Each time we take your measurements, we will take your circumference and weight measurements, and we will calculate your body fat percentage.
Your circumference measurements are purely for tracking changes throughout your program, these are not needed to manage your meal plan. However, your weight and body fat measurements help us determine how many calories you need per day. Your metabolism will be measured every 6 weeks to ensure that it’s either staying level or increasing.
To measure your metabolism, we utilize laboratory grade equipment from KORR Medical Technologies. The equipment is complex, but the process is quite simple. All you have to do is relax and breathe, and our equipment does the rest by collecting and analyzes the expired gases you exhale with each breath and calculates your metabolism based on those.
The test lasts approximately 10-15 minutes; you must be fasting and without caffeine for at least 4 hours; and you must not exercise the day of the test.
We will measure your body fat percentage using a Skyndex Digital Body Composition caliper. This is a painless process by which we measure either 3 or 4 skinfold sites on your body that are easily accessible when fully clothed.
The Skyndex will then utilize the appropriate formula for you, and provide us with your approximate body fat percentage. This is the ratio of the amount of fat mass to lean body mass (muscle, bones, organs, etc.) you have. And no, it’s probably not as bad as you think it is.
As you progress through the program, your increased activity levels should be helping you add muscle mass, which increases the amount of calories your body consumes per day. Essentially, muscle is your fat burning machinery.
For your circumference measurements, we use a simple tape measure to track changes. Some things will grow, some things will get smaller, and some won’t change at all.
These are all perfectly acceptable depending on the circumstances and your goal. For instance, if you are doing a lot of running, your calves may grow in size while you still lose size in other places. Or if you are performing resistance training, you may add muscle mass in certain areas, but lose fat in those same areas, yielding no change in circumference but a change in composition.
Results like these are why we constantly measure you. There are many varying outcomes and we need to make sure that the results you are getting are consistently aligned with your end goal.
After all, isn’t this about you and your goals?