrong with consuming butter or beef fat either as the headline would suggest. But at the same time it’s probably not ideal for most people to dump a load of butter and coconut oil into their coffee for breakfast…

The article is pushing coconut oil, beef fat & butter to be unhealthy because of the saturated fat content and it’s effect on cholesterol lipoproteins (LDL & HDL). So yes it is true that consuming too much saturated fat is not a good idea (balance and variety of fats is good) – the studies don’t actually single out coconut oil though, which does have some health benefits (as do most foods). For example it’s a great cooking oil since it is very heat stable and therefore hard to burn. Which makes it a great choice of cooking oil, especially frying.

You should get a balance of healthy fats; saturated, monounsaturated & polyunsaturated fats from whole food sources. And while eating more saturated fat can increase total cholesterol (both HDL and LDL) it’s the ratio of cholesterol that matters more, as well as levels of triglycerides. And without getting too complex, there are two types of LDL and saturated fats seem to increase the levels of the more benign form, so while total blood cholesterol may be increased it’s ‘better’ cholesterol. So while it’s not as simple as saying LDL is bad and HDL is good – healthy eating is pretty simple

AND, studies do not show that eating saturated fat increases risk of cardiovascular disease, or death BUT they do show that if you replace some saturated fat with monounsaturated fats like those in olive oil, avocados, nuts and/or omega 3 fats found in fish that it can reduce cardiovascular disease risk. This is not the same as saying saturated fat consumption is bad. Now some people may want to reduce saturated fat consumption – people with certain genetic high cholesterol disorders for example or if you find eating more saturated fat increases your triglycerides or other markers of health. So surprise surprise the same recommendations cannot be applied to every single person – individual variation counts for a lot.

So to sum-up. Coconut oil or any other one food isn’t going to hurt you or save you all by itself. Your activity levels, the rest of your diet, your weight, your stress levels, your sleep and overall lifestyle – they are what is going to make or break your health and longevity – not coconut oil, beef fat, butter or any other moronically singled-out food item.

By Bodyfirst Nutritionist Brian O’HÁonghusa

Does eating fat make you burn fat?
…
Yes.

By that logic, will eating higher fats make you leaner?
…
No.

It’s often touted that you ‘eat fat to burn fat’ and this is true but not as people think usually.
It means that the fat you ingest, through food, is what your body will use as fuel, perhaps preferentially to carbohydrates depending on the makeup of your meals.
It does not mean that if you eat fat it spurs your body on to liberate body fat stores…unless of course, it needs to because it needs energy because it’s in a calorie deficit, if this isn’t the case then the extra fat you ate that isn’t fat gets stored as…drumroll…fat.

Now eating higher fat has a lot of merits. It can help people improve insulin sensitivity so they handle carbs better.
It also improves metabolic flexibility so that you get good at using fat for fuel too, where people are generally only good at using carbs. So then you get the best of both. Food preference and activity levels/nature of your chosen activities also play a role.
Many people also report more consistent energy levels and better hunger control eating more fat and fewer carbs. It’s very context-dependent.

The bottom line is that when someone tells you that eating fat burns fat, this is what they mean…although they probably don’t know that this is what they mean.

By Bodyfirst Nutritionist Brian Ó’HÁonghusa

“I really want to lose weight” or “I’m trying to lose weight” are not entirely accurate statements , I hope what you mean is that you want to lose fat. There is a difference you see, between fat loss and weight loss.

With fat loss you generally end up healthier, feeling better, looking better and having better body composition, all good things from a health and fitness perspective right?

Weight loss on the other hand, although it includes fat-loss, also incorporates such things as muscle loss, water loss, glycogen depletion as well. None of which will really leave you any better off from a health and fitness perspective even though the weight on your scales might have changed. In fact, if you really want to lose weight in a hurry, I would suggest you book yourself in for a leg amputation, that’ll bring the weight on the scales down in a hurry (sense the tone here – I’m not actually suggesting any amputations go down, okay? Good).

Muscle and Fat

Consider this example, two people who are the same weight and same height, one is 15% body fat and the other is 30% body fat. On paper, based on weight, they are the same, right? In reality though they are going to appear very very different. A large part of this is due to the fact that muscle is denser than fat, so it takes up less space for the same amount of weight as fat would. This is one of the reasons why the weighing scales can be so misleading in terms of progress. If for example I am 80kg and I go ahead and start a weight training program and eating well, after 12 weeks I lose 5kg of fat and build 5kg of muscle, all of a sudden my body composition is better, I’m leaner, I look better, my clothes are looser in the right places BUT the weight on the scales is still the same…it’s hard to trust the scales to show you how your body is improving, it’ll only show you weight lost, not fat in isolation and believe me this is all you want to know about (as with everything there are exceptions). I’ll mention some better markers of progress later and how to make the scales your friend.

Having Muscle is Great!

There is a tendency for a lot of females to shy away from trying to build more muscle when looking to get into better shape or have a better body. There is some fear that the act of moving away from the brightly-coloured dumbbells will somehow make them massive and bulky, devoid of all femininity, overnight. This is a topic for another blog post but for now just know that: 1) it won’t – your physiology doesn’t work that way, I promise, and 2) having more muscle is great!

Here’s why:

The more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate (RMR) i.e the number of calories you burn by doing nothing at all, simply, you can eat more as a result.

Maintaining muscle mass is important for longevity and functionality in old age and is a major determinant of independence in later life. It’s not just about having big aesthetic muscles, it’s about being able to do day-to-day tasks without difficulty.
We begin to gradually lose muscle mass as we age, roughly after the age of 40, this is called sarcopenia and is a big factor in frailty and lack of independence in the elderly so it makes sense to keep as much as we can so we can stay strong and independent.

So if you don’t discriminate between fat loss and weight loss you could go on a low-calorie diet and do lots of cardio and put yourself into a large caloric deficit, sure you’d lose weight but a good proportion of it would be muscle loss as well as fat, which I hope you can see now is not a good thing.

“Brian, I see the light now, I don’t want to lose any muscle, how do I keep it while still losing fat?! Help!”

Glad to hear it. Now while some muscle loss while attempting to lose fat in a calorie deficit is inevitable, just like some fat gain is inevitable while in a calorie surplus to gain muscle, you can give yourself the best chance by:

1) Eating sufficient protein, 1.5-2g/kg of body weight depending on your goals

and,

2) Keep doing something that resembles strength training/intense resistance training to keep stimulating your muscles so that your body says “shit he keeps trying to pick this heavy thing up, God’s knows why? We better hold onto this muscle in case he tries to do it again soon!”

There’s more to it than this of course but if you do the above you’re off to a great start.

Fad diets and other factors that affect weight loss

Glycogen: This is how carbohydrates are stored in the body as energy reserves. Glycogen stores are found in the muscles and the liver. Each unit of glycogen has 3-4 units of water attached to it. So if you stop eating carbs, you’ll use up your glycogen and the associated water. This is one of the reasons low carb diets produce seemingly rapid weight loss early on but it’s not actually meaningful fat loss. Your weight will jump back up once you start refilling your glycogen again.

‘Teatoxes’: Many of these teas contain laxatives or diuretics which will cause weight loss yes, but for the wrong reasons…

Menstrual Cycle: Depending on the week of your cycle you’re in you can tend to retain more or less water, so you’ll appear heavier but remember it’s transient water weight, not fat. Follow the lads over at ‘Triage Method‘ for more on this sort of thing.

Stress: If you’re stressed out with higher levels of cortisol you can tend to hold more water and appear to be plateuded in terms of fat loss. Again, it’s just water weight , but stress management is a big factor in fat loss as well so it’s a good idea to try keep a handle on it.

Time of day, whether you’ve eaten or drunk, gone to the bathroom etc. All these factors play a role , which is why if you are weighing yourself as a measure of progress you want to control for as many variables as possible. So do it first thing in the morning after you wake up and go to the bathroom.

“Screw you scales! I’m gonna use these ways to measure my progress from now on!”

Progress photos: These are probably the best option to track progress, in the mirror you won’t notice the subtle changes day-to-day but photos taken 2-4 weeks apart will show off your hard work for sure.

Measurements: Positive body composition changes will be fairly evident when you consider things like waist circumferences or circumferences of the upper arms, legs or chest.

How your clothes fit: Need to start wearing a belt with your old jeans? T-shirt feeling tight around the chest and shoulders but looser around the midsection? Able to rock that dress now? These are all fine measures of progress.

Body-fat Percentage: While this might seem to be a good option considering we’re focused on losing fat, it can be a hard one to get right. The best and most accurate measures of body fat like underwater weighing and DEXA scans are fairly impractical and inaccessible generally. Skin fold calliper measurements are okay but you should get them done under the same conditions every time, by the same person. And it’s still just a number

Performance: Are you getting stronger in the gym or better at whatever activity it is you do? Great job! That’s progress, it’s not just all about how you look remember…

Sense of well-being: Are you feeling healthier or happier generally? Loving the process. That sense of comfort in your own skin? Don’t forget to include the mental progress as well as the physical, that shit is most important!

Weighing Scales: Okay so I know I’ve spent a good bit of time bashing the scales in this post BUT if you do want to use it, here is a better weigh (see what I did there..) than an arbitrary weigh-in once a week or so on a random day. If you want to use the scales, my advice would be to weigh yourself daily , yes daily, every morning as I mentioned earlier and then keep a record of your weight over time and see how it’s trending. Notice how it’s trending over the course of a few weeks or a month and compare that to your goals. Daily fluctuations are going to be a regular occurrence, you might be up some days, no change for some and then a drop, or any combination depending on how you’re eating so that’s why you need to get a bigger picture perspective of it.

By Bodyfirst Nutritionist Brian Ó HÁonghusa