Measure Progress to Guarantee Success

Positive results (ie, changes in body shape and weight), especially in the beginning stages of a program, can occur more easily and rapidly, as long as consistency with lifestyle and nutritional habits is present. Sometimes, even if weight loss is the primary goal, changes in body composition (ie, fat to lean body mass ratio) can become apparent faster than scale weight changes, and this is more likely in populations who have never trained – properly – with weights before, since muscle may be gained while losing fat, in the beginning, leading to changes in appearance (especially as seen by friends and family), but not necessarily in scale weight. This can be especially true in some males gifted with a genetic ability to grow and carry larger amounts of muscle than the average person.

Eventually, however, changes in scale weight will be an important part of most peoples' progress, unless they are underweight or already starting out at a low body-fat percentage. The main point is that, just as with weight training, we need consistent metrics we can measure and track in order to ensure we are making progress; sometimes our own instincts and visual presumptions fool us, while unbiased measurements provide us with data.

Why are Body-Fat Measurements Important

After the initial stages of body composition changes, when weight on the scale is a priority, every person should strive to at least maintain – or even gain more – lean body mass (ie, muscle), in order to prevent a number of both age and weight-loss related outcomes that negatively affect one's health and lifespan. Less muscle will usually lead to less metabolic activity (ie, less calories burned), less metabolic flexibility (the ability to feel strong and energetic during periods in life when lifestyle, nutrition and stress are not able to be controlled completely), and less bone and joint tissue mass, which increases the risk of both injury, joint tissue disease and less enjoyable movement from day to day, decrease quality of life.

Having your body-fat measured every 1-6 months (depending on your starting point, goals, and expectations) can help ensure you maintain, improve, or at least slow the loss of your lean body mass as you age, lose weight, or try to maintain a healthy and active lifestyle.

How WE Measure Body-Fat

At The Healthy Gym, we use a 12-spot analysis which helps provide more information and create a more accurate and consistent measurement with which we can compare in the future. We have performed thousands of these tests making it a very viable option for most people, as an alternative to more expensive and invasive methods.

How Else Can you Track and ensure your Progress

Using the scale and circumference measurements are common and useful ways to track progress, especially long term. As long as they are used consistently by the same person, at the same time of day, same clothing, etc, they can be very useful to track, especially if tracking your own progress at home. They cannot accurately tell you if you have gained or lost muscle or fat, unless they are combined with the tips explained below for more accuracy.

While having your body-fat checked is more accurate than guessing, there are other ways you can be more confident that your dietary efforts are not in vain. For example, making sure you are weight training, properly, 2-3 times each weight, while tracking your progress and consistently improving your strength with properly performed compound movements, will help ensure your muscle mass is increasing during the initial phases, and at least maintained as you get closer to your goal. In addition, making sure protein intake is sufficient to recover from your training efforts and the rest of your diet supports energy, hormones and overall metabolic health, will help. Finally, ensuring outside stressors are controlled and maintaining a healthy sleep schedule will create a more favourable environment for muscle gain and fat loss; when trying to lose weight, while the scale will say the same thing in the presence of a caloric deficit, poor sleep and more stress will lead to less fat loss and more muscle loss, which is going to create an uphill battle moving forward.

Who can benefit?

All members of The Healthy Gym have to option of frequent body-fat assessments, included with all of our programs, if it is something they are comfortable with. Non-members can also sign up to have just this important metric tracked as they progress with their health and fitness journey on their own.

If you would like to schedule a body-fat assessment, please contact us here.