How to Take Measurements for Weight Loss

Doing body measurements will enable you to monitor better your fitness performance than depending on the scale, mostly when you’re trying to lose fat and build muscle. How to Take Measurements for Weight Loss.

The device tests the weight — not the content of your body. If you’re trying to lose weight and adding muscle, people are going to see a change in the way you look — but it’s entirely likely that the scale isn’t going to let up. And if you rely entirely on the scale to monitor your performance, you may assume you’re not making much progress.

If you’ve been looking to lose weight or gain weight, body measurements will bring you a larger image and improve your morale because you can lose body fat when growing muscle. It’s good to see the inches fall off even though the device doesn’t mean a lot of improvement.

But from a health point of view, studying your size will tell you about health consequences. For instance, if the waist is more than 50 cm for a lady and 40 inches for a man, you might be at greater risk of heart disease and diabetes, as per the Federal Heart, Lung, and Blood College.

Here is some knowledge worth checking before you take measurements of your own body.

What Part to Measure and How to Do it

The first thing to do is decide on the part you will be measuring while trucking the progress. Some of the common areas to measure are hips, chest, thighs, and arms.

Use or purchase a – anti-elastic measuring tape that is ideal for your body and offers the most accurate reading.  Ensure you are less or in no clothes and place the measuring tape on the part to be measured and relax. It would be best if you were not breathing in and out. Try and hold a breath mostly if the part involved in the chest or lower abdomen.

1. Chest

The chest is the first part that we are starting with when measuring your body for weight loss trucking.  Ensure you keep measuring tape on the nipples on your chest and take measures at the ribcage on the side and under the arm. Carefully read the tape and record while ensuring it is tightly held on your chest. 

2. Arm

Before you do any other thing here, you will have to search for the arm midpoint and the bony point on the front of the arm you choose to measure. For consistency, let us use our left arm.

Then starting from the tip of the elbow, take 15 cm from the arm going up, divide the result by two, and the answer will be your midpoint of the measured length. Using the same tape, wrap it on the point you identified as the midpoint and hold the measuring tape to avoid movements.

 Hang your arm while making you’re the tape is tight and positioned at the center. Then read the tape and records for more effortless and accurate tracking.

3. Thigh

 We wouldn’t be wrong if we call thigh measurement a bum measurement because it measures the body’s widest part.

Firstly, know and identify the midpoint of your thigh. You are advised to have a seat and sit on the edge. Place the measuring tape on the bed of your hip just on the waist part and measure downwards up to your knee.

Divide the length by two to find the midpoint, place the tape on the identified point, and read the measurement while the measuring tape is tight. And this will be your thigh size.

4. Waist

Assuming you know your waist. Ensure the measuring tape is in line with the bottom of your belly, measure the size, and you’re encouraged to do so from the side of your body as it is always more comfortable and more accurate.

However, mostly the waist is never used to measure weight loss following its subject to bloating. For the women, it would not be the best during their menstrual period.

5. Hips

 Stretch your measuring tape and wrap it around your hip area. During this particular part, you are supposed to measure at the widest part of your hips and, if available, use a mirror to ensure you measure the right position.

Ensuring the measuring tape is tight, read the measurement and record, and that’s your hip size.

How to Take Measurements for Weight Loss and keep them accurate?

Do measurement once a week. It would help if you didn’t measure your body part every other day as the fat doesn’t go overnight, and you may not see the change since the body change within a day would be so minimal that you may fail to realize it.

Get the same person to help you out. To maintain uniformity, get the same person to help you measure. If you go for different persons every time, you will be getting different results following different measuring abilities and skills.

Ensure the same body condition.  When measuring, ensure your body is in the same conditions all through. By the same conditions, we mean; hydration, food intake skin temperature should be the same as they can alter with body size and shape, giving inaccurate readings.

Keep a record of your progress. Without the recording, you may forget some measurement, and this would mean one step backward. It is recommendable to be recording measurements every time to avoid forgetting and for accountability purposes.

Conclusion

How to Take Measurements for Weight Loss? It’s the dream of every other overweight person to cut it off and achieve their imagination’s body size and shape. However, there is no miracle for this. All you need to do is keep measuring the relevant part while still minding the eating habits and exercising. For you to see positive results, you need to have consistent measuring. And for the development to be accurate, try to measure parts like the waist, chest, hips, arm, and thigh and always make sure your body is in the same conditions.