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Rocco: A picture is worth a thousand words |
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Written by Rocco Castellano
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Thursday, 17 May 2007 |
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 Q: You’ve mentioned before that people shouldn’t work out to lose weight, but instead to lose fat. I recently started working out again, and I’m curious how I should measure my progress without focusing on weight.
— Matt, Des Moines
Rocco's Answer:
I despise the use of scales to measure progress in fat loss.
Reading your scale can be inconclusive and therefore extremely frustrating when trying to gauge benchmarks for your goals. The reason for this usually lies in the fact that, when starting a fitness program, your body may need to gain muscle. The majority of people that begin a fat-loss program that have been fat for a long time may have lost muscle and will not lose fat without gaining muscle.
Lean mass deficiencies are caused by many influences, specifically too much aerobic exercise and starving yourself into weight loss.
If your body needs to gain muscle, then the scale will show that you are actually gaining “weight” and you will become depressed and send me all kinds of e-mails because I caused you to gain weight.
What I recommend you do is take measurements of your neck, chest, real waist (the indent under your ribs), pants waist (just under your belly button), hips (roundest part), right and left upper thigh, right and left lower thigh (above your knee), calves and arms. In eight weeks do it again. If you see a change, you’re making progress; if not, turn up the intensity. An easy way to measure progress is to take a photo of yourself every eight weeks and compare.
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Rocco Castellano is the co-founder of askROCCO Media, which provides boot camps, seminars, media content and online fitness services at askROCCO.com. He is certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine and has written “askROCCO Uncensored v1” available at bookstores. Ask your personal
fitness questions at askROCCO.com. | Only registered users can write comments.
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