I strongly believe that diets and exercise programs can be accelerated when people start monitoring their own progress. But most people don’t know how or even why they should measure their progress. And the biggest problem is that weight is often held up as the yardstick of health.

It’s time to make a big decision. Do you want to lose fat or lose weight? If you just want to lose weight, then stop reading this article, go to your local hardware store, and purchase a handsaw.

Still reading I see. Let’s start with the why.

Why monitor progress at all?
When you go on a diet, you expect something to happen.

Something amazing. You watch the testimonials labeled “not typical” and see people losing hundreds of pounds. Seeing progress motivates you. It’s very difficult to stay on a diet or exercise program when you are expecting results and you don’t see them.

Monitoring progress is also important if you plan to experiment. Humans are curious beings. You don’t go on a diet and believe everything that is recommended. You say to yourself, “I wonder how much this matters. What if I were to something else instead?” You’ll have to monitor your progress to see what happens. When you stray off the beaten path, you don’t have a map, but you can take a compass, or if you like modern analogies, a GPS Receiver.

What should you measure?
When I started lifting weights, I knew that I would have to measure the amount I was lifting and I decided to track other things too. Everyday, I wrote down my body weight and the amount of sleep I had gotten the previous night. I also kept track of how much aerobics I was doing. It wasn’t at all hard to do this. I just made a spreadsheet in Excel with what I wanted. Some interesting things happened as a result:

  • I noticed a very strong correlation between getting less than 5 hours of a sleep a night and getting sick.
  • I was encouraged to do more aerobics than normal. Without the data on what I had accomplished, I felt a lot less motivated.
  • I realized that, if I took a break from lifting, it would take a certain amount of readjustment before I starting moving forward again.
  • And finally, after four months of lifting regularly, my weight hadn’t dropped one pound.

The last part disturbed me.

I expected to lose weight while lifting weight and exercising. It was obviously a naive assumption. I did after all make gains in lifting. Several people told me that they could tell a real difference. I certainly could. But the scale wasn’t reflecting that. The answer was of course that I was losing fat and gaining muscle. Both of these are excellent changes, but they aren’t going to be shown if you just measure body weight.

The most important metric: body fat
Losing weight is just not the answer. Many professional athletes are classified as “obese” by the BMI. “Skinny” people can often be quite out of shape. There’s no real way to gauge progress by measuring weight. Yes, if you are severely obese, weight is probably your best yardstick. For the rest of us, there is body fat percentage. If I had measured body fat percentage instead of just weight, then I would have seen a remarkable change and I would felt much more motivated to continue.

So then how do you go about measuring your body fat? I am going to assume your needs are similar to mine.

  • You want something cheap.
  • You want something fast.
  • You want something easy.
  • You want something relatively accurate.

There is a simple tool that meets all of our criteria.

Body fat calipers
These calipers are easy. You can do perform a test on yourself everyday if you want. They are cheap too. I got my pair of calipers for less than $5. That’s a lot less than the price for an average scale. And they work fine. From everything I’ve read, body fat calipers hit the sweet spot between accuracy and ease of use.

My calipers came with a chart and instructions, but the instructions only suggest taking a measurement in one location. Many people recommend testing seven locations and getting an average. But I had a hard time finding a good website explaining how to do this. I read through several websites, consulted my own instructions, and narrowed it down to a few steps:

  • Measure at the same time everyday and not directly after exercise. First thing in the morning seems like the ideal time. If you already weigh yourself, it would be excellent to just do this afterwards (you’ll need to weigh yourself if you wish to calculate lean body mass).
  • I’ve decided that three locations is probably the best for someone trying to perform this test alone (me). The suitable locations for a single person are:
      • 1. Chest: Men- pinch diagonally halfway between nipple and armpit. Women-diagonally 2/3 of the way up from the nipple to the armpit.
        2. Midaxillary: vertically pinch straight down from your armpit and down slightly from your nipple.
        3. Subprailiac: one inch above the hipbone
        4. Abdominal: one inch to the side of belly button.
        5. Thigh: halfway between knee and top of thigh.
        6. Tricep: halfway between the shoulder and elbow.
  • Just choose three of these locations. All will be on the right side of the body for consistency. I am choosing to do chest, abdominal, and thigh.
  • Pinch just the skin and fat and take your measurement. It’s pretty hard to actually pinch the muscle underneath.
  • Do all three sites and repeat the whole thing twice so that you can take an average.
  • Plug the 3 averages into this calculator.

If you find other equations that you want to use instead, go ahead.

Body fat calipers aren’t perfect. Many factors can change the accuracy, but the key is consistency. If you are always consistent in measuring, you’ll be able to easily monitor your progress.

If you want to get motivated, make changes, and then actually see them in action, I highly recommend purchasing body fat calipers. If there is an easier, more cost effective way to measure body fat, I haven’t found it.

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