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Tracking Tools: What gets measured, gets managed

7/22/2018

Part 2 from my recent progress update post:
My previous post was a progress update (nearly 5 % drop in body fat in 5 months: from just over 20% BF after my powerlifting meet to most recently, 15.4%). In powerlifting, I suppose you need more cushion for the pushin’, and while 20% is perfectly healthy, I wanted to return to where I feel most comfortable and healthy with my body which is where my body fat held steady before my competition days at around 16%. Regardless of body fat %’s, progress is the big point and we can ALL make progress towards our goals whatever they may be.

This post and the one to follow will highlight how I’ve accomplished this for the purpose of providing real life, practical, “you can do it too” tips. In honesty, progress came faster and easier when I was in competition prep answering to my coach on a weekly basis, but that required eating, drinking and sleeping the lifestyle. It’s not a lifestyle of balance...it’s discipline and dedication to the extreme, an extreme that’s unrealistic for most people. Now, away from the stage, it’s a little more challenging living a life of balance and maintaining my goals, but it CAN be done. There have been no extremes...only consistency and that’s what will work for you too. My lifestyle as compared to when I was in bodybuilding competition prep is much more balanced. My diet ranges from 85/15 to 90/10 now instead of a rigid 110%...as a result, I’m no longer ripped but I’m happy, healthy and fit...for me, that’s the ultimate goal. Let me emphasize this: unless you’re competing in extreme sports, extremes are not necessary and all extremes come with a price. I encounter people constantly who think the answer lies in seeking out the extreme: eliminating carbs; only eating this food or not eating that food; seeking out the next big diet fad. The answer is NOT in the EXTREME. The answer is in balance and consistency: progress boils down to what we do consistently...this is what these next few posts will be about. What helps us be consistent? Here’s what has helped me...

Today’s Topic: Tracking Tools ⌚️📱

🤷‍♀️Why track workouts or nutrition? We can’t manage what we don’t measure.

🛠2 huge invaluable tools:

⌚️Apple Watch for tracking my daily workout/activity calorie burn & heart-rate data
📱Cronometer -a nutrition tracker, which I like much more than MyFitnessPal.

I’m very visual...both of these tools put a visual on calories in and calories out and that’s what it boils down to. Move more, eat well, feel and perform better. 🚴‍♂️🏋️‍♀️🍎

Both of these tools promote consistency which I mentioned previously as a huge success key! For example: I have a daily calorie burn requirement that I strive to consistently hit 6 out of 7 days per week. Prior to using my Apple Watch, I was not consistent with calorie burn...I was overestimating my workout calorie burn. It was eye opening when I started using it and realized that I needed to sprinkle in more cardio. Now that I track my workouts, I’m consistent with my calorie burn on a daily basis. Some days I blow my goal out of the water and some days I just hit the mark, but I make sure I hit that mark consistently. When you combine this with consistency in nutrition, then you really see results. I’ve tracked nutrition consistently and I’ve NOT tracked nutrition so consistently and I always do better when I track. Cronometer perfectly syncs with my Apple Watch and tells me based upon my calorie burn and weight goal what my remaining calorie intake budget is. It tracks macros & micros; macros can be fully customized. Based upon your weight goals, it will calculate your calorie requirements. User friendly 👍

😎Tips:

1. Stay on track by setting daily non-negotiables. These will help you stay focused and will give you specific daily goals to meet which will help contribute to the success of your overall goals. Some of mine include: meeting my daily protein requirement (cronometer helps me track this); food logging at least 5 days per week with a goal of 6 days; closing my 30 minute exercise ring on my Apple Watch everyday; hitting my calorie burn “Move” goal on my Apple Watch at least 6 days per week and no less than 5 days out of the week.

2. Know the 5 P’s of success: Prior preparation prevents poor performance. Plan meals ahead of time. Create a healthy weekly menu for yourself and prep food in advance. If you’re eating out, look at the menu online ahead of time if possible and plan what you will order. Plan to make good choices.
This tip will help you with the next tip...

3. LOG BEFORE NOT AFTER...
Most people enter their food into their nutrition tracker AFTER they eat it. Plan your meals ahead of time and enter them BEFORE you eat them. I log everything for the day that morning and if I don’t know what I’m having for dinner, then I at least know what my remaining calorie budget will be. If you PRE-log, you won’t go over in calories because you can make adjustments beforehand. There may be days that are spontaneous and we need those kind of days so don’t feel that you have to be pre-planned ALL the time. Remember, it’s consistency that counts so just strive to plan more often than not. It’s about progress not perfection.

Bottomline: Measure & manage. Consistent action creates consistent results.👌

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Progress Update

7/20/2018

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Progress Update: currently down from 20% body fat in February at 138 lbs. to 15.4% body fat at 138 lbs. A drop of almost 5% body fat but same scale weight! That means lean mass is up and body fat is down!
Here’s what I can credit this progress to: in one word, CONSISTENCY.
👉Consistency in training, nutrition and lifestyle.
💪
My next two posts will cover more details on the “hows”, “whats” and “whys” of my progress update, including:
⌚️📱Tracking Tools
🚴‍♂️🏋️‍♀️Training
🥗🍎Nutrition
🥂🏖Lifestyle

Real life, sustainable, free, “you can do it too” tips!

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Summer Healthy Charleston Challenge Highlight Reel

7/1/2018

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Here’s our Summer 2018 Healthy Charleston Challenge highlight reel...we concluded our 6 week mini HCC session last week. So proud of this group! I know they’ll continue their healthy lifestyle journey successfully! If you’d like to take part in this life changing program at the MUSC Wellness Center, the full 12-week fall Healthy Charleston Challenge session will run from September 13 - November 15, 2018. It includes group personal training, nutritional coaching and pre/post InBody composition testing 💪
The online application will be available next week!

For more information, please click HERE

The Healthy Charleston Challenge has won two National Awards for "Best Chronic Disease and Obesity Prevention Program in the U.S."

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MEASURE: Why measure? What we can’t measure, we can’t improve.

7/1/2018

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“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
H. James Harrington

I absolutely agree with the quote above. We cannot improve upon what we cannot measure.

This blog post pertains to health and fitness so when I mention “measure”, what is your first thought? I’ll bet it’s the scale.

The scale is a tool, but the scale does not tell you everything. The scale does not measure every aspect of progress. The scale does not measure improvements in fitness levels; it does not measure how much better you feel; it does not measure how your clothes are fitting looser; it does not measure strength increases or endurance; it does not measure improvements to your cholesterol, triglyceride, and glucose levels; it does not measure body composition improvements. If you are consistently exercising and making better nutritional choices, then rest assured that you will be experiencing all of these improvements regardless of what the scale tells you. The next time you feel discouraged because the scales aren't showing much weight loss despite the fact you've been exercising and eating better, remember you may have gained muscle and lost fat. After all, improved body composition is really the goal. Don’t obsess over weight loss. Focus on body composition: building muscle and losing fat. To change your body composition, you won’t have one goal but two goals: reduce fat mass and increase lean body mass. Shifting your goals from scale weight to body composition improvements frees you from the stress of worrying about scale weight.

I’ll get personal to better illustrate my point. I track my body fat monthly using skin fold calipers. Inbody testing is also a good method and I’ve found that my caliper body fat readings match my Inbody pretty closely. Why should you measure body fat as opposed to just going by the scale? Let me show you why with my own progress notes comparing February of this year to June of this year. I’m not competing, so I no longer go through drastic cuts and gains (I honestly believe those extremes are unhealthy) so my goal now is to maintain my weight within a few pounds, while building lean mass and dropping fat. Being strong, fit and healthy is the goal...we are all striving for that, right? Okay, check these numbers and do the math...first just look at the scale weight comparisons. Then look at the BIG PICTURE:

February 2018:
Scale Weight: 138
Lean Mass: 110.7 lbs
Fat Mass: 27.3 lbs

June 2018:
Scale Weight: 137.2
Lean Mass: 114.9 lbs
Fat Mass: 22.2 lbs

Take home points—> my weight only changed by 0.8 lbs in 4 months BUT my lean muscle mass increased by 4.2 lbs and my fat mass dropped by 5.08 lbs. How’s that for math?! You see, if I were only going by the scale, it would seem as if I’ve made very little to no progress, but clearly I’ve made huge progress in putting on muscle and dropping fat which is my goal.

TIPS:

Put in the work at the gym. Fuel your body well. Be consistent. None of this matters if you aren’t consistently exercising and eating well.

Measure yourself regularly with the right tools, not JUST THE SCALE. Here’s what I recommend: Keep a log of your numbers—Weigh yourself once a week (same day of the week, first thing in the morning after using the bathroom). Take weekly waist measurements. Why measure? A pound of fat and a pound of muscle may weigh the same, but a pound of fat takes up much more volume than a pound of muscle. The only way to see this progress is with a measuring tape, not the scale. For convenience, do your tape measurements after your weekly weight check. For consistency, measure right above the belly button. Why just the waist? You can measure other areas too, but taking one measurement is easier than taking several and you don’t need someone to help you. If you want to track a couple of areas, track the waist and hips. Keep it simple. Also, while the scale can fluctuate due to water changes, hormonal reasons, bathroom issues and a myriad of other reasons, the waist doesn’t lie. If your waist is expanding along with a jump on the scale, it’s a wake up call. See how you use those tools together? Check bodyfat periodically (maybe every 3-4 months). You don’t have to check it once a month. I only do that because I have calipers. I recommend having the InBody test performed as a baseline and then repeat every 3-4 months. Every few months, do a progress comparison with your data and look at the big picture like I did with my data. It’s so much more motivating than only going by the scale.

Your composition as a COMPASS: Use your results to make any necessary adjustments to your nutrition and exercise routine. Example: if your Inbody tests reflect that you lost mostly lean mass, then look at your nutrition. Some of the most common reasons for excess muscle breakdown include losing weight too fast, cutting calories too low, not meeting protein needs, and not being active enough.

Cutting calories: It's a common mistake to drastically reduce calorie intake to accelerate weight loss. The problem is when you suddenly make extreme cuts in calories, the body thinks it's starving, and since muscle requires more energy to maintain, the body begins to quickly break it down. In essence, dropping your calorie intake too low, too quickly puts you on the fast track to muscle loss. An easy way to estimate your minimum calorie requirements is to calculate 10 calories per pound of body weight for women and 11 for men. For example, if you're a female weighing 160 pounds, you need a minimum of 1,600 calories daily. If you're older or have less muscle mass, it may be a bit lower. Dropping your calorie intake below this number may accelerate muscle loss. Note: this formula is only an estimate and may need to be adjusted.

QUALITY MATTERS: I want to add that while it’s true that calorie intake determines weight loss (caloric deficit) or weight gain (caloric surplus), the QUALITY of your nutrition combined with your exercise routine determines if you lose muscle, gain muscle, lose fat or gain fat. Yes, you can lose weight eating at a 1,200 calorie deficit even if those 1,200 calories are from junk food, BUT, you will likely lose muscle tissue and may even gain fat. Yes, you can make alcohol fit into your calorie allotment, but if you make alcohol a habit, then it’ll reflect in your composition. Alcohol is a huge contributor to visceral fat. Don’t ONLY think about calories, we have to also think about the quality of the foods we’re eating and what we’re drinking. Keep it simple: less processed, more “real” food. Make these your staples: lean protein, whole grains, healthy fats, vegetables and fruits.

PROTEIN: Make sure you take in an adequate protein amount. Believe it or not -- your protein needs actually increase when you cut back on calories. Therefore, it's crucial to bump up your protein intake to help preserve muscle during calorie restriction. Try boosting your protein intake to at least 0.55 grams per pound of body weight to reduce muscle loss. This means if you weigh 190 pounds, your target protein intake is about 105 grams per day. This recommended amount comes from studies in peer reviewed medical journals.

Move it or lose it: When you engage in strength training during calorie restriction, it lets your body know that even though you've cut back on calories, your muscles are still needed and working hard. If you fail to work out while dropping pounds, it's as if your body says to itself, "This muscle requires more energy to maintain than fat does, and it's not being used, so I'll use some of it for fuel." Researchers concluded that inactivity during calorie restriction significantly increases muscle breakdown and impairs how well the body uses protein, according to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2007.

The bottom-line: Body composition improvement is the goal and here’s a big take home point: 80% of your body composition is determined by what you eat. We must workout to improve body composition, but we can’t outwork bad dietary choices. Exercise and good nutrition are two crucial keys to your success. You need both to unlock the door.

To measure is to know—if you cannot measure it, then you cannot improve it. Measure your progress with the right tools, not just one tool (the scale). It’s not enough to simply measure. You must use your results as a compass. Are you headed in the right direction? If yes, then keep going. If not, then make the necessary adjustments and redirect yourself. If you need directional help, I’m here to help!

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Tracking Tools: What gets measured, gets managed

Progress Update

Summer Healthy Charleston Challenge Highlight Reel

MEASURE: Why measure? What we can’t measure, we can’t improve.

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