Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How to Track Your Body Composition in 3 Simple Steps

Episode Date: January 23, 2018

Let’s face it. A big reason we work out is to look good. Yes, there are many other benefits beyond the physical, but what we see in the mirror every day matters. A lot. That’s why a big part of staying motivated to stick to our meal plans and training programs is seeing progress. And this is where the mirror can mislead. You see, it takes longer than most of us realize to see marked changes in our appearance, and when the squishy parts don’t transform as quickly as we’d hoped, it’s easy to lose heart. It can feel like all that work in the kitchen and gym is more or less for naught. Well, if you learn to track your body composition properly, you can avoid these problems because you’ll know exactly what is or isn’t happening with your physique, and you’ll be able to then adjust your diet and exercise accordingly. It’s pretty easy, too. There are just three steps: 1. Weigh yourself daily and calculate weekly averages. 2. Take weekly body measurements. 3. Take weekly progress pictures. That’s all you have to do to always have an accurate snapshot of your body composition and a clear idea of which direction things are going in. Let’s take a closer look at each. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series where I answer one common question quickly and simply because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less. And that's what I do in these episodes. In this video slash podcast, we're going to talk tracking progress, tracking your body composition. And this is a good one because it is something that I'm asked fairly frequently about. And if you do what most people do, which is just weigh yourself semi regularly, then you can really miss the forest for the trees. And you can think that you are not making progress when you are. You can think that you're actually moving backward when you're not. And you can also think that you are actually making more progress than you really are if you

only rely on the scale. And if you rely on what you just see in the mirror, that can be problematic too because regardless of whether you're trying to cut fat or add muscle or do both at the same time, it takes quite a bit longer than most people realize to see marked changes in your physique. And we also tend to focus on the squishiest parts of our body, the parts that we like the least, which for most of us are the stubborn fat areas, right? So for guys, it's usually the abs and particularly the lower abs and the love handles. And for women, it's usually the butt, the hips, the thighs. So we kind of zoom in just on those areas. And those areas are generally the last to get lean. And this is, of course, in the context of fat loss. And if we don't see enough progress in those areas,

then we can become demotivated and miss what is happening everywhere else. And that's why I recommend that you do three things for tracking your progress with your body composition. Tracking your progress in the gym is of course just keeping track of numbers. But as far as your body comp goes, I recommend that you weigh yourself daily and then calculate weekly averages. I recommend that you take weekly body measurements and I recommend that you also take weekly progress pictures. If you do those three things, you will have a very accurate weekly snapshot of what is going on with your body comp and you will be able to adjust your diet and training accordingly if necessary. So let's take a quick closer look at each of those things. So the first one, weighing yourself daily and calculating weekly averages. Now, these days, most people are way too focused on weight. They want to lose weight. They say they live and die by the scale.

like to shift the discussion more toward body composition, which is why I'm always talking about it and writing about it in that weight doesn't matter nearly as much as how you look and how you look is dictated by your body composition, not your weight. And in many cases, what you think is going to be your optimal weight based on how you look is not. And especially for women, many women think that they have to weigh a lot less than they do to look the way that they want. And the reason for that is the way that most women want to look requires adding a fair amount of muscle, quite a bit more muscle than they realize. I would say the average woman getting into resistance training needs to add probably 10 to 15 pounds of muscle in the right places on her body to have the look that

she wants. That plus a low-ish body fat percentage, somewhere around 18 to 20% equals that athletic, but still curvy, sexy look that most women want. And that often means weighing quite a bit more than most women realize. If you were to take your average woman and tell her, let's say you take your average skinny woman getting into resistance training, you tell her you're going to have to gain about 25, 20 to 25 pounds to look the way that you want. Because remember, muscle comes with water and glycogen. So in the end, you actually weigh quite a bit more. She would go running in the other direction, right? But that's the reality. And so first it's, there's a reorientation that needs to occur regarding weight. That said, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't pay attention to our weight at all, because of course it is an important

indicator of what's going on with our body composition. So for example, if you need to lose fat, then ultimately your weight is going to go down to some degree, unless you have very little fat to lose and you are starting weightlifting or resistance training for the first time, then who knows, maybe in the end, your weight actually might be a bit higher. But for the average person that has to lose quite a bit of fat, even if they start weightlifting, which is going to obviously counteract some of the weight loss to do, you have the fat that you're losing, which is reducing your weight. Then you have the muscle that you are building, which is increasing your weight. The average

person though, let's say at the end of their first year is going to weigh quite a bit less, even though they're going to have lost a lot of fat and gained a fair amount of muscle. And so if we need to track our weight, then how do we best do it? Now, what most people do, of course, is they weigh themselves every day or they just weigh themselves every week or two, every seven, 10, maybe even 14 days. And both of those methods can lead you astray because in the first case, if you weigh yourself daily, you can quickly drive yourself crazy because weight loss is not a linear, at least not a perfectly linear process. Your weight is going to fluctuate daily based on how much water you're retaining, based on how much glycogen is in your body, which of course ties back to your diet,

where your carbs are at, based on bowel movements or lack thereof. And so just because your weight is slightly, or in some cases, even significantly up or down from the previous day, you know, it doesn't mean that you've actually gained or lost any fat or muscle. And by the same token, if you only weigh yourself every week or so, you can just have a bad weigh-in. You can have a false positive weigh-in where you think you've gained fat, but you actually haven't. Like maybe your sodium intake was just higher the day before. And so now you're retaining more water. You step on the scale. It's been 10 days and it looks like you're two pounds heavier and you freak out because you think that you are now two pounds fatter than you were seven or 10 days ago when you're not. You may have actually lost a pound of fat in that period, but you just missed it because you happen to eat more salt than usual the day before.

And those are the reasons why I recommend that you weigh yourself every day and then don't sweat your daily weigh-ins and calculate an average every week. Every seven days, calculate the average of the previous seven days and watch that average. That average is going to tell you what is really happening with your weight. So for example, let's say you weigh in Monday at 175 pounds and then you weigh in Tuesday at 174 pounds and then Wednesday is a bad day, 176 pounds, Thursday 174 again, Friday, 172, Sunday, 173. There's a full week, right? So your total weekly weigh-ins are 1,217 pounds divided by seven gives you an average of 173.9 pounds for the week. Then you go the next week the same way and look at that average. If the average is higher, then it's fair to assume that you truly do weigh more due to factors that aren't just overnight,

like again, water, glycogen, bowel movements, and so forth that you have either gained some muscle or gained some fat or both. And if your average weight of your next weigh-in is lower, then it's fair to assume that you've lost some fat or some muscle or both. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well,

please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay, so the next tip is the measurements. The reason why this is important, because even when you track it correctly, your weight alone doesn't tell you how your body composition is changing.

It just tells you that your weight is changing. It doesn't tell you whether you are gaining muscle or losing fat. And this can be particularly confusing to people that are new to weightlifting because of newbie gains, the honeymoon phase, where your body is hyper responsive to weightlifting and gains muscle very quickly. And as most people that are getting into fitness these days, at least, are getting into it to lose weight and to lose fat, it can be discouraging if they don't understand what's going on when they don't see much changing on the scale. Again, because most people are very just conditioned to live and die by weight and by the scale. Even though they might like what they see in the gym, they're getting stronger and they even might like what they see in the mirror.

They seem to be looking better, but what the hell is going on with weight? They don't get it. And that's where body measurements can be tremendously useful because they give you a complete picture of what is happening with your body composition. Now, if you want to go all in and you want to keep tabs, especially on muscle gain, then you can measure various parts of your body. You can be measuring your biceps. You can be measuring your shoulder circumference. You can be measuring your chest circumference, your thighs, and so forth. And if you want to do that, head over to mostfullife.com and search for ideal, I believe. And you'll see an article I wrote that I don't remember the exact title, but it is along the lines of how to build the ideal male physique. Check that article out. And even if you're a woman, check it out. And it tells you how to

take each of those body part measurements properly. I don't want to go through it here because I think it's unnecessary and it'll just add too much time. But there are two body measurements that I want to talk about in this video in particular, because I recommend that anyone working on fat loss, keep them. And one is a caliper measurement, which is going to help you keep tabs on how your body fat in particular is changing. And just click on a link to a video. It's going to be up here somewhere that I made on how to do this and the caliper I myself like to use for it. And I also recommend that you keep tabs on your waist circumference because it is a very reliable indicator of fat gain and fat loss. So if your

waist is consistently expanding, you're loss. So if your waist is consistently expanding, you're gaining fat. If your waist is consistently shrinking, you are losing fat, regardless of what you might see in the scale or in the mirror. And it's very easy to do. All you need is a measuring tape. And to do it, you simply stand with your stomach relaxed, no sucking it in, and you wrap the tape around your waist like a belt slightly above your belly button, which is your natural waistline, and you pull the measuring tape snug, but not so much to depress the skin. And there you go. That's your measurement. In terms of frequency, once a week is fine because you're not going to see the fluctuations in your

waist circumference that you can see, at least relatively speaking, in your body weight. So once a week is fine. And that again, will help you understand very clearly what's going on with your body comp and with your fat loss or fat gain in particular. And the third and final tip is to take weekly progress pictures. And this is important because let's face it, at least 50% of the reason why we go through all this trouble is to look a certain way. In the end, all of this fitness fuss needs to translate into visual gratification. And weekly progress pictures give us that gratification. If you don't take pictures, then inevitably what's going to happen is you are going to miss the subtle improvements in your physique because when you look at yourself every day,

it's hard to see the little changes that are occurring every day. And therefore, you can think that nothing is really changing when in fact you are moving forward. A photo gallery is perfect for that because when you have all of your pictures side by side and you can start looking through them and scrolling through them, you will quickly see how far you are coming. Now, I do have a few tips though for taking good pictures. So the first one is to use the same camera, use the same lighting, and use the same background every time. Another one is to take the pictures at the same time every day. And I recommend that you take them first thing in the morning after you have used the bathroom and every day. And I recommend that you take them first thing in the morning after you have used the bathroom and before you eat. I recommend that you take both

flexed and unflexed pictures. You can skip the flexed if you want, but hey, flexing is fun. So take flex and unflexed pictures. And lastly, take pictures from the front, the back and both sides and try to get everything in the frame, head to toe. Okay, so the bottom line here is that a smart person once said that if you can't measure something and you can't express it in numbers, then your knowledge and understanding of it is going to be lacking. And I agree. I think we should apply that to our fitness journeys by objectifying and by quantifying and tracking our progress in terms of numbers, you know, with our workouts and numbers and pictures with our bodies. That way we can let hard data guide us and drive our decisions as opposed to hunches, suspicions, or worries. this podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also

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