When you’re working towards a weight loss goal, your aim should be simple. You should want to lose weight, lose fat, build muscle, and get lean. The only way to know if you’re making progress is to have measurement data that backs it up.
So, you’re going to need to measure and keep track of your progress overtime. Luckily, Cronometer, if you use it, makes this easy by allowing you to add your biometrics right into the app. To add body metrics to Cronometer, just choose “Add Biometric” instead of “Add Food.”
For your initial measurements, you should to take the following biometrics:
- Weight
- Waist
- Chest
- Biceps
- Thighs
- Body Fat
- Picture
Always take your body weight measurements first thing in the morning, after you void yourself. Your weight fluctuates during the day based on what you eat, how much sweat you lose, and other things. So, taking your measurements in the mornings will get your best readings. Also take them naked or in similar underwear.
When you take other measurements of your body take them using the measuring tape and calipers and in millimeters. Millimeters is a better indicator than inches when you’re trying to measure small changes.
- Step on a body weight scale and add your weight.
- Pull your measuring tape around your waist, making sure it’s parallel with the ground and over your navel and take your reading.
- Pull your measuring tape around your chest, making sure it’s parallel with the floor and over your nipples and take your reading.
- Pull your measuring tape around both biceps, making sure it’s vertical and over your peaks and take your readings.
- Pull your measuring tape around both your thighs. Try to start your measurement halfway between your groin and knee, but wherever you start it, take that measurement so you can be consistent in future measurements. Make sure the measuring tape is parallel to the floor and take your measurement.
- For body fat, you’re only trying to get a measurement of your progress. It won’t be an official percentage number since there are many ways to calculate a body fat percentage using calipers, including multisite measurement calculations. And depending on who is doing the measuring, the number will be different. For your purpose, you only really want to see the fat around your waist go down over time. So, you’re going to pinch the fat around your supra-iliac region while with your body relaxed and then take a millimeter reading of your fat.
- Take a relaxed and front-facing flexed picture. Take as many as you want but take at least one and try to keep the lighting the same over the course of your transformation. You don’t want to lie to your future self so, it’s good to have both types of pictures for your starting point.
And that’s it for measurements. You shouldn’t have to take any measurements for complicated than this. If you have access to a facility with a DEXA machine, which I’ll discuss in the next article, then I would make it a primary measuring device. Otherwise, the body measurements above works well to track over your body transformation time frame.
