Building a better body is like baking a cake. From scratch. With a vague recipe. And lackluster measuring devices.
You need to experiment, and you need to keep track of two things:
- How you bake the cake (recipe)
- How the finished cake tastes (result)
You need to keep a detailed record of your recipe, which consists of a combination of (a) your exercise habits and (b) your eating habits. I’ll show you how to track your food intake and keep a training log later.
Your finished cake — the result of your recipe — is your body composition. You need to measure the amount of muscle mass and body fat you have on a regular basis, for an obvious first reason: to see if your recipe is good.
You need to make sure you’re getting the results you’re supposed to get. Because if you aren’t getting the results you’re supposed to get and you don’t know it, you’re going to drive a 6th of the way across the country in the wrong direction.
You want to find out whether or not your recipe is “working” as soon as you (reliably) can, so you can make adjustments and (potentially) get things moving in the right direction sooner than you otherwise would.
Of course, this is worst case scenario. Best case scenario: your results indicate a good recipe, which will be a jolt of motivation. This is working.
How to taste the cake.
You will probably “taste the cake” informally once you start eating and exercising. You’ll look in the mirror from time to time without a shirt on. You’ll notice if your belt or clothes fit differently. This certainly isn’t useless feedback, but you want to standardize the process.
You might be wondering about body fat calipers or bioelectric impedance scales. For the most part, these measurements are unreliable to the point of worthlessness.
There are three REAL ways to measure your body fat percentage: DEXA, BodPod, and hydrostatic weighing. In order to get one of these tests done, you have to find a facility with the means, and then you need to have the money (or insurance) that’ll cover the fees.
Strike one.
Strike two:
Getting these tests done in a time efficient way, for feedback’s sake, is almost impossible.
Don’t get me wrong…
If you can get these tests done every so often, do so. But, if not, don’t worry. You have a faster feedback machine at your fingertips. Keeping an eye on your weight, your reflection, your circumference, and your strength will tell you if things are going in the right direction… or not. Which brings us to troubleshooting.
FIRST:
TRACK YOUR WEIGHT.
Weigh yourself every morning, preferably before you eat or drink anything (to standardize the measurement). Record the number somewhere, alongside the date. Maybe you keep a notebook and pen by the scale. Maybe you take a picture of the number with your phone. Doesn’t matter.
I recommend importing this data into a spreadsheet once per week. This will make it easier to calculate your weekly average (which is more important than your daily number). I built a minimalist spreadsheet for this you can use:
Input your daily weight into the colored cells. Your average for the week will be calculated. After, enter your average weight in the appropriate cell, to create a running weekly log.
SECOND:
TRACK YOUR REFLECTION.
In addition to keeping an eye on your weight, you should also take pictures of yourself on a regular basis — once per week, at minimum. Take pictures from the front, side, and back (preferably upper-body and lower-body if possible). I like using relaxed pictures better, but a set of both flexing and relaxing won’t hurt. If you only wanna do one, keep it relaxed.
To standardize the pictures, use the same camera. Take the pictures in the same room with the same lighting. Wear the same clothes — less clothes equals more better. Keep the day prior consistent as best you can. In other words, if you take pictures every Friday, try to keep every Thursday consistent.
If you hit the bar Thursday night (and you usually don’t), you can bet you’ll be bloated in your Friday pictures.
Also, think about creating a separate folder on your phone for these pictures. Remember when you were showing grandma some pictures on your phone? “Just swipe right,” you said, hoping that it wouldn’t lead to that one picture of you snorting coke off of a Giraffe’s scrotum. Or whatever.
THIRD:
TRACK YOUR ORBIT.
Tracking your waist circumference is optional, yet VERY useful. Wrap a flexible measuring tape around your belly button. Make a perfect circle; make sure the tape is parallel to the floor. If the line is crooked, your measurement will be, too. Pull the tape so that it fits to the skin, but doesn’t squeeze it into your fat. And make sure you aren’t flexing. Relax.
(If you carry the majority of your fat around your hips and legs, you should also track your hip circumference. Measure the largest portion of your hips — usually right around the mid-butt. Make a perfect circle; make sure the tape is parallel to the floor; pull the tape so that it fits to the skin, but doesn’t squeeze it into your fat; make sure you aren’t flexing — relax.)
As with weighing yourself and taking pictures, do your best to standardize the process. Get your circumference measurements on the same day every week. Do your best to standardize the day prior.
Decoding the data.
You are not a number, yet numbers are a useful ally when piecing together a picture of your body composition… as long as you know how to decode the data.
You’re here to lose fat. In a vacuum, fat loss would lead to weight loss. You’re also here to build muscle. In a vacuum, muscle growth would lead to weight gain.
Unfortunately, human physiology isn’t owned by Hoover (the vacuum company). Weight loss may indicate muscle loss. Weight gain may indicate fat gain. Stagnant weight may indicate both fat loss and muscle growth… or no fat loss and no muscle growth.
Decoding the data is tough.
I’m here to help.
First, let’s take a look at what to expect for fat loss. (Because fat loss comes first.) If you’re using a conservative deficit, you should lose one pound of fat per week, on average. This won’t always manifest as one pound of scale weight lost per week, and there are a few reasons why…
FIRST REASON
As mentioned, muscle mass is also “weight.” You could be losing fat and building muscle, which would stalemate the scale.
SECOND REASON
Your weight can fluctuate by pounds on a daily basis for both non-muscle and non-fat reasons. Remember, your “weight” is a measurement of everything inside of you. As they say, the fastest way to lose weight is to chop off an arm.
Some of the constituents that create your “weight” aren’t very stable, like fluid levels, for instance. If you ate a burrito loaded with sodium last night your body is probably holding more water today, as compared to yesterday, which can result in you weighing more. Or perhaps some of said burrito is stuck in your intestines. Boom. You might weigh a few more pounds.
You lose one pound of fat in a week, yet weigh the same because of “other” totally normal physiological situations, or because…
THIRD REASON
Fat loss (and weight loss) isn’t linear. Even if you correct for every secondary physiological factor and were only measuring the amount of body fat you had, you wouldn’t see an orderly and discrete drop in weight like:
Monday = 200 pounds
Tuesday = 199.85 pounds
Wednesday = 199.70 pounds
Thursday 199.55 pounds…
In the real world, fat loss is wiggly. You might weigh the same for a few days (even weeks), then notice a large(r) drop one day. So if you don’t see the scale move in the right direction in a linear fashion, don’t freak out. The general rule of thumb: don’t panic until you’ve gone one entire month without progress.
But even more practical, don’t freak over small daily fluctuations in weight. The nonlinear aspect combined with fact that will have daily, if you look day-to-day will go crazy. take average over week, deep breaths, and give your body time to do stuff.
EXPECT:
If you’re a total noob, you will probably see a general downward trend in weight when you first start. And don’t be surprised if you lose more than one pound every week for the first few weeks. This “extra” weight loss might be some fat loss, but it probably has more to do with fluid loss.
The average will trend towards a one pound loss of fat per week (until you reach lower body fat levels).
The reason for this downward trend: in general, you can lose fat much quicker than you can build muscle. Where average fat loss is around one pound per week, average muscle growth is around one pound per month.
Granted, some noobs are able to add muscle more rapidly, at first. This honeymoon muscle building phase usually goes by the name “noob gains.”
“How do I know?”
If you want the best idea of what your weight indicates, you need to use more data.
First, how do you look?
You should notice fat loss visually. Probably not week to week, but definitely monthly. You won’t be as puffy and jiggly. You’ll see more muscle definition.
Unfortunately, visual data has a downside. A lot of people losing fat think they’re losing muscle, because they look smaller and scrawnier. The truth, however, is that they never had much muscle to begin with, and, with their fat loss, they’re simply revealing their unflattering frame. MOST PEOPLE OVERESTIMATE HOW MUCH MUSCLE THEY HAVE UNDERNEATH THEIR FAT.
This is why I also recommend…
Second, how circular are you?
Tracking your waist circumference is great because (a) skinny-fat dudes tend to carry a large portion of their fat around their waist, and (b) your waist isn’t heavily influenced by muscle growth. In other words…
- If you’re losing weight and your waist circumference is shrinking, you’re probably losing fat.
- If you’re gaining weight and your waist circumference is growing, you’re probably gaining fat.
Of course, there’s gray area. If you’re losing weight and your waist circumference is staying the same, you can be losing fat from other parts of your body, so don’t pull the fire alarm without also considering…
Third, how’s your strength?
As mentioned, you’re going to be tracking your recipe in addition to your result. One component of your recipe is getting stronger through “supergravity” training.
General rule of thumb: if you’re getting stronger, or, at the very least, you aren’t getting weaker, then you can assume your muscle mass is hanging in there.
- If you’re losing weight and your strength is stable or improving, you’re probably losing fat.
- If you’re losing weight and your strength is declining, you’re might be losing muscle.
- If you’re gaining weight and your strength is stable or improving, you’re probably gaining muscle.
- If you’re gaining weight and your strength is declining, you’re probably not building muscle.
As with all other data points, this is anything but an exact science. Some lifts are “weight” sensitive. For instance, most upper-body presses have a strong correlation with “weight.”
Meaning, the more you weigh, the more you’ll be able to bench press and overhead press. So if you’re losing weight and these lifts are losing strength, don’t automatically assume you’re losing muscle mass.
On the other hand, some lifts have a strong correlation with “weight” in the opposite direction. Your chin-up should improve as you lose weight, because you’re lifting less weight (fat). So if you’re losing weight and your chin-ups are getting worse, then that may be a red flag.
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¿BUT WHAT ABOUT?
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There’s no easy way to handle. Guessing game. With experiencd eye, can point things and not freak. But solo, do best you can.
if you can get bfat test, go do it. more data is great. still doesn’t replace weigh, pics, and measuring. b/c not as often.
and with easier more frequent, need to decode without sabotaging. imight be worth reaching out. here to help. IN THE DISCORD THAT’S EXTRA BOIIIIII