Body Measurements: The Third way to Monitor Your Natural Weight Loss

Body Measurements are the third aspect of tracking your true natural weight loss.

On this page, I'll be talking about making sure to include body measurements as part of tracking your weight loss progress. In "Fat Loss vs Weight Loss" I stressed the importance of tracking more than one thing to gauge your weight loss progress.

When you lose weight naturally and healthily, you will have greater loss of inches than weight. Like body fat percentage, your body weight can plateau and your body measurements can change dramatically.

A very common occurrence is that a client can have their weight plateau or even go up a bit but still have certain body measurements reduce dramatically. In particular, the measurements of the waist, and hips. In all bodies, this area accumulates the greatest deposit of fat.

As your lean muscle develops and gets healthier, your total fat starts to reduce rapidly. So your waist and hips, where the greatest amount of fat is deposited, reduce is size more than other areas.

Because of this, when you lose weight naturally this is the area where your body measurements will change the most. I use this as a tracking tool to make sure natural weight loss is occurring.

When yo-yo dieting or starvation is used, or when diet pills or diuretics are used you do not see this phenomenon of the waist body measurements reducing. The reason why is because either muscle is decreasing rapidly or it is getting dehydrated and losing fluids, or the weight loss is only water loss.

When a man is lean and fit, his body develops a "V" shape. It can be a narrow V or a broad V. But it is a V nonetheless. Go to Youtube and type in any olympic event and you will see the general shape of men's bodies are V shaped.

For women, who are fit and lean, there is always an "hour-glass" shape to the body. The more athletic women become, the hourglass gets slim area but the hip is wider than men due to the larger pelvic bones. When women are at "normal" body fat percentage levels, the hour-glass shape is more pronounced.

One unique trait of body fat is that it can make all the bodies grow into the same shapes. Either apple shaped or pear shaped.

So as your body fat percentage reduces, the body measurements around the waist and hips change the most. This, however, does not occur when you lose weight the wrong way. When you use natural weight loss principles that I outline for you, you build muscle and lose fat and some of your biggest changes will come from your body measurements.

I want you to have the most encouragement as possible. When you lose inches, body fat percentage or body weight I want you to have immediate feedback.

But most importantly, I want to make sure you are not losing lean muscle mass. Only when you measure all these areas can you tell. Here's why:

You can lose lean muscle and body fat at the same time. This can be especially true to very obese. If you have over 100 pounds of fat you are carrying you build muscle to carry it. That is also why you feel winded when you go up a flight of steps. You are carrying an excess amount of weight.

But there comes a point, where the ratio of muscle loss to fat loss has to change to stay healthy. Where there is not a large amount of excess fat to carry around, the lean muscle can get smaller but it cannot keep getting smaller. Your lean muscle needs to stabilize to prevent yo-yo weight gains. There is no need for it to keep getting smaller with the natural weight loss way.

However, the fat can still keep reducing. To make sure muscle is not the cause of weight loss, you want to track body fat percentage AND your measurements. You want to lose inches more than you lose weight. When your waist and hip measurements are reducing faster than others you are definitely going in the right direction. Lose inches together with your body fat percentage and your

For men especially, the chest, arm and thigh measurements can even increase, while the waist and hip measurements can be reducing a lot. This is evidence of an increase in lean muscle mass and a decrease in body fat and visceral fat. Visceral fat is fat that is not under the skin but within the body cavity and surrounding the internal organs. Visceral means "relating to or affecting one or more internal organs of the body"^[1]

Here Are the Body Measurements to Track:

How to Measure

Be relaxed when taking a measurement. Don't be stiff or try to flex your muscles or suck your stomach in. Just relax.

For the upper arms, chest, hips and thighs, you look for the widest part. For example, with your upper arms, move the tape up and down a bit. You will find an area where the measurement is largest. That is the measurement to take. You will get the hang of this in a short period of time.

With the waist, you want to do the opposite. Move the tape up and down to find the narrowest measurement. That is the one you want. Again, remember to relax. You don't have to rush the waist measurement getting smaller. You will be surprised at how quickly it reduces in size.

Add Up the Total!

Every day, you add up the total inches. Don't worry about nitpicking specific measurements. I am interested in the total inches changing. Just like the change in body fat percentage. We want to lose inches. Even if your body weight is not lowering, you want the fat percentage and the corresponding loss of inches.