How Not Tracking Your Results Could Be The Road To Nowhere by:Oliver Wolter

Dear friend,

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 inch on my arms"

Again - What is this weight?

Water - muscles or fat?

Probably you will think "is he unable to read? - he lost 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

[ Submitted with ArticleSubmitter Pro - ]

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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