Measure Your Body Fat in the Privacy of your own Home-Venuto.pdf

How To Measure Your

Body Fat In The Privacy

Of Your Own Home!

Accurately Test Your Fat-to-Muscle Ratio

Chart Your Progress With “Laser” Accuracy

Find Out If Your Program Is Really Working

By Tom Venuto, Author of the #1 Best-selling Fitness E-Book,

Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle (BFFM)

www.burnthefat.com

www.fitren.com

Special thanks to Accu-Fitness for providing illustrations

www.accumeasurefitness.com

“Accu-Measure” is a registered trademark of Accu-Measure, LLC

Retail Price $19.95. This is NOT a free ebook. You do NOT have resale rights to this product.

No unauthorized reproduction or distribution is permitted.

Feedback: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be In

The Shortest Time Possible

Management consultant and business author Ken Blanchard once said, “Feedback

is the Breakfast of Champions.” That’s great advice, and it’s just as true for

managing your own body as it is for managing a company.

The formula for success in any endeavor is simple: First, you set a specific goal

and designate a time limit for its achievement.

Second, you devise an action plan or strategy for achieving your goal. Your goal

and your action plan must both be in writing.

Third, you launch at once, whether you think you’re ready or not, and you begin

taking efficient daily action in the direction of your goal.

That brings you to the fourth step – and it’s a vitally important step that too many

people forget: Get feedback on your results. Feedback means measuring your

progress at frequent intervals to see if your action plan is working. Put another

way, it means you have to “keep score.”

Imagine a company where the owners did not meticulously keep track of sales and

expnses on a daily basis. They probably wouldn’t be in business for long would

they? Imagine a basketball game where there are no hoops and the players just

run around the court, dribbling, passing and so on, but there is nothing to shoot at

and no way to keep score. Ridiculous? Well, it’s just as silly to start a fitness or

weight loss program and not keep score as it is to play any game or run any

business without keeping score.

The way to get from where you are to where you want to be is to get continuous

feedback to see how you’re doing, adjust your action plan according to your results

and repeat the process until you reach your goal.

Why body fat testing is the best way to get feedback and measure

progress towards your fitness goals

Most people are totally obsessed with scale weight, even though the scale tells you

nothing about what your weight consists of; fat or muscle. Scale weight can also

fluctuate wildly on a daily basis based on your water levels, blurring the real

picture (and messing with your head too!)

Losing weight is very easy. Losing fat – and keeping it off without losing muscle -

is a much bigger challenge. If you simply wanted to lose weight , I could show you

how to drop 10 –15 pounds over the weekend just by dehydrating yourself and

using natural herbal diuretics. Bodybuilders and wrestlers do it all the time to

make a weight class. But what good would that do if it’s almost all water and

you’re just going to gain it all back within days?

If you want to achieve solid muscle gain or permanent fat loss and get off the diet

roller coaster once and for all, you must squash your preoccupation with scale

weight and instead judge your progress based on lean body weight and body fat.

Instead of looking only at body weight , a body fat test lets you focus on lean tissue

versus fat tissue so you get a clearer picture of the effects your nutrition and

training are really having your body. Body fat tests also allow you to monitor your

progress and get continual feedback so you know how to adjust your nutrition or

training on a week-to-week basis.

The scale, tape measure, mirror, and photographs are all helpful methods of

feedback you can (and should) use, but alone they’re not enough. It’s difficult to

notice daily and weekly changes in the mirror because they’re taking place so

gradually. Watching your progress unfold slowly like the grass grows can be

frustrating and discouraging – sometimes even a de-motivator.

It’s also difficult for most people to judge their own progress objectively. The best-

known example of distorted self-image is anorexia, but it works both ways: Many

bodybuilders suffer from “muscle dysmorphia,” a term coined by psychologists that

could best be described as “reverse anorexia.” These are people who can never

seem to get big or muscular enough.

Almost everyone has some small degree of distorted body image and you’re always

your own harshest critic. You seldom see changes in your own physique as readily

as others do. That’s why you need an objective, accurate, measurable and

scientific method of measuring your results and recording your progress. Body fat

testing is the answer.

Why skinfolds are the best method for personal body fat testing

There are many different methods for body fat testing, but some are more

appropriate for personal, regular testing than others. For example, underwater

weighing (also known as hydrostatic testing) has been called the “gold standard”

for fat testing because of its high accuracy.

However, hydrostatic testing is simply not practical for personal use on a regular

basis. Who wants to go to an exercise physiology lab and get dunked underwater

every week while suspended from an oversized “grocery scale?” Not me, and

probably not you either.

There are some other very high tech methods for measuring body fat these days,

and they keep coming out with new ones all the time. Some are said to be so

accurate that they can tell you whether your right arm has more fat than your left

arm! The problem is, all these methods are too complicated, impractical,

inaccessible or expensive. For home self testing, you want a method that is

simple, practical, easily accessible and inexpensive . That’s where the “pinch an

inch” test comes in!

Skinfold self-testing at home

There are three types of body fat: The first is subcutaneous fat, which is stored

right below your skin. Second, there’s intramuscular fat , which is inside the muscle

tissue (picture the fat inside a “marbled steak.”). Third, you have internal fat ,

which is located on and around your internal organs for protective cushioning.

Skinfold testing is based on the premise that the majority of your body fat is

subcutaneous – right below your skin where you can see and grab it. By “pinching”

the skin and fat and measuring the thickness of the fold at one or more sites, you

can get a fairly accurate estimate of your total body fat percentage…and more

importantly, a way to consistently measure your progress from week to week.

Until quite recently, a challenge many people faced was not having an experienced

fitness professional available to test you. For years, a skinfold test could only be

performed by somebody else (there was no way to “pinch yourself.”) A second

person was required to “pinch your fat” at several locations, including spots you

can’t reach, such as your upper back. Even if you were the “human pretzel” and

you could somehow reach around and measure all your own skinfolds, it wouldn’t

be accurate.

This problem was surmounted when a company called Accu-Fitness invented an

inexpensive plastic skinfold caliper called the Accu Measure. The Accu Measure is

different from other calipers because it was designed so you can measure your

own body fat at home and you don’t even need another person to help! This

method is inexpensive, convenient and private !

There’s a LOT to be said for the accountability factor when you have a coach or

trainer measure your body fat every week. However, the privacy factor of the Accu

Measure is also nice because if you’re like most people, you prefer not to have a

stranger groping your fat rolls every week. It’s kind of embarrassing in the

beginning… although once you start getting leaner, you may surprise yourself

when one day you’re proud to have someone “pinch you” - because there’s nothing

there but thin skin on top of rock hard muscle!)

How To Measure Your Own Body Fat At Home With The One Site Skinfold

Test

Skinfold self- testing is now possible because instead of using the traditional three

or four site skinfold formulas that require a second person, the Accu Measure only

requires a skinfold to be taken at ONE SITE - the Illiac crest (also known as

“suprailliac” or top of the hip bone), and you can measure that spot yourself!

Based on this single measurement , you simply refer to a body fat interpretation

chart for an accurate estimate of total body fat.

Some people wonder whether the one site iliac crest pinch test is inaccurate,

especially if they store more fat in their lower bodies than they do around the

waist. The truth is, it doesn’t matter where you store the most fat. What matters is

that you have a method you can use regularly, which gives you consistent readings

you can use to compare one week’s results to the next, and the Accu Measure does

that beautifully.

Studies have shown that measuring at three or four sites does increase accuracy

slightly, but not greatly so – so don’t worry that the Accu measure only requires

pinching one spot. Research has also shown that measuring more than four

skinfold sites does not always increase accuracy further. In fact, if the tester is

inexperienced, it can actually increase the margin for error).

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