Weight Loss Tip: no.2322

Measuring tape is a great tool for seeing how weight loss is going if you don’t have, or want to use, a scale.

Care to guess why?

Yup, measuring tape can be used to check progress because circumference measurements of individual body parts can often give you a better indication of a change in body composition than the scale can because the scale only measures your body’s relationship to gravity and how much mass is present at a given moment. Basically, that means that the scale doesn’t differentiate between bone, water, muscle, fat, waste, organs, and stomach contents. Knowing that is important because there’s the fact that muscle is denser than fat and takes up less space. So if you add muscle by resistance training while dieting, your weight on the scale may increase even though you’re losing inches. The use of measuring tape to measure yourself allows for you to more easily notice this change that the scale doesn’t often reflect.

As for how to measure yourself, take the circumference of your chest, neck, waist, hips, thighs, and/or arms on a monthly basis and compare the measurements. If you’re losing inches, then you’re on the right track. To be more exact, you can look online for a calculator that uses an equation like the U.S. Navy body fat formula to find out what your body fat percentage is from the site measurements. From there, you can compare the figures to more accurately assess your body composition.

Weight Loss Tip
no.2322

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.

Weight Loss Tip: no.2322

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