2. Body Measurements

Bodyweight is essential for maximizing control over your transformation, but bodyweight solely will not tell the whole story of your body composition. This is because simply weighing yourself on a scale does not tell the whole story of what’s really happening with your composition, the muscle to fat ratio.

If you look at the Before and After Example above, the actual weight difference is only 7 pounds. The true difference is the picture to the left, my body fat percentage was a lot higher. In the picture to the right, my muscle mass percentage is higher.

If you’re new to training or new to training Optimally, it’s very possible and highly likely that if you follow this program correctly, you’ll experience fast muscle gains and sometimes weight gain, while at the same time, losing fat, while you’re in a caloric deficit.

Let me give you an example:
Let’s you’re 6 feet, 205lbs at 23% body fat.
You’ve never lifted weights before, and similar to me, you store the majority of fat in your lower stomach area. Your goal is to lose 18 pounds, and build some muscle in the process. You start this program and you’re training consistently for 3 weeks, following the nutrition plan, and making a lot of fat loss progress and the number on the scale is going down as a result. Bring out the champagne…

But all of a sudden, you start to notice the scale isn’t moving as fast anymore…

This is d This is due to the muscle gaining proc o the muscle gaining process starting

Fat and Muscle are not one in the same, and they both hold weight.

But if you’re solely relying on the scale to track progress, it conditions you to think that if the number isn’t going down, you aren’t losing fat.

Yes, you may have temporarily stopped losing weight, but you’re now losing fat and gaining muscle… Which is the real indicator of success. This is something that the scale can not track. So by tracking your measurements, you’ll be able to more accurately see your progress. And if you’re losing fat, building muscle, looking and feeling better (the entire objective), is your weight really what’s most important? I’ll answer that. Hell no.

You can take as many measurements as you want, but make sure you’re taking at least these three:

Women will want to measure their waist, hips, and thighs.

Men will want to measure their chest, waist, and thighs.

Now let’s learn how to track our body composition progress.

Measure once per week or once every two weeks on the same day every week. Example would be every Saturday or every other Saturday. Use inches, rounded to the nearest 0.1 cm.
Do it under the same circumstances: Same time, in the morning, after using the bathroom, after weighing yourself, before eating or drinking
Don’t measure your midsection sucking your gut in, instead tense it like you’re getting ready to get punched in the stomach or the feeling of going number #2 haha.
The same goes for measuring each other body part, do it while tensed (as if you were preparing to take a punch, that type of tensing.)

Sometimes the scale won’t go down but measurements will. That’s an easy sign that you’re losing body fat and potentially building muscle.