Most people only focus on one thing when it comes to fitness, their weight. And why not, scales are everywhere. They are accessible and acceptable. However, because weight can fluctuate vastly for a variety of reasons, it is not your best predictor of fitness or progress.
Weight can be an arbitrary number when it comes to overall fitness. It does not take into account your healthy muscle, body frame or cardiovascular health. You can be overfat and fit, just as you can be at an ideal weight and unfit.
Even worse is the BMI or body mass index. This is a number derived from your height and weight, giving you an overall number that represents your total body mass. It has the same flaws as using only your weight as a guide. A muscular body builder with only 10 percent body fat would fall into the obese range because his “mass” is greater than the recommended 25. Even though it’s healthy mass, but the BMI scale does not take that into account.
We need to begin to look beyond the scale, height/weight charts and BMI to determine actual fitness. It is your fitness level, not your weight that most directly affects your functional health status.
Being slightly overfat with a healthy lifestyle is preferable to being at a normal weight and having unhealthy habits. With that said, being overfat has its own issues such as increased risk for heart disease, diabetes, joint problems and a whole host of other issues.
Society and the media sell people on the idea that they must be skinny and have abs of steel in order to be fit. This unrealistic standard causes many people to take the wrong approach, in an attempt to achieve what may not even be possible.
It is time to empower REAL people with helpful tools to better gauge their actual fitness. I fully believe that if people took a more active role in monitoring their fitness, along with adopting a more realistic goal, they would begin to enjoy the process of maintaining health. So let’s look at five more beneficial ways to monitor your fitness:
1. Body fat to muscle ratio analysis
2. Heart rate monitoring
3. Pedometers & timed distances
4. Waist to hip ratio & measurements
5. Continuous body-monitoring products
In Part II I will discuss ways two through five, but this in lesson I will focus on option number one, which is a top-notch way for regular people to gauge fitness progress. No matter what your weight says, your goal should be to lose body fat and increase your lean muscle. With this approach your weight takes care of itself.
Many of those I work with have a higher fat percentage than muscle percentage. This is a huge problem. When they finally reach their tipping point, where muscle is greater than fat, they feel a major sense of accomplishment, one that fuels their ongoing efforts. This analysis of fat to muscle ratio allows them to see the actual fruits of their labor.
But measuring that would be too complicated right? Not necessarily, there are many ways you can learn your fat to muscle ratio. The Gold standard is underwater measurement. Not many people I know would be able to opt for this method. Another method is using body calipers to gauge body fat. This is a fairly accurate measure depending on the skill of the tester, so this option is also less appealing. The easiest way is through a method called bio-impedance.
Body impedance is measured when a safe electrical signal is passed through the body using the hands, feet or both. The user feels nothing. The impedance is greatest in the fat tissues, which contains 10-20% water, while the mass without fat, contains 70-75% water. This low water content allows the signal to pass more easily through the fatty areas.
By using the impedance measurements along with other factors such as a person's height and weight, gender and age it is possible to calculate the percentage of body fat, fat-free mass or muscle, hydration level, and other body composition values.
This is a simple way to track your fitness and it provides a much better indication than weight alone. These devices can be found in some scales, and in body composition analysis machines, which can be hand-held, step-on, or hand/foot combination devises. In comparison tests, their measurements were quite comparable and proved to be accurate in most users.
More advanced body composition machines, like the Omeron, can tell you your visceral fat percentage, (fat stored around the internal organs) body age, and resting metabolism. These devices can be purchased for under $100 and can prove to be a wise investment for anyone wanting to monitor and maintain their physical fitness.
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