How to Weigh and Measure Yourself
The Weigh Ins and Measurements
People often forget that weight isn’t the only measurement that should be recorded during weight loss. Even though a person may go in to a diet plan with weight loss being the focus of their goal, you should also record your measurements. We will cover both weight and measurements and how often you should do these.
Key point to understand before weighing yourself. You should understand that your weight can fluctuate sometimes quite drastically, and really often. I will quickly go over just a few of these factors in weight fluctuations.
1 – Heavier Toady than Yesterday?
A regularly Misunderstood fact of weight is that it changes all the time. Your weight can change from month to month, week to week, day to day, hour to hour, and even minute to minute. You can literally weigh your self in before going to bed and weigh less in the morning (even before regular morning routines) believe just me try it.
2 – Changing your diet. This one can have some pretty big effects on your weight.
Anytime you make any changes to your diet you can experience some major changes in weight. Things such as sodium and carbohydrates actually make your body retain water. With water weighing over a half pound per cup, this can add up pretty quickly. Usually when people begin changing their diet towards a healthier one, the first things to go are usually prepackaged and the easy to spot unhealthy foods. Many unhealthier foods are usually packed with sodium and carbohydrates (example of this just below). When you suddenly stop consuming salty and carb heavy foods you will many time experience a fast decrease of water weight. Understand that there is only so much water, don’t become discouraged when your weight loss slows.
Example:
One serving of pecans (about 20 halves) has about 196 Calories, 0mg of Sodium, 3.9g of Carbs, and 2.7g of Fiber. For those of you that count Carbs when you subtract 2.7g of Fiber to the Carbs, thats only 1.2 Carbs from your daily allowance. Anyways for those of you not counting carbs. Fiber is great and lowering your overall Carb intake is generally good.
Let compare them pecans to a single pecan donut
This donut has about 450 calories, 330mg Sodium, 48g of Carbs and 2g of Fiber.
With carbs and sodium helping you retain water, you can see how much water you may be retaining.
3 – The Stages of Weight Loss with Exercising. Your weight will usually go through 3 stages and number 1 will be a bit of recap of number 2 above but here they are.
First
Water Weight actually has a considerable effect on weight, and can cause sudden weight decreases and subtle weight increases that can add up in time.
Women may retain additional water for up to a week. For the short term you can omit the readings for this time frame. And, for the long term you can include these when you have numbers from previous months.
Second
After losing the first few pounds sometimes really fast, it can feel like you almost stop losing weight. Sometimes losing pounds here can slow down to almost zero, your current weight can also have an effect here. But the water weight can usually make this a pretty abrupt change.
This usually happens when you’re closer to your ideal weight. Click the link below to go to our ideal weight calculator.
Third
Gaining Weight for Wight Loss? This is the one that can sometimes make people quit, which is actually just misunderstood. When you decide to lift weights (or almost any exercise really) as your source of exercise you can sometimes experience a gain in weight do to building muscle mass. Depending on your current weight you can be gaining muscle mass quickly enough to counter the fat loss you are achieving. This is actually a great thing, this is why weight isn’t the only way you should be measuring your progress. During this time you will usually begin slimming down faster than you think, pounds maybe steady but inches will be flying away. Just as a side note. Weight lifting is a great way to lose weight. Increasing your muscle mass can Increase BMR (to learn about BMR click the link at the bottom of this page), this sorta means free calorie burning (even when you’re sleeping). Also, for the many that are afraid of Bulking up too much. With regular exercise or weightlifting most people will just become slimmer and muscles will become more defined. Muscle Builders require very rigorous training and very strict diets to achieve their physical appearance. So Lift them Weights!
Conclusion
After learning the above we recommend doing two things.
First
Weigh yourself everyday and keep track of your weight. Understanding that your weight can fluctuate several pounds, you should keep a record of your weight. You can work off your highest number and just keep working on lowering the highest number you record. For women, If your cycle is very consistent. You can work on the highest for a particular time frame or week, or just omit the time frame you are at your highest for a few days. Remember a gain in muscle mass will offset some weight loss in fat loss.
Second
Aside from weighing your self we highly recommend you keep a record of your measurements. You can sometimes notice changes in your measurement (losing inches) faster than changes in pounds. You can measure yourself less frequently, such as biweekly or even monthly. Women should account for changes in measurements during a cycle, it is best to omit weights and measurements during this time. Here are just a few measurements that I recommend.
Measurements List
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- Waist – About half inch above your belly button, usually smallest part of your waist.
- Hips – This is the largest part of your Waist area.
- Bust – Around your chest inline with the nipple.
- Chest – Just under your Bust.
- Upper Arm – Largest part of the arm above the elbow.
- Forearm – Largest Part of the arm below the elbow.
- Neck – measure your neck (this actually changes)
- Stomach – I find this one an important one because it can be hard to notice the changes sometimes, but the tape measure doesn’t lie.
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