How to Measure Your Health and Fitness Progress
Roberto Parezze asked:
There are a number of ways in which you can measure success. When it comes to your health and fitness it is important that you measure your progress by both new healthy habits and your appearance. The most important measures of success with a health and fitness program is the long-term decrease in medical problems, injury and other health risks while improving your quality of life either with or without weight loss.
You can also measure short and medium term changes regularly during the process of your health and fitness program. Some obvious changes can be noted in health related behavior patterns like a decreased need for medications, an increased ability to perform physical tasks, a reduce fat intake and an increased intake of dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals.
Watch what you eat closely:
One way to make great improvement towards a healthier lifestyle is by making slight changes to how your food is cooked and prepared. You may even notice yourself checking labels at the grocery store or discovering new tastes and textures for food. If you feel good about yourself and know about these changes then you are more likely to keep making progress with your health and fitness program.
A physical way in which you can measure your progress towards a healthier appearance is by measuring the fat distribution through the waist circumference and waist-hip ration or WHR. Abdominal obesity is most commonly linked to risk factors such as diabetes and heart disease. This is why any slight reduction you notice in waist circumference or in the WHR is a good step towards having a healthier fat distribution in your body even if you aren’t actively losing weight.
Body fat can be a good measure of fitness:
Another way you can use to measure you physical progress is through body fat measuring with either hydrostatic weighing, electrical impedance or just by using skin fold calipers. The last method is obviously the cheapest and most accessible method. However, it is also a less accurate method, but it will give you at least a beginning point for you to measure decrease in your body fat.
No matter how you choose to measure your physical progress you should never rely on a scale for your indicator. Your overall weight loss in numbers and pounds doesn’t determine your healthy progress. Your weight is merely a combined total of both your lean body weight and body fat weight. Two individuals can have the save body weight while having completely different body compositions. One individual can be in more shape than a person with the exact same weight.
A scale has no way of measuring your body composition and the actual changes that are occurring. While a scale may show you’ve lost seven pounds it can’t tell you if half of the weight was muscle loss and water instead of fat. People also become discouraged when the scale shows they haven’t lost any weight but in fact they have lost pounds of fat and just replaced it with healthy, firm and fat-burning muscle. So consider other methods other than the scale to get a true measure of your health and fitness progress.
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There are a number of ways in which you can measure success. When it comes to your health and fitness it is important that you measure your progress by both new healthy habits and your appearance. The most important measures of success with a health and fitness program is the long-term decrease in medical problems, injury and other health risks while improving your quality of life either with or without weight loss.
You can also measure short and medium term changes regularly during the process of your health and fitness program. Some obvious changes can be noted in health related behavior patterns like a decreased need for medications, an increased ability to perform physical tasks, a reduce fat intake and an increased intake of dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals.
Watch what you eat closely:
One way to make great improvement towards a healthier lifestyle is by making slight changes to how your food is cooked and prepared. You may even notice yourself checking labels at the grocery store or discovering new tastes and textures for food. If you feel good about yourself and know about these changes then you are more likely to keep making progress with your health and fitness program.
A physical way in which you can measure your progress towards a healthier appearance is by measuring the fat distribution through the waist circumference and waist-hip ration or WHR. Abdominal obesity is most commonly linked to risk factors such as diabetes and heart disease. This is why any slight reduction you notice in waist circumference or in the WHR is a good step towards having a healthier fat distribution in your body even if you aren’t actively losing weight.
Body fat can be a good measure of fitness:
Another way you can use to measure you physical progress is through body fat measuring with either hydrostatic weighing, electrical impedance or just by using skin fold calipers. The last method is obviously the cheapest and most accessible method. However, it is also a less accurate method, but it will give you at least a beginning point for you to measure decrease in your body fat.
No matter how you choose to measure your physical progress you should never rely on a scale for your indicator. Your overall weight loss in numbers and pounds doesn’t determine your healthy progress. Your weight is merely a combined total of both your lean body weight and body fat weight. Two individuals can have the save body weight while having completely different body compositions. One individual can be in more shape than a person with the exact same weight.
A scale has no way of measuring your body composition and the actual changes that are occurring. While a scale may show you’ve lost seven pounds it can’t tell you if half of the weight was muscle loss and water instead of fat. People also become discouraged when the scale shows they haven’t lost any weight but in fact they have lost pounds of fat and just replaced it with healthy, firm and fat-burning muscle. So consider other methods other than the scale to get a true measure of your health and fitness progress.
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Serious Changes in Your Health and Fitness Means Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone
Gen Wright asked:
of people are being led astray by incorrect information, beliefs, opinions, and practices recommended by health care professionals, fitness instructors, and coaches who do not fully understand exercise and its requirements.Many governmental agencies and fitness industry institutions promote the supposed health benefits of general physical activities over planned structured exercise. In an effort to gain compliance, these organizations have lowered the requirements of exercise to such a level that virtually every activity that involves mere movement of the body qualifies.Such misinformation has caused many people to miss the real benefits that a proper exercise program can deliver or, even worse, to end up injured in the pursuit of health. Others become frustrated by lack of results or confused by conflicting information and choose to do nothing at all.Suddenly there are all these experts saying things like, just park the car a bit further away from wherever you are going, or just do some gardening or housework. The most misleading of all is the notion that walking alone is enough to strengthen and condition the body and that is all that is necessary. Well listen up, we all have legs and we all walk, legs are the things that move our body and walking is what you do when you need to go to the shops or somewhere. How did it suddenly become an exercise program?The truth of the matter is that if you want to lose weight, get fit, increase your strength or change your risk for heart disease you are going to need to work your body much harder than simply going for a leisurely stroll.If it were that easy why is the world now facing an epidemic of overweight and obese people, sky rocketing levels of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other life threatening illnesses and conditions labeled lifestyle diseases? One of the greatest global health threats of the modern age is our sedentary and inactive lifestyles.People who have health disorders which can be treated with physical activity should not be mislead into believing the “walking is all it takes for a good health” myth. This myth has given many a false sense that a stroll through the neighborhood is all you need to stay strong, fit and healthy. Instead of pushing people to become more active, it has merely provided an excuse to do as little as possible.The other misleading type of information is to just “do something you enjoy”. What has fun got to do with an exercise program? Getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning to exercise before work is not any fun at all. Sometimes it is dark, cold and wet and it takes commitment and discipline to roll out of bed when it would be so much easier and nicer to stay in bed. Absolutely no fun there!Well, here’s the truth that no one else in the health and fitness business wants to tell you: change is tough and getting fit takes hard work. In the fitness arena, that might mean better health, higher levels of cardiovascular fitness, increased strength, decreased body fat or decreased risk of disease or illness.In competitive sport it might mean performing a skill or event at a higher level of competency.Exercise training should challenge you to accomplish something not normally experienced in everyday life and to conquer new challenges. Have the courage to leave your old comfort zone, and step out into the discomfort of new territory, then you can achieve the healthy body you have always dreamed of…
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of people are being led astray by incorrect information, beliefs, opinions, and practices recommended by health care professionals, fitness instructors, and coaches who do not fully understand exercise and its requirements.Many governmental agencies and fitness industry institutions promote the supposed health benefits of general physical activities over planned structured exercise. In an effort to gain compliance, these organizations have lowered the requirements of exercise to such a level that virtually every activity that involves mere movement of the body qualifies.Such misinformation has caused many people to miss the real benefits that a proper exercise program can deliver or, even worse, to end up injured in the pursuit of health. Others become frustrated by lack of results or confused by conflicting information and choose to do nothing at all.Suddenly there are all these experts saying things like, just park the car a bit further away from wherever you are going, or just do some gardening or housework. The most misleading of all is the notion that walking alone is enough to strengthen and condition the body and that is all that is necessary. Well listen up, we all have legs and we all walk, legs are the things that move our body and walking is what you do when you need to go to the shops or somewhere. How did it suddenly become an exercise program?The truth of the matter is that if you want to lose weight, get fit, increase your strength or change your risk for heart disease you are going to need to work your body much harder than simply going for a leisurely stroll.If it were that easy why is the world now facing an epidemic of overweight and obese people, sky rocketing levels of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other life threatening illnesses and conditions labeled lifestyle diseases? One of the greatest global health threats of the modern age is our sedentary and inactive lifestyles.People who have health disorders which can be treated with physical activity should not be mislead into believing the “walking is all it takes for a good health” myth. This myth has given many a false sense that a stroll through the neighborhood is all you need to stay strong, fit and healthy. Instead of pushing people to become more active, it has merely provided an excuse to do as little as possible.The other misleading type of information is to just “do something you enjoy”. What has fun got to do with an exercise program? Getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning to exercise before work is not any fun at all. Sometimes it is dark, cold and wet and it takes commitment and discipline to roll out of bed when it would be so much easier and nicer to stay in bed. Absolutely no fun there!Well, here’s the truth that no one else in the health and fitness business wants to tell you: change is tough and getting fit takes hard work. In the fitness arena, that might mean better health, higher levels of cardiovascular fitness, increased strength, decreased body fat or decreased risk of disease or illness.In competitive sport it might mean performing a skill or event at a higher level of competency.Exercise training should challenge you to accomplish something not normally experienced in everyday life and to conquer new challenges. Have the courage to leave your old comfort zone, and step out into the discomfort of new territory, then you can achieve the healthy body you have always dreamed of…
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