In the world of health and fitness, setting goals is just the first step. The real challenge lies in effectively tracking and measuring progress. Whether you're aiming to lose weight, build muscle, improve endurance, or enhance overall wellness, tracking specific metrics is essential. The concept “what gets measured gets managed” holds true in the realm of fitness, helping you stay focused, motivated, and accountable.
The Power of Measurement
To understand where you are and where you’re headed, regular measurements provide valuable insights. Without them, it's easy to lose track of progress or misinterpret how well you’re doing. When you measure your health and fitness, you gain tangible data that helps guide your decisions. For example, tracking your weight, body composition, or workout performance allows you to evaluate your efforts and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Key Metrics to Track:
1. Body Composition
While the scale can be misleading, measuring body fat percentage and lean muscle mass provides a clearer picture of your fitness. Body composition helps track changes that might not be immediately visible in weight alone but show progress in building muscle or reducing fat.
-Our new tech at the office: In-body scanning (see example of scan data here). Important measurements we want to track are lean body mass and visceral fat levels. High levels of lean body mass means you have relatively high muscle mass and low fat levels. This is especially important as we age: high levels of muscle mass helps to prevent falls and increases the likeihood of favorable recovery after a fall - hip fracture in the aging population is a huge deal, especially with declining muscle mass.
Visceral fat levels is a measure of the fat around your organs - super important to keep an eye on this metric and keep it low. This fat is more difficult to burn off once accumulated and has more negative health risks vs subcutaneous fat under the skin.
-Diet: If you know what you’re doing, how many calories you need to eat per day to hit your goals, cronometer app is a great free tool for tracking food intake and making sure you're staying in your lane and hitting your targets for weight gain/loss.
If you have no idea what you’re doing and how many calories you need per day to gain/lose weight, Carbon app is a good paid option (~$100/year). This will give you a basic calorie target per day with macros (protein, fat, carb ratios) to hit. It requires weekly weigh-ins with a compatible smart scale (~$30 from amazon); the weekly weigh-ins tell the app if your calories need to be adjusted up/down if you’re not gaining/losing weight as quickly as you should be.
2. Strength and Endurance
Track your strength by noting how much weight you can lift and the number of repetitions you can complete. Similarly, endurance can be gauged by measuring how far or how long you can run, cycle, or swim. Regular testing of these physical capacities gives insight into performance improvements.
-Do you track your workouts? Progressively working to increase weight or reps over time? If you have a goal, make it specific: ie. instead of “I want to get healthier this year”, set a specific goal of “I want to lose 10 pounds by June” or “I want to run a ½ marathon in October”. With specific goals you can set small targets to achieve and track your progress over time. Goal to lose 10 pounds: get 10k steps everyday; do strength training 3x/week; drink 100oz water/day; get 7-8hours of sleep every night; track macros. Specific goals let you set specific targets to measure and track progress.
3. Resting Heart Rate (RHR) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
Monitoring your heart rate can give you a sense of cardiovascular health and recovery. A lower resting heart rate often indicates better fitness levels, while heart rate variability can show your body’s ability to recover from stress and exercise.
-Most smartwatches and wearables will track this and help give you a baseline of where you’re at. Once you know your baseline, as you progress on your health journey, modifying your diet, sleep, training and recovery cycles, see how your RHR and HRV adjust over time. RHR and HRV can also be good indicators of when NOT to train - when your HRV and RHR are in the tank, its probably not a good idea to train hard or set a PR - it's probably time to de-load, take a few days off and let your body recover.
4. Sleep and Recovery
Quality sleep plays a pivotal role in fitness, impacting muscle recovery and energy levels. Tracking your sleep patterns ensures you’re getting enough rest to optimize training and performance.
The Benefits of Measurement
- Motivation: Seeing progress, no matter how small, can keep you motivated. It reinforces your commitment and can make the journey feel more rewarding.
- Accountability: Measurement creates accountability. By regularly tracking your goals, you're more likely to stick to your routine and make the necessary adjustments if progress stalls.
- Objective Insight: It removes any ambiguity about whether or not you're achieving your goals, giving you the ability to assess your approach and make data-driven decisions.
In Conclusion
Health and fitness goals are a journey, and like any journey, it’s easier to navigate when you know where you’re headed. By measuring key aspects of your fitness, you gain insight into your progress, improve your decision-making, and enhance your motivation. Remember: What gets measured gets managed—so take the time to track your progress and enjoy the results!
Dr. Nathan Weber
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