Measuring success

I had a happy moment today, I had to do my belt up one hole tighter. That might not sound like a reason to most people but 2 weeks ago I didn't even need a belt to hold my jeans up. Last week I had to put a belt on my trousers and today it's on hole 2.

This made me think about times in the past when I have been losing weight and the scales have lied to me about my weight loss. I knew that my clothes were feeling looser, so I must have lost weight.

Your weight fluctuates all the time, if I had weighed myself the next day I might have been happier with the loss for that week. There are many other reasons the scales might not reflect an accurate loss, one new one I discovered is that if you have started a new exercise program, or seriously increased your effort on your existing fitness activity, your tired and stressed muscle's defense is to hold on to water. Sore muscles typically suffer from inflammation and can take a a day or two to release the water retained within the muscle cells, that it was using as protection during the repair process.

Tape measures don't lie as often as the scales, so it might be worth charting your progress with measurements as well as weekly visits to the scales. You don't need anything fancy the humble fabric tape measure does a great job.
Measure yourself at several points on your body, upper arm, chest, waist, hips, thigh and calf. You could do more points, but these points are where you will see the most obvious size reduction.

Measure yourself once a week and record your progress, on weeks where the scales take a disliking to you, looking over your shrinking measurements will boost your will power no end.


Ideally we would all own a set of those expensive fat monitoring scales or the evil looking fat calipers, so beloved of the sadists personal trainers at your local gym. In reality a set of bathroom scales combined with a cheap tape measure will do an excellent job of charting your progress.

One final tip I read today, keep a pair of your big trousers when you shrink out of them. In a couple of months time when you need a boost, try them on and feel happy when they won't stay up.