Health and Fitness: How to Measure The Progress of Your Health ...

People tend to measure success in different ways. It can be wealth, family relationships or personal happiness. But when it comes to measuring the success of your health and fitness program what is successful and what is not. Certainly one measure is the lack of illness or long term medical issues. Another can be the number of healthy living habits you have acquired or the loss of weight that you set out to achieve. People may be commenting on how good you look. These are all ways to determine if your program is working or not.

DIET IS VERY IMPORTANT

There are two important measures in the progress that you are making in your eating habits toward a healthier lifestyle. You may notice that you have become wiser in the way that you prepare foods. You may have substituted bad fats that you used in cooking with healthier fats such as olive oil or other oils that are derived from plants. You may be more aware and have a better understanding about food labeling. This is an area that we have made great progress in over recent years. We now have a better understanding about what is in the foods that we eat and what to is good and bad for us. You may have even substituted one brand to another healthier one.

Another way to determine the success of your health and fitness program is a physical measure of you waistline. Diseases such as diabetes and heart disease have been associated with abdominal fat. Any reduction can result in an improved body fat distribution.

BE AWARE OF BODY FAT

Another good measure of your progress would be your total body fat. There are several ways to measure this, the simplest and most accessible method would be skin fold calipers. While methods such as hydrostatic weighing or electrical impedance are much more accurate they are really not necessary. Skin fold calipers will give you a good staring point and way to measure your progress.

Regardless of how you choose to measure your progress you should never rely on total body weight and a scale. This is a mistake that many make as body weight may have been the factor that initiated them to start their health and fitness program from the start. Total weight is only a combination of total body fat and your lean body weight. The more important measure is the ratio between the two. Many times people can have the same weight and one will be in much better shape that the other.

Source: http://classicsbetter61.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-to-measure-progress-of-your-health.html

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