Is it absolutely necessary to measure your body fat to make fat loss and muscle-building progress? Some experts today are starting to suggest that we throw away our body fat calipers, just as others in the past have told us we should “throw away our scales.” Should we listen, or would that be making a huge mistake? Find out the answer in this week’s Burn the Fat Blog “Ask Tom” Q & A…
Q: Hey Tom, I recently read an article online by a well-respected trainer saying that it’s not necessary to measure your body fat. The main argument was that it’s how you look that counts, and if you tune-in to how you look from week to week, and ultimately, if you like how you look, then it really doesn’t matter what your body fat percentage number is. A secondary argument was that body fat testing is not accurate, so your results are often wrong. All things considered, the author said b ody fat testing is a total waste of time and you should throw away your body fat calipers and scales because they will only mess with your head and cause discouragement and frustration. Your thoughts? Is it absolutely mandatory to measure body fat percentage?
A: This is a great question and I’m glad you asked. I read the article you mentioned in your e-mail to me and the author made some legitimate points, but it’s also rather typical of what you find out on the public internet these days: Advice which might be well-intentioned, but is often just for the sake of stirring up controversy, and getting attention. I can’t imagine any legitimate trainer expecting to be taken seriously when saying body fat testing is a “total waste of time.”
With that said, myy short answer is, no, it’s not absolutely mandatory to measure body fat, even if you’re following my Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle program where I put so much attention on body fat versus body weight. There are some people who do fine without it, including myself, at times. However, I think you should track body composition, especially in the following circumstances:
1. If you’re a beginner, and you don’t yet have an intuitive sense of whether your body fat is going up or down week to week let alone day to day, and/or you don’t yet have a concept of what your body fat is or what is an ideal or sub-par body fat level (you need to learn).
2. If you have access to body fat testing at least monthly or bi-weekly, by a professional, where you can get an accurate measurement you can trust (take advantage of it!).
3. If you have a caliper such as an Accu-measure, where you can check your own body fat in the privacy of your own home. Or, alternately, you have an impedance analysis (BIA) body fat scale and you are sure it is giving you consistent readings from one measurement to the next (Those BIA body fat scales are known to give wacky readings that can make you want to break the damn thing).
4. If you have the personality type and a clear, logical (not overly-emotional) head, so you won’t freak out over strange numbers/results that are bound to show up from time to time due to testing error or natural body-weight fluctuations. In other words, for you, your body fat test results are simply progress data, not an event that ruins your mood for the rest of the week.
Why Beginners Should Use Body Composition Testing While Pros Could Consider it Optional
I think most people, especially beginners, would be making a mistake not to take advantage of the kind of feedback and education that tracking body composition provides. Experienced pros could easily get by without it; but, on the other hand, they often keep doing it – because they ARE pros. Let me use myself as an example:
I don’t measure my body fat all that often these days, except before competitions or special events when I want to reach peak condition, and periodically to get an accountability check or a baseline at the start of a new goal or training phase. I have no problem monitoring my progress visually. I can even get a good sense of how I’m doing by grabbing (palpating) skinfolds with my bare fingers (not a caliper). I get good feedback by feel, without even knowing the exact thickness in millimeters or the exact body fat percentage.
At the moment, I’m not working with the trainer who tested me for over a decade and a half, so I also haven’t had convenient access to a multi-site skinfold test performed by another professional. But just for kicks, I did a little experiment…
At the time of this writing, I’ve been working on gaining body weight and muscle mass, not worrying so much about adding a little fat in the process. During a muscle-gaining phase, it doesn’t hurt to check and be sure your body fat is not getting unacceptably high. Sometimes body fat creeps and you get so used to seeing yourself in the mirror every day, added body fat goes unnoticed unless you’re paying really close attention to small physical changes (and you hold yourself to a very high standard for leanness).
So I took a good look at myself in the mirror and pinched my abdominal and illiac skinfolds with my fingers, and I estimated my body fat as “definitely over 10%, but probably under 11%.” I then did an accu-measure caliper pinch and it put me at 10.9%, using the age range scale. Not a bad guess eh?
It’s also worth mentioning that I’ve been able to gauge my progress going in the other direction (getting leaner) too. I’ve prepped for competitions before and done very well, without doing any body comp testing (though I have never done a contest without monitoring my weight – both for feedback, and to ensure I made my weight class).
It took me years to reach that level of sensory acuity, where tracking progress and dialing myself in without any other feedback became easy just by looking in the mirror and grabbing the skin on my abs. Most people aren’t there yet.
When you consider how common body image disorder or distorted self-image are, I think it’s safe to say that for the novice (and even for some pros, who are not immune to body dysmorphia), the mirror actually can play tricks on you. That’s why I think it’s helpful to have both visual, tactile and numerical ways to get feedback and track progress, and not only one way.
There are big benefits to be had from measuring and tracking your body composition and I recommend everyone does it and learns the lessons that only come from the experience of having those numbers tracked through at least two goal cycles – fat loss to your peak condition and maintenance (or building).
I had my body fat measured consistently for years in the early days of my career, and since I knew the measurements were professionally taken and were as accurate as they could be, the feedback was valuable. In fact, the education I got from learning about body composition and measuring it in the early days was priceless. It was a lot like doing all my meal plans by the numbers on spreadsheets when I first started. I wouldn’t know what I know today if I had never tracked the numbers in the beginning.
Required Knowledge: Body Fat Versus Body Weight
What you’ll learn by measuring body fat, weighing yourself and tracking your progress for an extended period of time is the concept of body composition. The big idea you must internalize to the point that it’s a part of your everyday thought process and physical approach is that body weight and body fat are NOT the same thing.
This may seem like a ridiculously obvious point, at least to people who have advanced to the level of being a member in our Burn the Fat Inner Circle community. But for the typical person, body composition is not even on their radar. For most people, weight loss is the goal and diet is the solution, but here, we all know that this spells disaster! Weight loss is the wrong goal and diet (alone) is the wrong approach.
Even if you decide not to measure and track your body composition, what I consider mandatory to your success is that you understand body composition on an intellectual level: you must know the difference between total body weight, fat body weight and lean body mass. That includes the distinction between muscle tissue and non-essential lean body mass.
This is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle 101: Weight loss is not always fat loss, and therefore weight loss is not always a positive outcome. Weight loss can include water, glycogen, the contents of your digestive system and muscle tissue. If you lose muscle, you are working against yourself.
Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle 101 continues on the flip side: Weight gain is not always fat gain and therefore weight gain is not always a negative outcome. Water weight can fluctuate dramatically on a day to day basis. And of course, if you gain weight in the form of muscle, that is a positive outcome.
Although it’s ideal to measure your body composition, simply having this new knowledge about the difference between body weight and body composition is enough to help start changing behavior.
For example, once body composition and the importance of muscle is on your radar, you will know that diet alone is a bad idea, because diet without training leads to greater losses of muscle when you’re dieting in a deficit. This revelation is enough to get many people to start resistance training for the very first time, and from the day you pick up your first weight and lift it, your results and health will automatically improve from that point forward. It’s a watershed moment.
Business, Sports – And Fitness – Wisdom: What Gets Measured Gets Improved
Aside from the education you get about body composition versus body weight, why else would you want to measure body composition? Motivation!
Motivational psychology 101 says, what gets measured gets improved. In any organization, whether business or a sports team, the instant that performance is measured and tracked, performance starts improving. It’s all about accountability!
I understand that you can track progress visually, but motivational psychology 102 says that the more types of feedback you have the better. Why not track visually and by the numbers?
Doesn’t it make sense that seeing how you look in the mirror and in photos, combined with weight and body composition data has more value than one or the other by itself? In fact, it’s the two together that helps you reconcile between results of one or the other when they don’t jive with the efforts you put in.
Is Body Fat Testing Inaccurate?
Let me also address the question about whether body fat testing is inaccurate, and therefore “you should not bother,” because this is an important point.
It’s true that every body-fat testing method has an inherent margin for error. For example, the margin for error in skinfold testing may be on the order of 3% or so. However, since many body fat testing methods have been researched and found to be able to consistently produce repeatable results, this shouldn’t bother you. It’s not the absolute accuracy, but the consistency from one test to the next that matters the most.
Where additional error often gets introduced is in the tester, as a result of the testing technique. So, an inexperienced skinfold pinching person can not only expand the margin for error but also produce inconsistent results, due to inconsistent testing technique. This can be reduced or almost eliminated with experience. So, while inaccurate test results are very possible, I don’t think this is a reason to dismiss body composition testing altogether.
What if You Don’t Have Access To Body Fat Testing or You Simply Don’t Want to Measure Your Body Fat? (Do THIS Instead):
If you’re one of those people who – for any reason – does not want to track body composition, or if you have a hard time getting an accurate body fat measurement so the whole endeavor is driving you crazy, then here is my suggested alternative:
First, take to heart the advice I gave above about understanding body composition – muscle vs fat vs weight – on an intellectual level. Make sure you understand this concept thoroughly.
Then, at the very least, weigh yourself once a week for an “official” progress report. Monday is a good day because it helps keep a lot of people in check over the weekend. In addition, get a measuring tape and measure your waist size (women may also want to measure hips too).
Your waist measurement correlates highly with your body fat percentage. Although the circumference in inches or centimeters won’t tell you your exact body fat percentage, if your waist size is going down, you can almost always be assured that your body fat is going down, so waist circumference is a good proxy for body fat.
What’s more, waist measurement is a scientifically-proven benchmark for metabolic and cardiovascular health risks. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of symptoms that are linked to risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. One of the risk factors is abdominal circumference of 35 inches or more for women or 40 inches or more for men. That makes the waist size / abdominal circumference measurement a good one to monitor for both health and body fat tracking reasons.
Concluding Advice
I could go on and on about the reasons to track your progress with body composition testing and to track your progress with as many other methods of performance feedback as possible. I list 10 of those reasons in Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. For now, I strongly urge you to read or re-read the chapters in Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle about body composition testing and tracking progress (the feedback loop system).
One last caveat: I would advise you NOT to become obsessed with pursuing any specific body fat number, thinking that it’s some kind of “holy grail” achievement. The number really doesn’t matter if you are happy with the way you look. Also keep in mind that two people can look completely different at the same body fat percentage – one visibly much leaner than the other.
But seeing the change in the numbers and seeing your progress trend in the right direction does matter. Use your body fat test results as an educational tool to understand body composition and also as a progress charting tool to monitor your personal progress over time and you can’t go wrong.
If you have any other questions, or challenges with body composition testing or with the “head trips” I know you have to deal with from time to time when managing your body fat and body weight numbers, please don’t hesitate to ask: I’ll be here in the forums and I’m here to help.
- Tom Venuto
PS. The Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle system of fat burning is different than most “weight loss” programs. Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle is based on the methods of natural bodybuilders and fitness models, who have always focused on the muscle to fat ratio first and not just scale weight. To learn more about how to transform your body composition from fat to muscle, literally at will, using the right combination of nutrition and training, read the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle book – buy now on amazon, get more details at: www.BurnTheFatFeedTheMuscle.com OR check out the new Burn the Fat 7-day online course and support community at www.BurnTheFat.com
About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, fat loss coach, fitness writer and author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom’s articles are published on hundreds of websites worldwide and he has been featured in Muscle and Fitness, Men’s Fitness, Oprah magazine, The New York Daily News, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He has appeared on dozens of podcasts and radio shows including Sirius XM, ESPN-1250, WCBS and Day Break USA. Tom is also the creator of the new Burn the Fat 7-Day Body Transformation System and the founder and CEO of the premier fat loss support community, the Burn The Fat Inner Circle.