How Not Tracking Your Results Could Be The Road To Nowhere

Dear friend,

Many times in the past I got emails like this:

“Hi Oliver,

I just started with my fat loss diet a few weeks ago, but it
seems that since 2 weeks I am not losing any further weight –
what can I do?”

STOP

What does it mean to lose weight?

What is this weight?

Water – muscles or fat?

And the letter goes on…

“It seems I started losing muscles as well, because I already
lost ½ inch on my arms…”

Again – What is this weight?

Water – muscles or fat?

Probably you will think “is he unable to read? – he lost ½ inch
on his arms – so it must be muscles”.

But this is not the truth. It can be muscles, but it can be fat
or water as well.

Weight and inches are not the same as muscles

Wow – bold statement but this is the god honest truth. Or would
you say that if you lost 2 inches on your waist it must be
muscles?

Well – I bet you would say “hey if I am losing 2 inches on my
waist it must be fat”. While this is on most cases right it is
also right for your arms and your chest and all other body parts.

Look – your body doesn’t store all his fat for the “bad times”
on your waist. Probably your body prefers to store his fat on
your waist but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t store it anywhere
else.

In fact you will find your body fat all over your body. Okay I
am a real life man and know that only a minority of muscle
building enthusiasts like me have a problem with some extra
inches on their arms even if it is fat.

But fact is – you cannot decide where you want to lose fat. It’s
your bodies decision and there is nothing you can do about that.

But now I want to come back to what you should do if you want to
lose fat. It’s really easy and probably you are already doing
this:

Tracking your body fat levels where your care about

Tracking your body fat levels is essential on any fat loss diet.
But what is the right way?

The right way is always the most reliable way!

But what is the most reliable way?

To answer this question I want to ask you what kind of body fat
you care about and want to get rid off?

Some body fat stored somewhere inside of you or the body fat
anybody sees at the surface under your skin?

Well I bet it is the second one and this is exactly the point
where you should measure your body fat. You should measure your
skin fold thickness by using a body fat caliper.

Nothing fancy like body fat scales is as reliable or as cheap as
good old body fat calipers.

It seems half of the fitness world is using some kind of
electronic body fat measuring tools. But I say – it’s a waste of
time and money if you build up your muscles as well.

You can find it in any manual I know of: “this scale is not
intended for people involved in a muscle building workout
routine”, but anybody seems to ignore this.

These electronic tools are calibrated with data of people who
have average body fat and muscle levels. But if you workout with
weights you don’t have an average body composition.

How will I know?

I tested several electronic measuring tools on some of my
personal training clients with very low body fat levels and
washboard abs. Depending on this measuring tools – all had more
than 10% body fat – one even had over 27% body fat on one of
these electronic tools. Could you think of having washboard abs
with more than 27% body fat?

No way!

So I want to come back to the body fat calipers. These are some
great tools to measure your progress when it comes to losing body
fat.

If you measure – always use the same formula to calculate your
body fat levels. There are a few different formulas out there
and they all give different results. But the most important thing
is the measurement itself. So if you lost one millimeter on your
waist skin fold – you lost some kind of fat on your waist.

Best regards,

Oliver Wolter

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About The Author
Oliver Wolter is a world renowed fitness and bodybuilding expert. He is the author of the X-Size (www.x-size.com) weight training computer software and the Perfect Six-Pack (www.fat-burning-ab-workout.com) fatburning book. He is also the author of different fitness/bodybuilding related sites like Muscle Building Net.

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